What’s New, Taking the Weather in Stride, and Early Season Race Recaps

What’s New:

While my training has largely been ordinary this year (same approximate volume and intensity), I’ve incorporated a few new things.

First, I’ve done more leg strength than ever before. Higher step ups, more lunges, and increased weight with squats. But I haven’t neglected my core or upper body either and I’ve still been doing the weighted pull-ups. And then I did something in July that’s been a goal of mine for 20 years. I benched my body weight! That after not benching in 3.5 years.

Second, I’ve been doing some jumping. Think ski jumps and broad jumps and tuck jumps and jumping jacks. I figure these are a crossover between strength, agility, and cardio. We’ll see if they make any difference.

Third, I’ve brought back hilly runs. I did these back in 2007 to get me prepared to ski up big hills at the West Yellowstone SuperTour and since I’m headed to Crested Butte to race the Alley Loop, I figured I should give these a try again. I previously called these altitude simulation runs but I think they are good for going uphills. I was way too weak to do these in high school and college but now I can squeeze in 500 feet of elevation over eight miles by adding in a few hills on my run home from work. 

 

Used the river gorge to get in some good elevation on my December 4th run home from work. Check out that ascent!!!

Of course I always spend a lot of time working on and thinking about technique. I’m never going to be a great skater or strider, but that double pole, well, I want to perfect that. I mean, I want to look like the pros. I’ve worked my upper body so much that it has to be possible and I’m just missing something. A few things I’ve been working on include quick down and quick up, getting up high, getting my pole plants farther forward (the reason why I think my poles always slip while rollerskiing) without straightening my arms, and not going back on my heels when I do the scoot. That’s a lot.

I also got two new comments while rollerskiing that made me smile. I often get comments about training for the proverbial Birkie (to which in my head I always list off all the other races that are equally - and sometimes more important to me than the Birkie but that the random person doesn’t know about) or that I might be some kind of “professional.” But these comments were both new and happened in the summer while classic rollerskiing.

The first one came while I was skiing with Erik: “Hey, what wax is kicking today?”

The second one I was out by myself and some guy from his lawn said, “You’re going to beat me in the Birkie next year.” Statistically, very likely.

Taking the Weather in Stride:

I don’t have to tell anyone that this December has been very warm. I’ve felt fortunate to have four machine-made snow loops in the Twin Cities and that the employees are very diligent, running the snow guns when the temps drop below that magic temperature. My intervals are no secret when they are so visible on the short loops.

Of course it helps that I have cross training options like running, rollerskiing, and even biking. A couple times to get in long workouts but avoid boredom, Erik and I skied for 1.5 hours followed by an hour run. But mostly, I haven’t worried about the warm temps and shortened loops, other than by the middle of January I have yet to do a 3 hour ski this winter! 

 

Talk about a boring ski at Battle Creek on December 2nd.

Followed it up with this inspiring run!

Early Season Race Recaps

Last year we did Skadi’s Ski Chase. It went OK but I had kinda decided we weren’t going to do it again until Finn Sisu announced their new Tour de Finn series. All of a sudden I was signing up and mighty glad to be doing so because it would kill some skiing time on the hamster loops. Race morning dawned warm with temps barely dipping down to freezing and a bit wet. The race field was huge. Of course, there were three times as many men as women. The organizers were going to start the two fields 5 minutes apart but that seemed dangerously close to lap time so we asked to shorten that to more like 2 minutes which seemed to work well.

I didn’t get a good start position. The race didn’t mean that much to me and since it got funneled to about three skiers wide ten meters from the start, I decided to just chill and let that play into my race strategy. In such a short race it’s easy to go out way too hard but this way I held back for the first quarter lap to let my heart rate come up and then got to the passing. 

Definitely not the best photo of me but this shows some of the course congestion, including with the men at the 2023 Skadi's ski chase. Photo: Skinnyski.com

By the time I caught up to Molly though she put in a fight and we ended up skiing together the second half. It was drizzling and eventually I had to pull my glasses up. Since they’re prescription I always have this battle of “is it better to see through rain splotches versus without glasses.” Eventually the latter always wins. I thought my best chance to beat Molly was to hit that north donut hill hard and that’s what I did, holding her off by just a couple seconds.

