TC Champs and Seeley Hills Classic

Family Christmas, which was scheduled over new years weekend for my moms family was cancelled due to predicted bad road conditions.  So I quickly signed up for the Twin Cities Championships 2 days before the race.  I was not mentally or physically prepared to race it turned out, and it was a rough couple days.  The classic race on Saturday was a double pole heavy race with very slow tracks that nobody used for poling and very steep uphills that had to be run.  I placed over 2:00 behind the leaders, including Bjorn, which is horrible for an 8k race.  The Sunday skate went better.  It was a pursuit race based on finishing time from the classic race.  I still lost an additional minute to Bjorn and Andy Brown, not quite as bad in a 15k, but still less than ideal, but I caught and passed my friend Evan Slocum right near the end, which was my goal on the day.

The next weekend I still hadn't recovered any desire to race again, so I sat out the Pre-loppet in favor of an easy 50k classic ski at Wirth and a 20k skate at Murphy.  It felt good to really hit the long distance, and restored some confidence for the next weekends race.

Seeley Hills Classic was next up on the list.  I tend to race well in Wisconsin races for whatever reason, especially on the Birkie trail, but I had no high aspirations for this classic race.  The conditions ended up being fresh snow in the tracks, which meant the lead pack would not be breaking up much for the first half of the race.  I tucked in at the back of the pack behind Dave Nelson and was content to sit there.  Bjorn dropped back to chat for a while, keeping an eye on the front of the pack the whole time of course.  Then he went up to take a pull and I continued to sit on the back.  This turned out to be a mistake, since his pull was just enough to shed a few people off the back.  I quickly passed Dave Nelson and his pack when I saw this occuring and pushed up to quickly catch Grant Nelson and his pack.  I dropped them but was unable to regain contact with the lead pack of 8 skiers.  After the turn around at the 16k food stop some of the tracks were skied in, so the pace got much higher and I was unable to pull the leaders back.  I fought until the large climb at 18k then decided I would settle the pace down and see how the rest of the race unfolded.  I kept getting info that I was sitting in 9th and figured I'd be pretty happy with a top 10 if I could keep from imploding in the last 10km, a weak spot for me at this race in prior years.  I passed OO still just a minute or two behind the lead pack, but they were out of sight if not completely out of mind.  It was nice to have the distraction of skiers coming the other way from the short race, and I did my best to push all the climbs since my legs were still feeling good.  I saw Bjorn, Andy, and Ben Koontz were all that was left of the lead pack when I was less than 1k from the turnaround, so I felt ok about that gap.  Then I saw a few more skiers go by the other way, and when I had the turnaround in sight I saw the next 2 guys only about 30 seconds ahead of me.  I kept that in mind as I started back and pushed up the pace, still feeling surprisingly good.  I caught the first skier with about 8k to and the second with about 4k to go then just put my head down and hit every hill as hard as I could.  At the turn around I saw that the Nelson brothers were starting to close the gap, so I wanted to make sure I didn't get passed in the last couple km.  I crossed the line in 7th, less than 10 minutes behind Bjorn, who won the race, by far my best Seeley performance yet.  Also, my back didn't hurt at all, usually after long classic races it is really bad, so hopefully that means I'm getting my double pole technique straightened out finally.  Next on the list, defending my title at the Balsam Vinterfest.

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.

Another Friday Night

What's the best cure for a lonely frustrating Friday?  Pulling out the RCS skates for their first run of the season and sailing along through 50k at Hyland in the dark.  It was nice to push off all excuses and just do a long workout, probably my last one in a while with christmas stuff piling up pretty quickly now.  I had to go to the cities anyway, and after wandering around looking for the FedEx building for a while I was sick of being in the car and just wanted to ski.  After a couple laps I really wanted to quit and go home so I could eat supper and sleep, but knew workout time would be hard to come by with my brother's graduation the next day, and an evening of hanging out with his friends, so I kept at it and the 3rd lap breezed by.  The fourth lap I was starting to feel the hurt from pushing hard over some of the smaller hills, just to keep a little feel for a fast tempo, and so I decided to hit one lighted loop at a hard pace just to wrap up the evening.  Then home to crash into bed in what would be the first of a growing string of short nights.  I'll hopefully have time to catch up on sleep during the holidays, maybe even spend some time at my house, although that seems unlikely to happen.