So.. did everyone get outside and play this weekend? I made sure to get out and freeze my extremities a few times over the course of this weekend. First off was the finale for the Mad Trapper Snowshoe Race series held out at Mike Caldwells ‘Ark’. I had to go to it solo this time around, as Kev was otherwise tied up, and Jim was helping a friend carry out a last-minute move. The pending snow had me a little worried when I went to bed Friday night, but when I was leaving Saturday morning, the roads were still clear. I arrived about 30 minutes early, in time to weasel my way into scoring a set of Atlas DTSL snowshoes for the race. These are the ultra-light racing version of what I use. I’ll compare it to going from running in construction boots to slapping on a pair of running shoes! Not to mention that I didn’t whack my ankles repeatedly. As a result, I was able to boot it for most of the course. As my reward, I wound up finishing in 7th place(hmm..results actually have my in 8th, oh well)! Yay me. Funny thing is, my time was comparable to the other 2 races. I can only assume the course was a little slower than last race. Even better than that is the fact that I wound up in 4th place over the series for males. Yippee. Have a look at the full results.I still ended up pretty pooped, and soaked. I kind of blew up on the second lap (hilly course), since I went a bit too hard on the first lap (flat course). As usual however, it was a great time. I’ll have to return next year.
Having gotten the snowshoeing out of the way, I turned my focus to race training for the Raid Pulse Winter Race that Jim and I are doing this coming weekend. The race is only 5-8 hours, and will consist of Skiing, Snowshoeing, and Mountain Biking. I’m pretty comfortable in the latter 2, but I was still concerned with skiing, after having done the winterlude Duathlon. So, yesterday, I set my sights on going out skiing, and not stopping until I felt I could do it properly. Before heading out, I did some further research on how to properly set up my ‘wax pocket’ on my skis. That’s the area under your feet that helps you propel yourself on waxable skis. The result of my reading lead me to stretch out my kick zone both further forward and backward from what I had been using. One coat of base binder, and three coats of Green kick wax (green was the color of the day for the really cold conditions), and off I went. Well, what a difference that made! In no time at all, after setting off from Bell Arena by Bruce Pit, and I felt like I could ski. All I had to do was wax differently. I even tried out the double-pole, kick technique that I saw on the Olympics. It worked! I tried skiing up small hills (instead of ‘walking’). It worked! I tried skiing without using poles at all. It worked! What a relief. Now at least I think I’ll be able to semi-efficiently take part in the race. Good thing too, given that I’m hoping we can pull off a podium finish. I traded off a long run to do this skiing, but it was the right choice. Now I can ski! I was out in the -20 cold for over two hours, working up a sweat, so I’m pretty sure I got the physical benefits anyway. One missed run won’t kill me!
I also dragged along my backpack full of the mandatory gear that I would need next week, and my GPS receiver as well. As a result, I was able to track the course that I skiied, and you can see it to the right here. The yellow trail is where I skiied. It came up to about 14km. I wasn’t always going flat out, as a result of my little ‘tests’ and exercises, but I’m guessing we can finish the 15km worth of skiing in about 2 hours, provided we can stay on course. The other lesson I learned (again), is that liquids freeze fast in -20 with wind. Even when I blew my Eload back into my water back, the nozzle would freeze. I’ve really gotta come up with a fix before next weekend. Hopefully MEC has the neoprene insulating sleeves for the drink hoses. I’m sold on it at this point. Especially after going through 2 races having problems!
I even managed to get in some quality bar-time this weekend, having finished 1.5 coats of varnish on the bar pieces that I stained last week. Yay me! That’s all for now.