 

Three-way sprint finish for the lesser places at Skadi's. Photo: Skinnyski.com

The next weekend was Hoigaard’s Relays. Last year I’d intended to do both Skadi’s and Hoigaard’s but we had good natural snow and the temps were freezing so we skipped Hoigaard’s. This year it was quite a bit warmer, like well above freezing warmer but it was raining. I was motivated to race though because there wasn’t much else to do. Erik and I partnered up and I sent him out first. I’m still not great at balancing on my skate skis and conditions were slushy. When Erik tagged off to me I struggled for the first few meters, through a particularly slushy section, but then I was flying towards the south donut where we pulled a near 180 to cut off the south donut. I didn’t have my glasses on because of the rain and I had intended to take that corner wide but ended up cutting it tight, got knocked a bit backward, and just couldn't recover. I fell before I slid off the course and as a result two other racers fell. It’s never good to fall on a downhill because it curbs so much speed. 

Erik racing the 2023 Hoigaard's Relays. I wish the spectator with the umbrella had been in the background. Photo: Skinnyski.com

From there I never really recovered. That and my skiing isn’t really good enough to be able to push hard in those conditions. Usually I end my first lap breathing super hard and feeling like the whole event is a good workout, but that wasn’t quite the case this year.

And back to Taking the Weather in Stride

The Tour de Finn motivated Erik and I to sign up for our first ever Pre-Loppets. Ha, and then the weather flipped, to really cold and the Pre-Loppet got canceled. I wasn’t very excited to race at -25 ℉ windchill so was glad. I saw the cold weather coming, so I ramped up the training before the front came through when I wouldn't want to train as much. Because that cold weather always makes me question why I keep at this ski racing business.

Perhaps I spent too many years being too hardy - always racing and training when it was below zero. Instead of giving me great tolerance, this has backfired and turned me into a wimp in my older years. Too many times of getting sweaty and then cold and on the fringe of hypothermia, shaking uncontrollably. And too many times frost-nipping my fingers and toes and now that my toenails are getting deformed and thickened and the tips of my pinky fingers have decreased sensation I take the cold weather much more seriously.

When I see the weather dipping, even below 20 ℉ if there is substantial wind, I immediately think about shortening my workouts or running (when I can keep my hands and feet warmer), or simply not going out at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

One of the difficulties of dressing for the extreme cold is that in between winters we have 90 degree heat and I often forget most of what I’ve learned the past winter. Here’s a few things that are helping me through this polar vortex, both new and old revelations. I’m at least an average sweater and even though my hands and feet get cold, I almost instantly melt when my core overheats. I’ve learned the hard way that I absolutely can NOT do fleece as a medium layer. Instead, in the past I’ve learned to simply add an additional t-shirt, or perhaps double long sleeve tops, but absolutely not under any circumstances, fleece. Our black Vakava warm-up suits are not insulted. Fortunately this year we got some snazzy new vests. While my initial intention was to wear the vest during warmer weather, I realized quickly that adding it on top of my Vakava jacket worked well for me. I really like the collar on my jacket with a protected zipper flaps, is reasonably flexible, and doesn’t go up so high. The same isn’t true for the vest. Hence I zip the jacket all the way up and not the vest and then adjust the zipper on my vest if I get warm or cold. The balance is always how to stay warm but not sweat. And then throw into that long uphills and screaming downhills and well, it’s pretty much impossible so the goal becomes to sweat as little as possible.

If it’s colder than 15 ℉, I wear my insulated U of M pants. Keeping the legs warm is helpful. Otherwise on my head I wear a thin hat and lately, double thin buffs.

That leaves the hands and feet. I’ve taken to wearing my giant mountaineering mittens more often. They are a beast to put through the pole straps (as in I have to pull them through with my bare hands) but they are warm although they don’t grip the poles terribly well. Erik made me some light but wind-proof overmitts a few years ago that I’ve busted out finally. These are nice because I can wear lightweight mittens that make gripping the poles a dream. I’ve also found that they seem protective against my other problem of my hands getting cold after my gloves/mittens have gotten really sweaty.

Erik overhead some skiers at World Masters in 2018 talking about using latex gloves to prevent gloves/mittens from getting sweaty. I've done this a number of times in the past, usually with reasonable success (although the gloves are literally dripping when I take them off) but more recently I haven't had good luck with this. Once the sweat starts rolling around when I move my hands to get into my tuck position, this makes my fingers cold again so for now I’m nixing this. It’s also gross.

Erik surprised me with some heated socks just before the polar vortex kicked in. I stupidly thought I’d be OK without them skiing on a 15 ℉ day with a windchill around zero but I wasn’t so, I started using the heated socks and so far so good! I got the Meister brand and on 50% power the giant (they are quite overkill) batteries still have half charge after 10 hours of use.

And now we’re heading back to the 30’s so I’ll likely forget all this knowledge!