Training Log Archive: AliC

A full travel day back to Toledo, made it safe and sound and having read about 10% of Les Miserables, according to Mr. Kindle which doesn't measure in pages. The battle of Waterloo description that lasts for a few percent on it's own wasn't the most gripping part so far...

C • Battle of Waterloo.... 2

Woo, and moved it up a place for 2nd! 1:08 behind a different Russian this time, Anastasia Kravchenko, and 26 seconds up on 3rd, also Russian, Tatiana Kazlova. The scandis seem to have been shut out of the podium the past two days, kinda surprising, but then again, Tove, Josephina and Erik Rost are all down in NZ.

Anyways, my race did go well. I felt a little undecided to 1, and just a bit slow to 2 (fell on my face by a tip-catch on an uphill), but after that, pretty much smooth saililng. One really nice thing about starting late is that all the cuts are already made for you. So a few times I wasn't even intending to cut, but hey, that track through the woods seems to be going my way... =)

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Split analysis - first number in parentheses is how much I think I lost on that control, next is how much I lost to superwoman (only won 1 split). I guess basically, consistency does win the way, but wow did I lose a lot of time to superwoman!!!)


1 - Indecision about route as I ascended from the start. Decided to duck into the woods earlier as opposed to stay on the big trail longer. Hesitated when my started-with-M21E headed to an earlier control, but after a quick map look, I continued on to my own control. (+10, +19)
2 - Cut across yellow, effectively, using the contours to put me on the right little trial into the woods. But then felt not-fast on the steep little trail up, including a fall from a tip-caught. (+10, +22)
3 - Just barrely missed a big-trail turn-off, luckily cutting the corner through the yellow was totally possible, probably just a few seconds slower. (+5, +25)
4 - Fine. (0, +13)
5 - Fine, liked that I took the second little trail off the big trail approaching control. Saved a smidge of climb. (0, +19)
6 - Ooh, climb times, but fine. Maybe lost a bit just not being super speedy? (+5,+30)
7 - Yeah, found a cut straight up to the control, awesome. (0, +8)
8 - Jumping over a stone wall at high speed- gotta go for it or you loose momentum headed up the next hill! Again, choose the second little trail on approach to control, was cleaner + simpler. (0,+3)
9 - Fine. (0, +15)
10 - Zig-zag and then right, and found a very helpful cut, again. (0,0)
11 - Little trail go-for-it skiing! (0,+6)
12 - Around to the right on little trails (0,+2)
13 - Bah, probably my one really wrong route choice, went left, going right including a cut through the field was better (less futzing around the house on the hill). (+10?, +21)
14 - Yeehaw, and thank goodness for touch-free punching!! Totally changes ski-o for the better! (0,+2)
Finish (0,+4)

C • Tired of the congratulations yet? 15

C • [duplicate] 1

C • 1241 WRE points yesterday, ... 5

Nice late afternoon ski with the crew (Greg, Adrian, Ken), all in our matching jackets, cute. =) We did a nice big loop with some good climbs and a few good descents. The final bit in the valley was brrrrr. Inversion for sure. Anything depression like was even colder (not that it's really that cold, just what we've become adapted to here.)

Event: Ski O Tour, Col de la Givrine
 

And today is a dual-start long. Meaning you start at the same time as another gal, but have different first loops (presumably) and then probably the same last loop to finish, see who is ahead by then... the menfolk have a quad start - guess that means they have 4 separate loops. The race is on the Middle final map from last summer's WOC, La Givrine.

My goals:
- At any possible forking, be 100% careful to go the right way!
- Be a bit more cool and collected, especially when transfering from a big track (hard, fast skiing) to the little tracks. That's given me a mistake or two in the past races, so something to try to nail today.

Warm up loops, with map holder to get into the zone of looking at it. Had both a map from Saturday's race and the map of the stadium which I could see just across the train tracks. Last memories of this place - cheering Boris in from the middle distance at WOC. =)

Woo! 3rd again! Happy with it. Not a perfect race, but fairly smooth. I took the time I need to mostly make sensible choices. I can think of two places where I think I missed the best route and there may have been a few more. Only once did I feel out of contact, but turns out I was exactly on the trail I wanted to be anyways, either luck or good spidey sense...

The gals infront were the same two as last time and they were in a dead-even tie, Polina Machikova and Yulia Tarasenko. The men's side was won by Stan, the Bulgarian, and then two Russians in second and third, so pretty Russian-dominated podium. Here's a photo of when they got us all up there (thanks to Ken!):


Ah, I also lost a pole basket with just a few controls to go. I probably would have been a smidge faster with it, but luckily the last controls were mostly downhill and it didn't hurt me terribly. Perhaps ~20s? Definitely not the 2min30 ish to the winning gals.

Did my two non-awesome route choices spell that biggish difference? Or is it more just speed throughout the course? Only the splits will tell...

One route choice I was kind of non-committed to go right or left of a steep wooded downhill and I ended up just opting to go over it, which required ski-taking off, not ideal. Such precipitous descending also meant I wasn't exactly sure where I was and hence hesitation going into the woods to the control.

Another route choice, I had just I think had a great route choice, busting through the woods skis-off directly to the control, and I actually think fastest would have been to continue that way to the next trail over (all parallel, going up hill), because that connected well to where I needed to go next. But I opted to put skis on and ski around, losing time for sure I think.

Anyways, a very happy camper again, should have good WRE points going into WOC now!

C • Very cool again! I believe ... 13

Ski-o training! On the men's map from their mass-start long, just going around it, trying to keep in good contact and not die on the much icier snow. Got quite confused at one time and took awhile to relocate. At least partly due to cut tracks being about the same looking as snowmobile tracks and thus the green lines on the map not making much sense.

