The winter that won't end

I've been waiting to put this post up until the snow was gone.  It has surprised even me that it would take this long.  I have loved the late season skiing, although it hasn't been high quality skiing for the past month or so, and has caused a significant setback to my biking, running, and paddling.  Here are some of the highlights:

The skiing in March was still quite amazing depending on location, so I decided to head up to Theodore Wirth on March 16 to get some good skiing in on some lingering snow.  I wanted a relaxed ski, so I invited my friend and fellow Pepsi Challenge champion Molly Watkins to get a few km in.  She is super busy, so would only have time for 30k or so, that was my plan to make the day a reasonable one.  I arrived in the parking lot and Jallie and KJ were just setting out on a ski.  Kevin was joining a couple other guys in a 12 hours of Theodore Wirth ski challenge, so he had 50k under his belt already, and Jallie was just going out to join him for a bit.  Once Molly showed up we joined up with those two and had a fun little skiing quartet.  We soon picked up Tim Dahlberg and later Andy Brown, so there was all kinds of skiing company on the trails.  The skiing was pretty low key and easy except one uphill double pole contest, in which the Alaskan animal soundly defeated me.  About the time Molly left the classic skiing was not working out so well anymore, so I switched over to skate skis and went out to put in a few more km with Jallie, so much for an easy day.  I ended up skiing 60km, and would have done more except it was getting dark and I was out of food.  Both Molly and Jallie provided me with tasty cookies along the way, and conditions were really amazing actually.
The next morning I got a call from Nate asking if I wanted to head out for some crust skiing.  We met at the arb, but quickly ventured off across the golf course and into the fields southeast of town.  The crust was perfect, hard enough not to sink in, soft enough on top to get an edge.  We had a vast landscape that was ours for the exploring, and explore we did.  The worst part of the whole ski was when we got back onto the trails in the lower arb and ran across a stream that had cut the trail.  I saw Nate go down around a corner and was prepared to laugh until I rounded the corner and saw the stream.  I tried to jump the gap in the crust and didn't make it, so I also crashed.  The crust was rather hard and sharp when I cut through it, but I came out better than Nate, who ended up with a few blood spots.  We then went to the gym to cheer on the rest of Team Nichole Training, Nichole and Brian, as they finished up a pretty intense treadmill workout.

A week later the snow was still holding, so I loaded up the skis and headed North.  This time my goal was to get one more ski in at Murphy Hanrehan, the hilliest trail system in the Metro area.  The snow was still a bit icy in spots, and I had seen trail reports that said there was exposed dirt on one part of the trail, so I was unsure what to expect.  The climbing was good, although the ungroomed trail made for difficult balance, and I played it pretty safe.  Then I started to hit the downhills, and I was very surprised.  Whether by chance or design the uphills are mostly south facing and the downhills mostly north facing, so the snow on the downhills was soft and deep, easy to corner on and really fun.  I did a second loop and was much more ambitious on the descents since I knew they were good.  It was a great day out, I was skiing in race bottoms and short sleeves, but things were getting pretty soft by the end of the second loop and those hills take their toll.  I wasn't ready to be done yet though, so I headed over to Cleary Lake to get in a few more km.  Trail reports said there was still grooming, and I was amazed at how good the trails were.  I did several loops and conditions were just really amazing, good corduroy, fast snow for the most part, and a very flat deck, I could easily V2 everything and really cruise.  Cleary is one of my frequent skiing locations most years because it is the closest system with lighted trails, but it had been almost 2 years since I had skied there, and since it is pretty flat I chose Hyland over Cleary most weekends this year, but it was fun to get on nice trails and just ski fast.  The next day I headed back up to the cities to get a long run in with Ms. Molly Watkins.  She is in a marathon class and passing the class depends on finishing the Eau Claire Marathon.  She has been hard at it often doing a ski marathon on Saturday and long run on Sunday throughout the winter.  We explored around the U a bit before heading south on the river road.  I finally achieved a goal of mine since I started at the U, that I never officially achieved while I was a student there, of running from campus across the Ford Dam and back.  It isn't really that long of a run, but I was not the runner in college that I am now.  Molly kept up no problem, even when I made her run up the hill from the east river flats to finish the day.  She was even nice enough to feed me afterwards.  Then I went to Finn Sisu to demo some new classic skis and got a good 10k in at the U of M golf course.

This is the sad part of the tale where the ongoing winter starts to have unintended side effects.  I got in a long run the day before Easter on the roads out by my parents.  I ended up a hair short of 19 miles, and the last mile was getting to be a struggle.  I don't know why, but the 18 mile long run is never a good one for me.  I explored some really fun roads though and in general it wasn't a bad day.  I must have picked up a bug from a family member or someone at the Easter pancake breakfast though, because my lungs and sinus were not happy with me the next week.  At first I was worried it was maybe due to my adorable new roommate Mozzarella.  She is a rabbit I adopted from my friends Erik and Karin who are moving and didn't really have a good way to move her with them.  She is just my kind of pet, soft, quiet, and I can leave food and water out and be gone for several days at a time with no ill effect.  Luckily time has shown she was not the cause of my stuffy nose, but the week I was sick no long run happened, so my last long run ended up being the Easter 18 miler, which didn't go well and is over a month ahead of the Ultramarathon that I will tell you about below.  Snow kept falling, and I kept skiing.  I'm a big advocate of making the best of what mother nature sends my way (ok maybe not really.  I'm not at all a fan of wind or rain in general) so many additional km were skied in the arb, the golf course, and even in to work and back one day.  All in preparation for the zero more ski races I have coming up this year.

I will include my first running race in this post, because there was more snow than anything else on the course.  Trail mix was one of the first races over 5k I have ever done.  When I started running it my freshman year of college 12.5k seemed almost too long to race over, especially considering the terrain.  I have progressed as a long distance runner since then, and now 12.5k is one of the shortest races I do.  The last couple years I have felt a bit guilty for doing the "short" race now that I know I could handle the 25k or 50k, but the relay has a strong history for me, and it doesn't hurt that my team, the Nordic Ninjas, has won 8 of the last 9 years.  This is also the 11th time I have run this race, so I'm pretty invested.  I wasn't sure what to expect this year since we lost our top runner, Matt Liebsch.  This meant for the first time since the Nordic Ninjas formed I would be our top guy.  This worried me a bit until everyone was lining up near the starting line and I didn't see anyone too dangerous milling around near the front.  This was quickly confirmed when the race started and I got pretty quickly off the front, and so did Jeff, Travis, and Kevin Johnson, our new addition to the team.  In fact, at the 1km mark our entire team was the top 4 runners.  At this point I started to worry less about winning and just relaxed into running a good hard effort.  The conditions were a bit tricky, but as long as I watched my footing I didn't have much trouble.  I had to adjust my stride some to get grip in the snow, but nothing too crazy.  I won pretty handily, Jeff was second, and our team ended up winning by well over 10 minutes in total.  It was nice to be back on top after being upset by the Gear West running team last year.

Now the snow is almost entirely gone and Northfield is looking at it's 3rd day in a row in the 70's, so the winter post finally comes to an end (although there is still a chance of snow in the forecast for next week).