Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Sugarloaf USA, with Nancy. Cold again, and a bit windier at times. I wore an extra shirt and different socks, and survived. No lift lines anywhere. Four runs, and took a cocoa break at Bullwinkles.

C • No lift lines 1

And four more runs afterwards, including all the way down to the bottom of the condos. For the last two, Nancy and I went in separate directions, and I did a double black run that was fine, though a little icy.

I seem to have logged a comparable amount of exercise this year to recent years, which seems a bit surprising. Definitely less hiking than last year, but a bit more orienteering, helped by the fact that we had a Highlander this year. My Billygoat result in 2017 was pretty pathetic, but my Highlander and Traverse were both pretty good. 32 O races, including one DNF and one DSQ, both unusual for me. Six A-meet weekends, of which I ran M35 at five of them (and M21 at the Team Trials), and I think I came away with two first-place awards and one second place from all that (thanks to various award criteria). Five races in which I turned in the fastest result (one of which I was the only one on). 223 km of orienteering, which is the most since 2011. It would have been good to have done a bit more pedaling, and a bit less shoveling. And with a bit more wisdom, maybe I can avoid injuring my back in the future. A combined highlight/lowlight was the trip to Manitoba with Charlie, which was wonderful in terms of company, but at the end of it, I was saying that I'd had enough and didn't need to return to those sandhills. I think Charlie really has had enough, but I suppose I would consider going back, despite the insane poison ivy situation. I ended up with a decent results despite some pretty disappointing navigation, as it really is pretty hard. But I got through it.

Sugarloaf USA, with Nancy. Temperature on the way to the ski area hit a low of -17F, though it was up to around zero by the time we parked the car, and maybe slightly more than that during the day. Four runs in the morning before a break for hot chocolate.

And then five more runs with Nancy, and one final black diamond by myself. Pretty bundled up all day, though I switched to the really serious Frostline mittens for the afternoon. No wind today, so the next two days are likely to be considerably less comfortable.

Right around sunset, temp 7F when I started and it dropped a couple of degrees while I was out there. Bundled up pretty well, four layers on top, two on the bottom, fleece beanie and lobster mittens. My chin was chilly for a little bit, but not for long. I was just a tad warm a couple of times, but that beats the alternative. A couple of inches of fluffy snow over a more solid base, but most of it had been snowshoed or skied or snowmobiled already, except for the part north of te Power Line trail, which had just one set of old snowshoe tracks, so I was basicaly breaking trail there. Over all, it was invigorating.

Snow dealings, round 3d: finishing up my driveway. Half an hour or so, mostly with the snowblower. Got rid of most of the snow, and now it's a sheet of thick, solid ice. Not good, glad I have AWD now. Also blowed out the mailbox.

Snow dealings, round 3b: Nancy's driveway, maybe 4" of fluffy snow over an ice layer. We had four people, so we made reasonably short work of this. I dropped them off at the house and drove back to park at North St. Auto, then jogged to the house. Nancy and Rachel cleared off their cars, I went after the plow snow with a shovel while Stephen used the electric snowblower. Did a little scraping with the pusher on the steep part after that, and when we got Rachel's car out, I jogged back down the street to get mine.

Snow dealings, round 3c: my driveway, 3" of fluffy snow over a hard layer of ice. Stephen cleared off his car (he got the key to the Mazda for Xmas) while I blowed as much of the driveway as I was interested in doing that late at night. I didn't have to walk behind the snowblower, it could pull me along on the ice without my feet moving. I'll maybe get out and sweep it to get some black showing so that the sun can work on it, but it's going to be cold. I also had to give Stephen a push to get out because he hadn't cleared in front of his tires very well.