Save the date Oct 16-17th for a fun weekend of camping and trail work surrounded by fall colors! Details from our club president below:
I know it's a little early to start talking about the upcoming ski season, but stuff seems to approach faster than we want when it really is time. I am looking at when we might be able to get together, as many as are willing to help out to go out and spend some time working on the trails this coming October.
The Forest Service is also wanting all of us volunteers to complete the trail work and chainsaw field safety classes. They will be there to conduct these, as we get some work done in the process. There are several problem areas where deadfall has collected very close to the sides of the trail, and where brush is getting out of control, so there is plenty to do. There may even be a couple of aspens and dead firs that can be removed to clean up the trail line and keep us from having so much grief during grooming season.
Upon review of the calendar, it appears that the 3rd weekend of October looks best (16th-17th). People have various things going on the first couple of weekends (including trail fest running and off-road duathlon races at Ullr Fest) of October, plus the aspen leaves will be in peak season about that time, so it should be very nice.
I am proposing perhaps setting up some camps on the trails during the week prior, so that we can spend a weekend outside getting lots of things done, like drainage, grading, aspen shoot whacking, fence pole setting, etc.
You don't have to camp, but it might be fun and more efficient to get everything done for some of us, so there may be some things that could be done by everyone like keeping the camp running and etc. There's definitely something for everyone and it'll give us all a closer relationship with this amazing trail system that we've all worked so hard on for all of these years.
Please consider marking that weekend off for trail work volunteering. It's been a while since we've put in a big club weekend to clean things up, and if you've been up there this summer, you can see that things are getting a bit shaggy around the edges.
Please RSVP by leaving a comment on our facebook page, responding to Clay's original email or leaving a comment on this blog.
Thanks.
Clay Moseley
SWNSC Chairman
Friday, August 6, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Jemez Mountain Trail Runs and Atomic Man Du donate to SWNSC!!
Jemez Mountain Trails Runs has just voted to donate $500 from this year's earning to SWNSC! They appreciate the work we do to upkeep our nordic trails which their event uses as part of the run course. So make sure to support the famous JMTR (which sells out so make sure to register nice and early next year!) and come out for SWNSC trail work days :) Info on trail work days is posted here, on our facebook page and sent to the members email list.
Atomic Man Duathlon has also donated $300 to SWNSC last month as part of their work to donate all earnings to groups supporting athletics in our community. Do support this local April event by volunteering or participating next spring.
Thanks to the above goups and the private donations that have been generously coming in since our 501c3 status has been approved we are doing quite well especially for an off season! We have also submitted a proposal to the county lodging board for funding to use in advertizing/promoting our trails and club outside of Los Alamos. We should know soon whether that has been approved and the quantity if so.
Atomic Man Duathlon has also donated $300 to SWNSC last month as part of their work to donate all earnings to groups supporting athletics in our community. Do support this local April event by volunteering or participating next spring.
Thanks to the above goups and the private donations that have been generously coming in since our 501c3 status has been approved we are doing quite well especially for an off season! We have also submitted a proposal to the county lodging board for funding to use in advertizing/promoting our trails and club outside of Los Alamos. We should know soon whether that has been approved and the quantity if so.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Master's Nationals in Craftsbury, VT
We ventured to Northern Vermont for a different type of vacation ski experience and to participate in the National Master’s events (a 10km [actually 11km] freestyle and a 50km classic race), which included the most formidable classic-technique marathon in the country, the Craftsbury Marathon, a 50km race that is usually a point-to-point event, taking in some of far-Northern Vermont’s most scenic xc ski trails through dense forests and open farmland, as well as across frozen lakes and into small villages.
Craftsbury Outdoor Center (located outside of a small hamlet called “Craftsbury Common”) is well known on the East Coast as one of the best places for cross-country skiing, period. It has a wide variety of ski trails, literally over hill and dale. It is not western skiing at all – the hills are abrupt and quite often very steep, trails are often more uneven and twisty, and the skiing is generally quite a bit more challenging, in that the snow conditions vary throughout the countryside, depending on directional aspects and varying levels of humidity. East Coast skiers definitely have a more built-in hardiness when it comes to the varying conditions and hardships put in their way by Mother Nature -- more on this later.
The Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) was just a fantastic place to drop anchor and ski our butts off for over a week. They fed us well and we got a lot of peaceful downtime, at least when our little 18-month old, Mila, let us. The COC has functioned in various capacities as a sports camp of all sorts (running, rowing, xc skiing, mtn. biking, etc.) since its beginning in the 1910s. Now, it’s a commercial operation that caters to the more adventurous East Coaster, and we felt like we were at a rustic sports camp for adults…mostly senior citizen adults, for most of the early part of our stay. Closer to race day, the clientele changed demographics and we knew it was time to get ready for the races.
We flew to Manchester, NH because Southwest flies there. It was a good plan, but we had to drive ALL the way up most of New Hampshire, cross into Vermont over the Connecticut River at St. Johnsbury, VT, and then drive on very rural roads to our destination. It was a fun trip that took us through parts of the White Mountains of NH, where I had downhill ski raced on one trip back in college. I quickly recognized the part of I-91 that narrows down to one lane each direction to pass through what is called “Franconia Notch” where the Cannon Mountain ski area is located. It brought back memories of my one trip to ski in New England and the very challenging snow that people ski on there.
The first day on snow was great. They hadn’t had a great winter, but it was good enough and the COC had been doing a remarkable job in “farming” snow so that any thin area was covered well. The temps were stable and wintery, but not too cold. It was just about ideal and Dina and I had a great time while we pulled Mila around in a rented pulk – pretty tough on some of those steep Vermont hills, but at that low altitude, I felt really strong.
The next morning, we woke up to a torrential downpour of RAIN(!) and temps in the high-40s. How weird! By mid-day, the temperature had risen into the 50s and the rain just increased. We got out and skied a little bit anyway, but it was just sad to see what was happening, and we literally watched the snow disappear before our eyes. The COC crew got to work and harvested as much snow as they possibly could from any open area, mostly local corn fields. Literally hundreds of local Nordic skiers showed up during the day, and the next, to come lend a hand with shoveling and moving snow for the races. They were smart and focused on a primary 13-15 km loop. Miraculously, they salvaged the loop, despite a winter-time record-breaking 2.5 inches of rain that flooded much of New England as the snow melted so rapidly.
The next day of skiing was still depressing: extremely dirty snow with a LOT of tree debris and even mud and some pebbles. I actually skied right over someone’s discarded klister. They must have been having a horrible ski and just scraped it off like a big ball of slime and slung it right into the trail. It got all over my skate skis and I almost fell right on my face when I slid across it. It was a real mess to clean off of my skis and caused me to have to bail on our outing because my ski would no longer slide on the “snow.”
By this time, I was getting nervous about what kind of wax was going to work in those kinds of conditions, so I spent a good afternoon testing Rode klisters (they work the best in wet, miserable snow types). I had Dina try out some combinations too. I finally found something that worked EXTREMELY well – Tom Berg had given me a bunch of his old Rode klisters for those types of snow, which he said he would never bother with again anyway, so they were mine. I researched them and sure enough—they work like a charm if applied correctly. If I remember correctly, I had a base of Rode Neri, with a blend of Chola and Gialla mixed in layers over the top. Awesome!
Those klisters are weird. They also smell like pine tar and horse liniment. One funny moment was when Denny showed up (over 4 hrs after he was scheduled to arrive due to having a disastrous trip) in the middle of the night – he walked into the room where I was now staying alone (while Dina and Mila stayed in the room next door) and smelled the combination of klisters and all of the wet clothes from the weather, which I had apparently gotten accustomed to. He let out an exasperated gasp that woke me up and I then had to explain about the weird klisters, etc. He didn’t believe me and replied, “…that ain’t ALL klister!” The next day, I had to make him sniff the bottom of my skis to prove my point, but he still thought it was weird. All that klister finally killed his senses too, because he got used to it after only one day. When we all got home, we opened our bags and that musty aroma came rushing back to remind us of the ordeal we all went through there.
