Silverstar day 3

Sking conditions have been great up here in Silverstar.  Erik Pieh and I have been putting in 50-60 km per day, striding in the morning while the snow is colder and skating in the afternoon.  It is our goal to ski all the trails in the Silverstar and Soverign Lake systems over the course of the week.  The trails here are a good challenge.  The downhill area claims 760 meters of elevation change, and the nordic trails go all the way to the top.  I'm curious to check out my gps data when I get home and see how much we climbed each day.  Here are a few more pics.  The scenery here can be hard to see through the trees, but that makes it that much better when a good vista is found.

My friends Dave and Caitlin are along on the trip too.  They are getting married in the spring and are a bit excited.

Silverstar day 1

As soon as the temps in Minnesota got chilly I hopped on a plane for the coast.  The coast of Canada that is.  I flew into Vancouver yesterday and drove up into the mountains to Silverstar/Soverign Lake to find some early season snow.  The snow up here is really great.  I got out for a 30k classic this morning on my new Atomic skis and have been pretty happy with them so far.  The grooming here is pretty amazing, and the views are I think the best of anywhere I've skied.  I look forward to exploring as many of the trails as possible over the next week.

World Cup Time

The Nordic skiing world cup kicks off in one week with the Ruka Triple miniseries.  I get excited for skiing like normal Americans get excited for normal American sports, like football or baseball.  It isn't as easy to find coverage of skiing, but for the past few years someone has been putting up torrents of full coverage from Eurosport, so that means I can download and watch full races with a bit of a delay.  There are ways to get live feeds, but the quality isn't as good and the hours the races are going on don't match well the hours I'm awake always, or if they do they are in the morning when I would rather be out skiing myself than watching others ski.  I am going to miss the first weekend of racing this year because I am going to be at Silver Star resort in BC skiing on some great looking early season snow.  I'll put together a post on that soon, maybe once I arrive and have some pictures to add.

One of the things that makes watching skiing even more fun is having a fantasy ski team.  Much like the fantasy leagues in other sports a player builds a team of athletes and their performance throughout the year scores points for any fantasy team they are on.  A magazine called Ski Trax hosts several nordic skiing leagues.  I have done pretty well in a few of these and even won a couple small clothing items.  Not bad for the 5 minutes of work I put into figuring out my team.  Unlike other, more involved, leagues where a roster is set each week here all the selection is at the beginning of the season, then all there is to do is sit back and watch.  Here is my team for this year.

Female Skier #1 : Kikkan Randall (Usa)
Female Skier #2 : Marit Bjoergen (Nor)
Female Skier #3 : Justyna Kowalczyk (Pol)
Female Skier #4 : Therese Johaug (Nor)
Female Outlaw : Maiken Caspersen Falla (Nor)
Male Skier #1 : Dario Cologna (Sui)
Male Skier #2 : Petter jr. Northug (Nor)
Male Skier #3 : Alexander Legkov (Rus)
Male Skier #4 : Emil Joensson (Swe)
Male Outlaw : Teodor Peterson (Swe)

I feel like most of the selections were pretty straightforward this year, especially on the women's side where there are a few skiers that have been head and shoulders above the rest of the field in most races.  The outlaw skiers (outside of the top 15 overall) can make or break a team when the skier selection is straightforward.  I feel pretty confident about Falla for my women's pick because she is blazing fast, one of the few skiers to beat Randall straight up in a skate sprint last year.  On the men's side Teodor Peterson is young but had some very promising races last season, especially later in the year.

This being an Olympic year always effects regular season results as well because many of the best skiers will be training hard through the early season to peak for the Olympic games in February, but many of the bubble skiers will be trying to have great races early in an attempt to make their nations Olympic team.  This can shake up early season results a bit.  After the Olympics some skiers may be burned out or on their way to retiring, while skiers at the top of the heap have to refocus before the world cup finals in March if there is a close competition for the crystal globe.

The Olympics themselves are a great spectacle too of course.  There is a lot riding on the shoulders of the top athletes, and somewhat unlike a normal race where points go to anyone in the top 30 at the Olympics if you are not in the top 3 you are forgotten (At least forgotten by anyone outside the ski world, I am in no way implying that a 4th, or a top 10, or a top 30 at the Olympics is anything less than an amazing performance for most athletes.)

