Birkie Trail

Christmas has come and gone, and may have taken the good skiing with it.  It's currently misting in Northfield and the snow pack is becoming very dense and wet.  With the expected rain and temp drop things could get very icy very fast down here, a situation the groomers have not been able to deal with in years past with the equiptment availiable.  At least things around the cities should shape up quickly, since there is very little a Pisten Bully can't groom if there is enough snow to work with.

I got a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS for Christmas with a HR monitor and everything, so it should provide a wealth of new info about my workouts.  Since I don't really have a training strategy at the moment and am not nearly as serious about my sports as I am just dedicated to doing them it probably won't make me faster, but it will extend my enjoyment of the activities into tracking what I've done.  The ski season has been by far my worst for tracking milage or hours put in because I enjoy skiing more than other sports like running or biking, so I'm often not out there just to put in the miles, but rather because I want to be out enjoying the snow and defiance of friction that comes with it.  That should change now that tracking time/distance of workouts has become much easier.  The ability to easily track pace and HR should show at least some benefit for my training I think, since I will have more than percieved effort to base things on (In the past I've also used splits, which is much more effective in running than skiing I think).

I got some good skiing in over the holiday, although not as much as I maybe should have our would have liked too, but spending time with family and friends was the main goal of the weekend and I set my priorities accordingly.  I did get a good evening of sledding in and a broomball game that I still have a couple of bruises from.  On Christmas day I put in a good 2 hr ski (27km according to the garmin) on the now lit trails at the Garfield trail system near my parents.  I brought a headlight and skied the unlighted portions of the trails system as well, since thats where the best hills are.  I also got a 6x5 min interval session in there on the 26th.  Then the 27th it was up to the Birkie trails for some great skiing in nearly perfect conditions.  My brother and sister came up to ski, and my friends Jeff, Mike, and Jim all skied too.  The four of us stuck together for about half of the ski (my brother and sister did not ski with us, they did a shorter ski and went to hang out at the sawmill, a local bar, for a while).  About halfway through I spotted my friend Allie at one of the trail intersections so Jeff and I skied with her for a while.  Mike and Jim didn't see us take the cutoff so we lost them, probably for the best since Jim was on a schedule to get out of there anyway.  We skied with Jallie for a couple km then headed back towards OO where we started and hit almost all of the best hills on the Birkie trail along the way.  Ended up with 40km on the day, so I think I'll be ready for the Seeley Hills Classic in a few weeks now that I know I have handled the distance and the hills I'll see during the race.

It feels strange having such good snow and not racing, but it isn't even January yet, so there's plenty of time left.  No racing this weekend with New Years and family christmas, but the weekend after that things will kick off, then there's pretty much no break until after the Birkie.