So by Wednesday, unfortunately, or depending on how you looked at it, the temperature began dropping dramatically and some light snow fell. The next day was Thursday, the day of the 11km freestyle race. That changed everything and I didn’t have time to keep testing classic skis, as it was time to prepare for the skate race. I had to figure out which type of skate ski I was going to use for the race: a stiff, cold snow ski, or a softer, warmer (and wetter) snow ski. It was a toss-up because the course was getting more firm and crusty by the minute, but it still had an unbelievable amount of moisture in it from the rain and the new snow. It just wasn’t intuitive to us there – lots of humidity with cold temperatures and aggressively crystalline wet snow – just something we’d never really seen.
Denny and I scrapped thinking about the classic race and went out to test skate skis. We both had trouble deciding and it was especially hard for him because he had a pair of untested “warm/wet” snow skis that just didn’t have any racing miles. I told him that I felt the drag of the wet snow, despite the cold temps and hard (more like crusty/icy) trail conditions and that I was going to go with my soft, “plus” base skis. I knew I would give up the control and responsiveness of my hard-flex cold snow skis, but I would get some better glide out of my “plus” skis. He was on the fence, but gave into the logic and decided on his “plus” base skis too. Dina only has one “good” pair of skate skis, so I waxed those up, put structure into them, and we called it good. She said, “whatever!”
Before the race on Thursday, they were calling for a big storm to come in. Denny and I went out to ski and warm up on our “other” skis, the ones we decided not to use. We went between skiing easy and making some pretty good efforts for warm up, and I felt like my cold-snow stiff skis were gliding well and also that Denny’s were too. He seemed to be skiing quite well, so we were confident, but wondering if we had made the right choice.
Lots of New England and mid-Atlantic (i.e. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) skiers were there, even for a Thursday race. We found a young lady who worked at the COC who volunteered to watch Mila for the 40 minutes or so that Dina and would both be away, and Mila got to watch us and everyone else race and had a good time picking the little Toko course flags up out of the snow (we consequently had a few of them in our room the rest of the trip). That worked out well.
Denny and I were in the same wave, which consisted of the M0 – M3 groups (M0 is 25-29 “pre-masters” and M3 are the 40-44 group), so we fit right in the latter half. I tentatively found a front row start position, as no one was overly aggressive about being in the front right away. Lots of “pro” sponsored skiers were in the group, so I could see why most guys seemed to hang back in the 2nd through 5th rows. I felt a little like a sitting duck in the front, but decided that I didn’t have to take off like a bolt of lightning, even though the start went straight up a stiff little hill right off the bat. Denny opted for the far side of the 3rd row, so we never really even saw each other during the race. Dina’s wave would take off some 15 minutes later, so I knew I would get back quite a bit before her to take Mila.
I felt pretty relaxed at the start and figured I didn’t have to kill myself since it was only a warm-up event for Saturday’s marathon. The gun went off and I was cautious not to get stepped on up the steep starting hill. I quickly found a group not far from the front runners that seemed about my speed, if not a little quicker. I really had to stretch out my technique to get everything I could out of it at that quick low-altitude pace. Everyone was so fast and had solid technique, so it was a booger right from the start. The course was a real mixture of technical turns, twists, and short, sharp hills and false flats that required a sort of double-time level of effort. It was fast with the frozen-rain base, but also sort of ground up sugary consistency from the Pisten-Bully tillers and traffic.