I'm off to find snow, let the games begin!!!

Lunch Special

Time for another food post, with a picture none the less!  I looked back on my blog archives and noticed how boring they are, so from now on it is my goal to have at least one picture with each post.  This means I'll have to start taking more pictures, so I made that a goal, and then promptly lost my camera.  My goals over lunch today were:

1. Clean my gutters before it snows
2. Find my camera
3. Make lunch

I accomplished all of those goals, but the third one got a bit time crunched, plus I'm trying to use up as much of the stuff in my fridge as possible before taking off for Canada next week, so my selection was limited.  So without further ado I present to you today's lunch creation (and accompanying picture).

Fried egg apple sandwich.

The idea was based on the contents of my fridge, and the contents of this blog post by Noah Hoffman.  It was a good flavor combination.  The apples added a good moisture and tartness to the toast and egg.  It would have been better with Norwegian brown cheese, or peanut butter, but I had neither available.

What's in a name

Just a couple updates for today.  First this post is going up because I'm sitting at work on a Saturday morning waiting for a machine to fail.  I was in pretty late last night working on it, and it shut down again after I left, so I came in this morning and started it and am not waiting for it to shut down again so I can attempt to diagnose what component is failing.  That's boring stuff though, the non working part of yesterday was much more fun and interesting.

My friend Molly called me up Thursday afternoon and asked if I wanted to sneak out for a bike ride on Friday.  It was supposed to be over 50 degrees, possibly the last great biking day before the snow comes (soon hopefully) so it was too good of an offer to pass up.  She came up to Northfield to meet me so I needed to find a route that would show off some of Northfield's best road cycling while fitting within the 3 hours of daylight we had available.  It wasn't a hard route to plan.  It looks something like this:

A great route, but what is it called?

After a quick warmup climbing out of town on 246 the route turns off onto a section called Valley Grove, named after the valley grove church which is located on this ribbon of pavement that winds through the countryside.  There is a great downhill with a wonderful view out over miles of farmland when this route is ridden anticlockwise.  The road then features a couple more scenic climbs before meeting back up with 246 just outside of Nerstrand.
There is just enough time after making the corner to set up for the Nerstrand town sign sprint, if you're into that kind of thing.  A flat reprieve awaits for the next several miles, small rolling hills only, before turning onto highway 14, another winding stretch of pavement with good hills and plenty of farm scenery to take in.
HWY 14 drops you off right in the little hamlet of Sogn at the base of the best paved climb in the area.  From the bridge at the bottom to the crest of the hill is a full mile long an average grade of 5%.
After this it is a downhill roll into Dennison, with another town sign up for offer on the outskirts of town, and a nice cruise back in to Northfield by any of several different routes.

At almost exactly 40 miles it is a great route when a couple hours are all the time available to ride.  It is easy to add on a spur heading towards Cannon City or Cannon Falls if more time is available, or to cut out the eastern portion of the ride if a shorter ride is needed.

This was probably the first "long" ride I did with the fella's who would form the core of the EMVC, we rode this on 4th of July weekend my first year living down in Northfield.  Several riders were on mountain bikes, including Jeff who rode a Giant Rincon with a basket on the back.  I rode most of this route as part of the Tour de Nick, my first group ride with the Northfield bike club, and my first long ride with my fixie.  I had planned to ride it with my bible study group before some mechanical issues drew us up short.  I rode it earlier this summer with my friend David who over the last couple years has built himself up from 20 miles on the flat Gateway trail being a long ride to a 65 mile day with hardly a flat spot to be found.  Riding it Friday was a great opportunity to share some fun roads and a wonderful sunset with another friend.  Once the crops are in and the farmers are fertilizing heavily is not the ideal time for riding from an olfactory perspective, the horizon is just as large, and so are the hills.

One habit of Jim's is to name all the regular routes/features that we ride, but as far as I know this loop in it's entirety does not have a name.  Parts of it are well known and do have names, but this great route needs a name of it's own.  Any suggestions anyone?  If anyone is interested in going out for a road ride and trying this loop out let me know.  It may be getting late for it this year, I'm ready to get the skis on at this point, but when the snow goes away there will be plenty of time for some good rides next year.  I also have it on my bucket list to rollerski this next summer, so if anyone is interested in that we'll make it happen.