Nice sunny day in the Jura!

Can you have a skieroo? Anyways, a little tour de outer loop of le Combe Froide avec Greg, Cristina, Ken. Chillier and icy compared to yesterday. I was in my skiathalon boots and was missing the more solid connection to ski of my skate boots for sure!

And, since I had my ski-o map from this side of the road from yesterday, I decided to re-ski it for practice. Holy moly were the little trails harder today with the ice! Good to practice things, the map is still just hard to read though with all the little trails on top of yellow!

Warm up around Les Rousses. Legs felt a bit tired, but not terrible.

Mmm, 2 minutes back in a much shorter race = not so good. It was tricky as expected and I messed up fairly significantly twice. But before documenting that, the sprint was partly in a castle/fort thing. And by in it, I mean I skied through the moat for a good 500m or so. Awesome! =)

Ok, so where did things go awry? There was a labyrinth at the center of a butterfly loop.
1st time: way in = good, way out = ok
2nd time: way in = good, way out = wrong way!!!
3rd time way in = good, way out = not as wrong as 2nd time, but not quickest

So I didn't do a good job of exiting the labyrinth, at all. My 2nd time out, I think I read the butterfly loop in the wrong direction, because I really intended to go out that way. The 3rd time, I think I had only a half-baked plan to get to the next control, and it looked like an ok way out, but would have been far faster to the big trail to come in the most immediate entrance. (Slight excuse: most immediate entrance covered with control circle line.)

Then, was a whopper of a slow up hill (had been in the sun, so slow suctiony snow) when I was racing a Russian. Turns out, too hard, because I skied right by my control, not realizing (I think I was thinking about the next one? Obviously, not enough oxygen in brain.) So had to go back for that and then didn't take a quick cut to the next one. Argh! This is actually one definite thing to look out for- I can ski harder on big trails, but have to get a 100% clear picture of the little trails to take afterwards to get to the control.

A full rundown:
1- Started with Marc L., which was fun, I was faster putting my map in, he took a shortcut for the S-turns (started straight up!) which put him in front of me. Then he headed over to some control, I continued on to mine.
2 - Yehaw! I stopped to have a look at the relatively long route choice - oh yeah, I'm going for it, into the moat! Perfectly fast skiing and dumped you right at the control. Has to have been the best option.
3 - Cross the road, into the woods, see a control off to my right (wasn't expecting it there), check it, yup it's mine, onward.
4 - First time into the labyrinth, a-ok.
5 - Should have gone to the right instead of left, would have been less futzing in the labyrinth.
6 - Hard to follow the trail, just kept it going, crossed the big trail, slight hesitation heading onto the little trail on the far side, but did it and found my control.
7 - Back into the labyrinth, now knew which corner I needed, so went int the nearest way.
8 - Terrible!! And I *think* I had just decided to go to 9 instead of 8, at least I hope, because otherwise it's a bigger mistake. I thought I learned to respect forks yesterday? Apparently more learning required. Totally had that sinking feeling of being confused when the control I was headed to was my #9 instead of 8... Then found a men's control on the way to 8. Bah.
9 - Fine, I'd already been there.
10- Choose an ok corner of the labyrinth, the best one was far to the other side, so I think a good way in.
11 - Didn't exit the labyrinth properly, not really sure why I didn't see the best way. Impatience?
12 - Racing, racing, flew past control. Darn it! Totally because I was trying to hard on the uphill on the big trail and just didn't look at my map that one extra time. Shouldn't have left big trail until I was 100% sure.
13 - There was a cut, I didn't take it, due to just being somewhat frazzled at this point.
14 - Holy moly downhill!

Oops, too minimal warm-up. Decided it was worth it to fluoro skis, so that took most of the time. Ken was a superstar helping me with the final touches!!

Wahoo! 3rd place!

Just a 1.5 min behind Polina M. (Russia) and mmm I think it was a Tatiana something (also Russian). Totally happy with that result, although it was very unpretty at the beginning.

I think that pretty much all of the women made a mistake to #1, going up the wrong trail past a little house in a meadow. Ok, group retreat! (Awkward with skis.) Then, tried the next one, oops, turned out also wrong (I feel like that junction was funny, it didn't make sense to me. But it was really hard to distinguish trails in the open meadow in the fog.) But I'd headed up a fair bit, with some Russian gals and a Swedish gal, far enough that it made sense to bushwack (skis off) up the hill to a different trail, ready go!

With that over, things went ok for a bit, I was catching up and passing gals, but then I went toward the wrong control from a fork, and was back behind. Passed the same set of girls again, was ahead for a bit, then another error, flew past a turn I should have taken, so went back and then passed them on a big trail.

Toward the far side of the map was around a Russian and the Kazakhstan gal, we went left of the hill, not sure that was best. But I passed them there and then stayed ahead of my group. On a long leg I felt like they disappeared somewhere, not sure why or how.

We had a forked mini loop right around the transfer under the road, I thought I was ahead in that but much was going on so hard to tell. (Hoping, hoping!) Totally alone crossing road and thereafter, although did also sense others in the last little forked bit. Very, very happy when I got told I was in 3rd finishing. Wahoo! =)

C • W00T! 24

C • Awesome!! 3

And in Prémanon! Little joggeroo while Adrian and Ken were at team leader's meeting, Greg was napping and Cristina was grading lab notebooks.

But, there is nowhere good to run. I tried on the road for a bit, but there's no shoulder and I felt like I was going to get run over. So I ran in little driveways and such of skiing cottages, plus a bit just on the snowy fields on edge of road. Snow seems solid, in open areas, could be a good choice to just cut tomorrow!