Trail Mix

So my trail mix team, Nordic Ninjas, is going for win #6 this year, a pretty decent streak by any standard.  We have had a couple team members change over the years, but have stuck pretty consistently to U of M skiers.  This year changed that a bit when Dave decided he did not have a good enough feel of his racing/health condition to enter a team event.  So we went through a series of other skiers to find someone to fill his shoes.  Brian Gregg or Evan Pengelley were the top two choices on my list.  Both of them were on the team at one point, but Brian ended up with other commitments, and Evan just closed on a house, so we ended up with Sven, someone from Gear West who works with Matt.
Preparing for this race seemed a lot like getting ready for a ski race.  I waxed the night before (summer wax on Jeff's skis) got up, put on my ski gear (also good for cold weather running), strapped on the skis and warmed up a bit (with 3 inches of new snow in my yard it was too good of an opportunity to pass up).  Then I got in the car and drove to the race.
The cold wet weather must have scared some people off, because the field was probably only 75% of it's normal size.  Things started looking up right from the line.  It is always a good sign when nobody is anxious to start right on the line, nobody out to win the race before it starts.  Matt and I set the pace right from the start, and when I finally looked back after a mile or so there was nobody with us.  I held on to Matt until somewhere between mile 3 and 4 then cut back just a hair to a more comfortable rhythm.  I was still able to see Matt on the long climb at the back loop, and picked up the pace a bit to make sure nobody was closing the gap down behind me.  Matt won, I was second, about 45 seconds behind him, and Travis was about 4 min behind us.  Sven was an additional 8 minutes back however, so things were looking a bit dicey.  Results came out and we had the second fastest time, but it was behind a Co-ed team, so we still won the Men's division.  In fact, we beat the next mens team by 13min.  A pretty sketchy win if you ask me, but I'll take it.
That night was my friend Kim's birthday, so we went to Annie's malt shop and out to a bar for a bit.  I got to ride in Rob's fast new Cadillac then it was home to sleep a bit before racing again the next morning.

Sunday morning was the maple syrup run at the Riverbend Nature Center in Faribault.  I was lured down there by the chance to win maple syrup, and the pancake breakfast after the race.  I took the lead right off the line and put a fast gap on everyone else.  I ran 17:50, not a great time, but I still won by 1:30 over the next finisher, so I'm pretty happy with that.

Ski Run Ski

The skiing continued to be good well into March, so it was nice to mix a bit of that in with beginning to bike and run.  Once the roads were cleared the car got a bit of a break, and I've been riding to work almost every day since.  I've even spent a couple weekends at home, which was great.  I got some skiing in on the second of April with Blake and Bjorn, adding another month that I've skied in.  Theodore Wirth was surprisingly good still, especially the man made section.
After that the running started in earnest, not much time left until trail mix after all.  I ran 6 days in a row one week, probably my best streak since high school.  After that though my knee started to bug me, so I'm going to dial it back a bit once trail mix is over.  It seems like my legs can handle long distance fine, but they just need plenty of recovery between runs.
The spring biking series has also kicked off.  I'm currently leading KOM points, but am third in sprint points behind Mike and Jim.  Got one great gravel ride in with Ben, Curtis, and crew on a Tuesday evening as well.
In other news my friend Gary is getting married in a couple weeks and his bachelors party was last weekend.  We played paintball which was a surprisingly good time, and did a bit of drinking as well.  I mixed a whiskey sour and an amaretto sour together to make a pretty good drink, and that was it for me at the bars.  When we got back to Gary's place he made me a white russian that had very little white in it, then I was ready to sleep.

BWCA

Following the Birkie this year I was actually a bit burnt out on skiing, maybe disheartened would be a better word.  The snow was still great though, and the next week presented an opportunity too good to pass up.  Bjorn planned a winter camping trip into the BWCA for the first few days of March.  There were 4 of us on the trip, Bjorn, Kurt (a med school student and friend of Bjorn's), Mike Kosowski, and myself.  The plan was to do most of our travel by ski pulling sleds with our gear on them and to snowshoe through portages where skiing wasn't possible.  Kurt's dad had most of the gear we needed, including some pretty sweet sleds and a canvas tent and TI stove.  Much like the Quetico trip the first day was the toughest.  Learning to ski with sleds, adventuring through untrodden portages, me breaking a pole, and of course the first day there is always the most weight due to food and such.  It was some work, and did I mention the high that day was 5F with 15mph winds?  Once we got to a nice sheltered spot and got the tent set up and warm things were pretty good though.  With the stove there we ate well the whole trip, and Kurt broght stuff for gin and tonics, so that was a pretty nice addition to supper a couple nights.  The second day we had another portage that hadn't been traversed, but the elevation change was less on this one, and we were a bit more prepared for how to handle the sleds.  The temps warmed up too, into the teens, which helped.  The terrain was gorgeous on the portages, snow undisturbed for the whole winter.  There had been a big meltdown and refreeze a couple weeks before (Mora weekend) so the lakes were great for crust skiing and we could make pretty good time.  The portages were deep snow where no snowshoe tracks existed, but when you are in no hurry to get somewhere slow steady progress is just fine.  The next day we went out on a day trip fishing a couple lakes over.  We caught a couple decent sized lake trout to add to one of our meals.  We also went to the top of a bluff near the lake we were camping on and got some great views of the area.  I sadly lost my camera on the way down the slope though, so may need to plan a trip come spring to go find it.  I'm sure the camera will be non-functional, but would like to save the memory card if I can find it.  The last day on the way out we found a great portage that Bjorn and I were able to ski through and finished with a great downhill that we dropped our bags and went back just to ski again.  There was another fun hill on the way where I made it around a corner but my sled didn't and ended up wrapping around a tree and bringing me to a rather sudden halt.  My bike tire elastic system worked well to dampen the sudden stop and all I did was fall down, awesomely.  We stopped at Sven and Ole's for pizza on the way back through Grand Marais, which was a pretty solid meal choice.  Besides the cold feet most of the trip it was really a blast, something I'd for sure try again.