Minnesota Gravel Championships

I posted a condensed version of this post on the Vavaka Racing Blog, so if you want the slightly shorter version you can head over there, or read this for all the extra bits if you want, or are the kind of person who always watches the directors commentary on DVD's just for the sake of completeness.

Last weekend I took part in a couple of the races in the inaugural Minnesota State Gravel Championships bike event in Northfield.  Contrary to the official sounding name the races were low key and most of the riders were just out to have a good time.  There are some great gravel roads around Northfield, and it was great to take part in an event that showcased about 140 miles of those roads.  There were three events over the course of the weekend, a 10.5 mile time trial prologue on Saturday morning, a 55 mile stage Saturday afternoon, and a 85 mile stage Sunday morning.  I raced the time trial and the Sunday morning stage.

Saturday morning was warmer than I expected, and riding the 12 miles out to the race directly into a 20 mph headwind warmed me up pretty quickly even before the racing began.  By the time the group got together to ride from the finish to the start of the point to point course the wind had picked up even more to 25 mph.  This made for a very fast time trial with a tail wind almost the entire way.

 Boonies Bar and Grill, the finish of the Prologue Stage

I rode the time trial on my fixed gear, just for an extra bit of challenge.  I shared a start time with Nate Porath, who was trying out his newly rebuild single speed, and had a couple of EMVC riders in the time slots ahead of and behind me, so I had plenty of people to gauge myself against over the course of the race.  I got a jump on Nate right off the line and was flying down the first hill, my legs spinning furiously to keep up with the bike, when all of a sudden I heard a crunching noise from my rear wheel and felt my chain go slack.  My chain was not tensioned tight enough and had jumped off the cog from the bumpy gravel descent.  Luckily it did not wrap up on the cog or in the wheel, so when my speed ran out on the uphill I stopped and quickly spun the chain back on.  I had to run the rest of the uphill because it was steep enough that I couldn't get back on the bike and get traction from a standstill.  I hopped back on and had just made the first corner when Galen flew by me.  I passed Nichole Porath who was doing her first ever bike race, and my friend Claire who I almost didn't recognize because I didn't expect her to be as far up in the race as she was since she doesn't ride a lot either.  I kept Galen in sight and slowly pulled him back as I got back into my groove.  After I passed him I was on my own for the next several miles of the race until I caught sight of Mike "the moose" Kosloski ahead of me.  I fought hard to pull him back in over the last 3 miles or so of the race, and going up the last climb I gave a hearty moose call to let him know I was on his heels.  When he turned and saw how close behind I was he put on the afterburners once we turned on to the pavement he clicked up a few gears and took off.  I still ended up beating him time-wise for the stage, but didn't catch up to him.

I decided to skip the Saturday afternoon stage to rest up for the next day and instead donned my cow suit to go out and help with the start/finish of the stage and to cheer on the riders.  I got to signal the start of the race, and be there at the end to direct riders down to the river bottoms trail in Sechler park for one more mile of sandy fun before the end of the day.  The cow suit was a big hit with the racers, about the only thing they had to smile about as they ground their way into what was by then a well over 30 mph headwind.  Watching the riders struggle made me a bit glad I decided to sit that stage out.

By Sunday morning the wind had died down and the sun even poked out through the clouds as the final stage got underway.  My plan was to ride conservatively for the first half of the race then crank it up if I was feeling good, a strategy that had worked out very well for me at the Inspiration gravel race this summer.  Jeff Lanners and my friend Jake came up to race this stage as well, so the three of us and a few other Northfield folks formed up a good pack a few miles into the race.  I was feeling pretty good, so I took pretty long pulls and tried to keep the pace steady and manageable so everyone would have time to take in the amazing views some of these back roads offered.  The roads by and large were in really great shape, except a few miles of freshly graded gravel that were a bit soft (and by fresh I mean very fresh, we actually saw the grader out there while we were racing).  Jeff fell off the back a couple times but we controlled the pace to let him back on.  In the mean time we dropped the rest of the group so it was just the three of us.  I amped the pace up to try for a Strava segment on Shady Lane, a long, steep gravel climb in Sogn Valley.  It is a minimum maintenance road, so the conditions can vary quite a bit, but it was in really great shape this weekend.  Last time I attempted this climb I broke my bike chain, so I wanted revenge on this hill and a chance to put up a good segment time.