Despite skiing as aggressively as I could, I felt like I was more or less struggling to hang on until we hit a long, fairly steep hill that was about 1,200 meters in length. At that point, I had relegated myself to the back of the group I was with, which was really the “main” pack. It was about 8 or 9 guys and I was just focusing on not getting dropped. At the long hill, I noticed our tempo slow just a notch and suddenly the first two guys in our group were pulling away. Gaps started forming and I didn’t really feel too badly, so I started to go around the guys in front of me until I was on the front chasing those two who had attacked in front. Near the top, I caught the 2nd guy and we went over together and I was pretty pumped up. I didn’t notice it until we were at the top, but my heart rate had gone out the roof and I was still working at 100% power level – at our altitude, I would have had to back off. It stayed that way until I just ran out of gas in the sprint finale.
That guy and I worked together but couldn’t catch the first guy who split off our group. He dangled tantalizingly close, but never seemed to lose ground. I took over the pulling after a while because I could hear some guys working their way back up and didn’t want to deal with the group again going into the finish. It was a little too late and a little group caught us. I backed off to catch my breath and got passed by two or three guys. I stayed behind until the top of a particularly steep hill, and then I punched it and got a little gap. I worked my butt off until the 1km to go mark, when I could hear someone behind. Over the last steep hill, two guys were tussling behind me and one made his move to pass over the top. I gave it everything I had to get on him, but he was in an all-out punch on a grinder false-flat. I could hear others behind and just had to focus on giving it 100% and not fall flat on my face because my muscles were quivering and twitching like crazy and I wasn’t used to that. At the end of the false flat, the guy breathing down my neck finally caught me and inched around me as I agonized toward the finish line. It was a fun race, but that type of finish is frustrating. I just mistimed my effort and it cost me. But, I was really psyched about the race and had a blast mixing it up out there with a different group.
Minutes passed and I wondered what the heck had happened to Denny. I realized at some point that he had taken just about as much time to race the course as we had taken to just warm up and ski it for practice earlier, even talking quite a bit. Sure enough, when he came in he had the most perplexed and frustrated look on his face. His skis were just horrible and were completely white and fuzzy looking when he took them off. They didn’t hold any wax and the bases looked really bad. He had indeed taken the same amount of time that we had to just warm up on the course. So, the race was a complete bust for him and he was bummed but a good sport about it. We talked it over and he knew he needed to get those skis fixed…which I think are currently at a shop in Boulder, where the techs said they were the most sad thing they had ever seen and admonished him for just ordering skis from any old online shop.
Dina’s race went well, but she got hit by the very sudden blizzard that came up about one minute after Denny finished. Holy crap, that was amazing and it snowed about 3 inches in one hour. In all, it snowed about 5 inches that compressed down to a wet consistency.
We went to the awards, where they provided wine and cheeses and Dina and I both won some very nice glazed pottery bowls.
The next day, we just went out for an easy ski, but I felt hosed. We had all signed up for the “Dash for Cash” sprints that night, but the temperature had dropped into the negative numbers and I had a lot of ski waxing to figure out and get done in a very frigid little wax shed. It took way too long because these clowns from California kept trying to get us all to leave so they could apply their toxic magic flouro dust. I had banked on skiing on one particular pair of skis for the wet conditions, but with the new snow and the arctic temperatures, I was faced with having to change my ski selection to my stiffer, colder snow skis. Plus, the entire kick wax / klister scenarios had changed, and gotten even more complicated.
Everyone had different ideas and I had my own too. I ended up following the Swix recommendation, which was not intuitive at all, so I was extremely conservative with how I applied it. Despite the cold temperatures, they called for using a very warm klister applied in layers over the Swix KR-20 ice klister. We just weren’t sure what to do and so I applied a very thin layer of the warm klister with a cold hard wax over that. On Dina’s skis, I was much more liberal with the warm snow klister and ironed in 3 different layers.
Well, she was the only one of us three who had good kick.
After all of the waxing and freezing, we got ready to go watch Dina do the Dash for Cash sprints in front of the Nordic center. It was moved from the little local town “common” due to the loss of snow, so it was closer to where we were staying. That’s a good thing because it was like -10*F and hard to stay outside for very long just being a spectator and having a baby in tow.
