What I did with my day off

Ski or not?

Towards the latter part of the race Saturday my arch started bothering me, I figured it was just from ski racing for 2+ hours, which it pretty much was. I didn't think much of it but last night it started to bother me a bit so I popped a few ibuprofen and went to bed. This morning it still is there so the question came... to ski or not to ski? Skiing easy most likely won't hurt it, but an extra day of rest after a lot of travel and racing isn't the worst thing either so I am taking the day off. This week is planned to be pretty easy with one 2 hourish ski per day and some light runs and then put in some harder efforts Saturday before the Tour to warm the body up for racing. A day off in the middle in the big picture doesn't make much of a difference and over the years I have tried to do too much when a little flare up like this happens and sometimes it ends up okay but that is also why I have issues with pretty much every appendage in my body. So I like to think that today I made the smart decision.

The Birkie!

We woke up at 5:30 am to the thermometer reading -8. All week they were saying that it was supposed to be around on Saturday which it got to but it started about 20 degrees colder than they had said. For these big World Loppet type races when you have literally thousands of people showing up to relatively small areas within at about the same time it pays to get there early and also be affiliated with someone who in the industry so you can have a parking pass. While we drove in the last mile or so before the parking lot the road was lined with racers walking from the satellite lots in the sub zero weather. Glad I wasn't one of them. We got there about an hour before the start and tested skis as usual picked the fast ones and finished warming up before getting in the start pen. The pen is divided into waves and the Elite wave of 200 skiers lines up behind the start banner that gets lifted when the start gun goes off. The next waves banner gets lifted 2 minutes later, and so on. So we were all in the pen with our warm ups off 10 minutes to start and the announcer says the start is delayed 10 minutes due to a big traffic jam of everyone trying to get there at the same time. So now there were 200 guys running back and forth in ski gear trying to stay warm for 10 more minutes. It wasn't that bad though.

Once the race got going it was pretty mellow of the start. About 1k of flat/rolling skiing before we head up about 1-2 k of climbing along a powerline before we head into the woods. At about 2k I was up near the front when a guy stepped on my pole and broke it. (Turns out he broke another guys pole a few minutes later and his coach came up to me that night and appologized. Apparently he is just real bad at skiing around other people.) A mild sense of panic took over but calm eventually came back when I heard there was a pole station about 1k up the trail. When I got to it there were a bunch of poles in a pile and the guy at the station picked up a short pair of turquoise ones which weren't going to work so I got to stop and go back and grabbed one that was a bit longer. Turned out it was about 6 inches taller than I ski on... but at least I had one and I was back in the race and skied my way back up to the front over the next few k's.

So the race was on. But no one really wanted to push the pace. This was a mixed blessing for me since I was skiing with one pole that was way way to long until about 25k, also I wasn't able to get my second drink bottle at 15k like I had hoped/planned and from about 25k to 38k, when I got my last bottle, I was pretty close to running out of energy. In that way the slower pace was a godsend, but big pack sprints are not my specialty. That meant that with 5k to go I made a move to try and separate things a little bit. Lars caught up and so did Babikov with the rest of the field. Then Babikov went and I tried to go with him since that was my best hope by far if I could just hang on to the top of the climb. He was just too strong and a pack of about 20 ended up forming coming across the 3k flat leading to the finish and I just didn't have enough to do much in the sprint. Looking back I am a little disappointed with the place (12th, I think) but I went where I though my chance was best to try and get away and maybe win the thing but it wasn't to be.

So now I am home for three weeks! The skiing is great in town and the Tour of Anchorage is coming up this weekend. Looks like it should be a battle between the top 3 from the Sven Johansen last weekend and two Norwegians, one from UAA who had to sit out the NCAA season for some eligibility reasons and one who was 6th, I think, at the Birkie. Should be fun!

Pre Birkie day

Yesterday I got to do all the Birkie had to offer. Really just two things, the sprints and the Birkie dinner. The Sprints went okay and almost as well as I really could have hoped considering what the course was and I had woke up thinking there was no way I was going to race them. I ended up 4th... okay, but 3rd would have got me $200. The Birkie dinner was another last minute addition to my schedule and well worth the time. Prime rib, free drinks, good food, prime rib... and I got to hear quite a bit about Birkie's gone by. The Birkie is really a very cool event.

I ended up not getting back from dinner until 10:15 since the dinner was about 45 minutes away and was pretty exhausted after the travel the day before. So I crashed out hard only to wake up 20 minutes later a could not get back to sleep...! and only managed maybe 5 hours of sleep. Still today I felt pretty good considering the lack of sleep and tested some skis and checked out the expo at the Telemark Lodge which is madness. Ski selection was pretty easy since the conditions have been pretty cold and stable. One pair for cold hard track, one for slightly softer if the snow doesn't have a chance to set before the race starts.

Off now for a short ski to check out the finish.

