Training Log Archive: kensr

Long travel day past Geneva to drop off Ali and on thru Italy to the Trento region for a sprint and middle the next two days.

Better on the rough trails, but a bad route choice to 8 took me to left to avoid a sharp drop, but that drop really wasn't bad. My route, however, ended up with no cut over to the right trail pattern, and I had to take off my skis and run up over a stone wall. Cost me 4 min on that move. Was close on a bunch of legs, but lost 2 min a couple other times to end up 4th.

Issues to work on:

1) Skiing downhill on crap snow, particularly narrow trails in the woods. Lost a lot of time in those situations. I can practice this at home, but will expect to trash a pair of ski in the process.
2) Better route choices. Never was lost, knew where the control was, but didn't pick the best route. Study the map, trails and short cuts.

Lap around the local ski route. Chasing after the other 3 up and over some stray branch of the alps and then a fun ride down swooping thru the terrain.

Event: Ski O Tour, Col de la Givrine
 

In the sun at Col de Givrine. Right along side road and rail tracks and then a flat valley gaining elevation as you move away from the base.

Seemed like work today. Two controls in the open and then narrow rough tracks climbing in the forest. Lost a couple minutes on both of those. Some more up a long meadow, and then a long climbing traverse crossing meadow and forest strips. Bad route choice cost me a bunch of time going to 8. Then back down the valley dropping in and out of rough snow.

Ended up 4th today, could have picked off 2nd if skiing went smoother. Middle in same area tomorrow.

Couple loops down by the RR tracks on tired legs.

Morning ski around Saturday's terrain. Main trails groomed but frozen. Skiing good. Nice sunny day. Secondary tracks rigid and fast, stayed mostly clear of them.

Morning ski around the north map with Ali, Greg and Cristina. Nicely groomed, but with a coarse comb which had frozen into gutter tracks. Okay on flats and ups, but dominated the downhills which tended to throw you off balance. No falls, but wobbley aggressive. Looking like it will warm up by the time we ski around the fort.

Sprint around an old castle fort. Straight up out of the start on a string of shoveled snow piles along the in-run of a ski jump. Luckily we didn't finish with a shot down the landing, which would have been exciting. Next along the edge of the moat and a series of controls off to the side of a main trail. Nothing complicated, but did muff one a little by going too far into the woods. Caught up to my competition about halfway thru and dogged him until he made a mistake. Was ahead for a couple controls and then I picked a poor route along a sketchy skinny trail and he got back in front. Followed him down an icy nose to the go control.

Good for another win and trophy. Afraid to look at the bottoms of my skis as I know I zinged a couple rocks thru the sparse snow cover.

In France for ski-o tour. Temps just above freezing and heavy overcast. Snow cover thin corn snow up here in mountains, nothing down in the lowlands. And for this I left the best VT snow in years.

Long race today, 7 km which seems ridiculously short. Just as good as I still feel punky, although not coughing much any more.

In the Jura Mtns for 2 days of ski-o here on the Swiss border. Staying in a nice Nordic training center right on the trails.

Long today, an easy 6.7 km for me. Except I miscounted switchbacks and junctions on the way to #1 and went way past it. Forgot how easy it is to overshoot controls while skiing. Finally turned around and came back down the long hill I had unnecessarily climbed and nailed the control, after covering 5 km on probably a 2 km control.

After that settled in for pretty conservative run. No further mistakes, but paused several times to confirm position and route choice.

Despite horrendous navigation to the first control, I ended up on top of my class for the day as my Swiss competitor for day did a mispunch.

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