Shady Lane Minimum Maintenance Road (MMR)

After Shady Lane there was a mandatory check in point just before mile 40.  I waited there and chatted with the volunteers and ate a cookie while I waited for Jake and Jeff.  Once we were all back together we started out, but there were more sizable hills shortly after the checkpoint and it quickly became clear that Jeff was struggling to hold the pace.  Since there were a few more riders leaving the checkpoint behind us Jake and I kept riding figuring Jeff would catch on with them, and they might be closer to his pace.  Jake was losing ground on the climbs too but catching back on well on the flats and downhills, but after doing this for a couple climbs he stopped for a mechanical and decided to dial it back, so he told me to push on.  We were with a couple Northfield riders at the time so I kept on with them.  I was climbing better than them too, so I left them behind on the next climb and decided to push ahead to catch on with another rider who I could see ahead.  I worked to catch him and we traded pulls for a bit before he pulled over to eat something, so I ventured on alone.

This was the worst section of the course to be by myself, 20 miles directly into the wind.  The miles seemed to crawl by and every climb I could feel my energy draining.  The rider who stopped to eat caught up to me just before the town of Nerstrand.  We once again traded pulls for a bit before he got a gap on me, and then stopped again to eat.  This happened at least a couple more times before the end of the race and it got frustrating.  I was not strong enough to keep up with him or drop him, and yet when I passed him I felt like I had to try to hold him off, so I would push on.  I tried some shot blocks for the first time and they were like eating fairy magic.  I was convinced at the time that I had never eaten anything so good.  Finally we turned out of the wind and the rider ahead had a 200 meter or so lead on me as we rolled through Cannon City.  At this point I knew what waited ahead.  My co-worker Jim drew up the route for this race and he loaded up the last 15 miles with hills, and the last four climbs are all big on their own, much less after 75 miles of riding and hills already.  Right as we turned onto Farmer Trail with about 8 miles to go the rider ahead of me pulled over and stopped again, this time to pee, so when I went by him I was determined to not let him catch up.  I pushed hard on the hills and pushed the pace even on the downhills to hold him at bay.

I looked back a couple times and saw him behind me, but he didn't look like he was closing in on me, so I kept the pace high and just hoped he was hurting as much as I was.  I still had 100 meters or so on him when I made the last turn towards the finish.  The finish was on top of "Radar Hill" a minimum maintenance road with a slope over 15% at some points.  Right near the base of the hill there was someone cheering who said there was a rider behind me closing fast.  As I pushed up the hill there were some great cheerers, including Nate and Nichole in full cow suit attire, but I was struggling just to keep the pedals turning.  I wasn't in a good mood and having people yelling at me right in my face after 40 miles of being alone with my own thoughts was a system shock.  The hill was a system shock on an entirely different level too.  On a good day this climb takes about 3 minutes, so I just kept reminding myself how little was left after five and a half hours of racing.  I took one glance behind me when I was about halfway up and the rider had closed the gap to about 3 meters.  What!?  How can he still be riding that strong?  I just didn't have anything more for the climb, so I kept cranking my way up and when the slope eased up I shifted and really stood on the pedals.  My legs were not happy at all, but I could see the finish line ahead and I was not going to get out-sprinted after this many hours of racing, especially when Jim and Jake and Galen and the Poraths ventured out in the cold just to cheer me on.  I managed to fend off the hard charging rider and just hold on to 10th place.  Jeff and Jake both ended up dropping out at Nerstrand and taking the pavement in, and Jake made it out to cheer for me at the finish.

"Radar Hill" this one really hurt.

There is something really great about a tough race where you finish knowing you had nothing left.  When I crossed the finish line I could not have climbed one more hill.  I just stood bent over the handlebars for a couple minutes trying to catch my breath.  It was all I could do to pedal the mile downhill back into Northfield where there was hot soup waiting.  The race hurt, and there were points along the course where I questioned why I was doing this to myself, but the pain fades quickly and already I'm mostly only remembering what a great day it was to be out riding.

The only downside to my second gravel race is that it just confirmed that I really enjoy gravel racing, and will now have to continue to compress a busy race calendar to make room for another type of racing.  The recovery is quick from these races though, and I can mostly rely on general fitness as long as I get in a couple long rides here and there to keep the body used to long hours in the saddle.