Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Hickory Hills, scoping out the situation. After a couple of quite cold nights, what had been frozen was now mostly snow-covered, and what had been open water was now pretty fine ice. There were a bunch of ice fishermen out having a get-together, a few snowmobiles and ATVs, and a bunch of people on skates, so it was clear that the situation was favorable. After a reconaissance tour, I headed back to the car for more gear, then rode back out to the main part where the good ice was.

The spiky tires again worked great. It quickly became clear that I was best off to stick to the narrow strips of ice where the snow had drifted away, and to stay off the places that had a couple of inches of snow. The former was like riding on pavement, whereas on the latter I slid around a little and it was a lot more effort. There was one small area where the ice was unexpectedly slushy. No danger, because it's a very shallow spot, but it was very unclear why it wasn't frozen.

C • This looks a tad more preca... 3

Excellent ice, dead calm, I was not feeling rusty, and my ankles did not hurt. I chatted for a bit with a guy named Michael Columb, which said he had drilled test holes yesterday and found 5"-6" everywhere he looked.

I thought I felt a puff of wind, so I set up the sail and skated around with it, but that's really all I was doing, there wasn't enough wind to matter. This is the only section that AP guessed wrong, putting it as "running"

One more lap of the nice ice, feeling like my form was pretty good the whole way around.

And back to the car. This includes the time spent loading the bike and other gear into the car, but it was enough effort with frozen fingers that I'm going to leave it.