To the Birkie

After traveling all day yesterday from Anchorage to Minneapolis to Hayward, WI I woke up this morning to a thermometer that read -18 F. Ouch. It is warming up fast though and this afternoon are the Birkie Sprints, 100 meters out and back on Main St in Hayward. I wasn't sure if I would do them after the cold cold temps this morning but my temp cutoff was 10 above and now it is 11 so I think I'm in.

Home

I finally got home last weekend after 6 weeks. I figured it out and over those 6 weeks I flew 21 hours and drove 50 hour to get all the places I needed... too much. The furthest I have gone since I got back was 15 minutes to ski on at the Hillside trails when I wasn't driving the 5 minutes to Kincaid.

Yesterday was the Sven Johansen 30k skate out at Kincaid. Not the biggest race in town but definately the best. After an easy 5k to start it covers almost all the hard trails in the park. Combine that with the snowstorm we started in made for a tough day. This past week I had planned on putting in some quality training but I have just been exhausted. My plan if I was feeling 100% was to try and drop everyone at around 10k and ski the last 20 on my own, if that didnt' work I was going to try to drop everyone again at 20k. I knew I could outsprint everyone but I wanted to win by a lot and take away any chance of getting tangled up. I put a 15 second gap on the field at 10k but that got closed up when we came thru the stadium into a pretty good headwind and the guys behind me closed the gap. I went again at 20k and put a pretty good gap on the remaining 4 guys (Frode Lillefjell, Brent Knight, and Lex Treinen) and thought that might have done it. Unfortunately Frode was there and it took a few k but he finally caught back up and we both relaxed and the other two caught back up not too long after. So I figured Frode and I had done our work and had the other two come to the front and set the pace for a bit. They both took their turns admirably and then with 3k to go Frode took the lead and picked up the pace getting rid of Lex. Then it was the 3 of us and with 1k to go I took off on a gradual climb and got enough of a lead to eliminate a true sprint finish.

Considering how the body felt (steep climbing felt awful) it was a pretty good day. It would have been nice to win by more but looking at two 50k's the next two weekends it was a good warm up. I didn't have any cramping issues and it was a solid 30k workout with some pretty hard efforts but I didn't have to dig too deep. I travel again on Wednesday to Wisconsin for the Birkie which should be a pretty good field with most all of the top Americans and a few foreigners that Rossi is bringing over. Should be fun...

Rocky Mountain High

I'm up in Aspen now for the last two races of a 6 week trip. Not a bad place to end it. We have a 10k classic tomorrow followed by the Owl Creek Chase on Saturday before I head back to Denver to fly out early Sunday. Given the totally outrageous housing cost here ($425 a night was the cheapest I could find) Noah Hoffman's family has been kind enough to open their house to me and a couple other skiers for the week.

After what has felt like a week spent in the city and traveling it was a real nice change to settle in here yesterday and just go ski... slowly. We are at about 8500 feet up here and if you go too hard your lungs let you know. Fortunately there is a fair amount of mellow skiing terrain off ther race course that I was able to cruise around on yesterday. Once in the sunshine which was a nice change and the other at night which is just fun.

Today is just an easy ski on the course and getting the skis ready for tomorrow.

Also here is a link to some photos of the Madison sprints

http://madcross.smugmug.com/Madison-Winter-Fest

Madison

I spent the last week at a cabin in the woods up in Hayward, Wisconsin training and resting abit after Canmore. And today it was time to get back to racing with the Capital Square Sprints in Madison, WI. The race here goes 1/2 way around the Capital Square in an out and back U and they estimated that for the mens race there were 10,000 people out watching making a pretty sweet atmosphere. Today was the skate sprint relay, 2 skiers per team, each skier doing 4 laps. Anders and I teamed up as we usually do but this time we switched things up and had me lead out and him anchor. Worked out pretty well.

I started out slow... we hadn't been able to ski on the course during the womens race so none of the guys had skied for 30 minutes before the race. I ran a bit but in the middle of a city to keep from getting too cold but still started pretty cold. After lap 1 I was at the back of the leaders in about 5th just cruising. Anders came thru in third and after that it was a battle between the Factory Team, CXC, and us, just like we figured it would be. The second laps everything stayed together. Then on the third Andre Golovko from the Factory Team and I opened a gap on Brian Gregg the CXCer only to have Kuzzy close that up and take the lead going into the final legs with Anders right behind and a small gap on Lars. Our plan from the start was to ski relaxed and not do any extra work then I would try to give Anders a lead going into the final lap and he would just fly away like he can we he gets rolling. I tried to open the gap on Andre but he was just a bit too strong and we came thru the final exchange together. Then Anders just unloaded and came in with a huge gap on Lars and Kuzzy. Pretty impressive and tactically magnificent if I do say so.

We just returned from a little cocktail party at the top of one of the hotels on the Square, they do a great job taking care of the athletes around here and it has been really amazing to see the energy that Madison has for ski racing.

One more tomorrow...