We watched the first few pro guys and gals go off, and HOLY CRAP! -- did they ever go fast! It was weird seeing that much speed on skis. Dina had a good run of it and got a big mention from the Bulgarian girl doing the announcing over the loud speaker. It was quite fun to watch. Dina also advanced to the heats in her age group, but they were taking a long time, it was frigid and getting colder by the minute, it was late, and she wanted to make it to the chow hall for dinner, so she bagged the rest of the race and an assured prize.
When we woke up the next morning, it was COLD! REALLY COLD!!! The temperature on the tree outside of our dorm/barracks/lodge was reading about -22*F. And, it didn’t seem to be rising while we got ready for the event. But, they announced that the race would go off without delay. We all wore extra everything, and had even gone to the little Nordic gift shop the day before to buy extra balaclavas…good call!
Denny and I applied our hard kick wax over the klister, opting to go colder than recommended because we were certain they hadn’t expected it to be this cold. We figured that anything would grip on the arctic snow. Were we ever wrong!
We both started in the first wave, but now we were in a huge group, so I opted to start further back this time. 50km is a long race, especially in those conditions on that tough loop, so I wanted to be conservative for the early parts. I was feeling pretty good early and found a good group that seemed to be right about my level, and my skis felt quite fast. But when we hit the first series of steep climbs, I was slipping badly and had to get out of the tracks to get any purchase at all. I got gapped, but easily strided back up when the gradient lessened. This was the pattern of my race for the entire first 25km. It really took a toll on me and going through on the 2nd of 4 laps, I was not feeling that great. We went up that first steep hill after the start/finish and I was slipping horribly and just instantly made the decision to throw in the towel. I kept skiing, but was frustrated and tired despite skiing with guys who were not any better than me. I just had to resign myself to skiing as best I could to even finish because things weren’t good as far as my kick was concerned. In summary, I had completely hit the wall at the 25km point and still had 25km to go…not good.
The next 25km were miserable. I just hacked, clawed and cried my way through. I was so exhausted by the finish and had considered giving up entirely several times, but am glad I didn’t. I did get passed by something like 85 people, including what I can only best describe as a lot of senior citizens and members of the opposite sex. That’s something I’m not *ahem* entirely accustomed to.
Dina was waiting with Mila at the finish and gave me a lot of good cheers. I wanted to sit down and cry, but it was only a balmy -4*F in the sun and I was so cold, tired, stiff and bonked that I had to keep myself moving to get into our room and get some sustenance in me. It was a while later that Denny came in looking just about as bad as I did and felt just about the same. We got our butts kicked by the elements and the competition that day, that’s for sure.
On the other hand, Dina had a fantastic event. She skied the 25km and had perfect kick and glide the entire time. She was careful about letting me know what a great time she’d had until I was sufficiently over my grief. At one point on the course, I was lapping around some skiers and catching up to her and remarked at how much better she was kicking uphill than I was and noticed how long it took to catch her, really only after the hill was over. She cheered me on like crazy and that kept me moving.
So, we learned some valuable lessons about klister, once again (remember our McCall MWC long classic race story?). From now on, I’m going to do a lot more asking questions and getting a lot of opinions, and even getting someone who knows better about those complicated scenarios to do it for me (which a lot of racers do, I’ve come to know…). At least I got it right with Dina’s skis…she still remarks at how great her skis were that day…so close! She says that was her favorite classic race so far.
Denny packed up and left the next morning. I was resolved to just watching Mila the next day while Dina skied, but the temperatures had helped the lakes to refreeze, so they had gotten out there to groom them. We both went out for an amazing ski on the lakes and a few more of the connector trails that we hadn’t been able to ski earlier in the week due to the loss of snow. Wow, that was just amazing. We got to see what New England skiing was all about.
See all of our photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/SWNSKIboard/MasterSNationals2010CraftsburyVT#
Craftsbury Outdoor Center (located outside of a small hamlet called “Craftsbury Common”) is well known on the East Coast as one of the best places for cross-country skiing, period. It has a wide variety of ski trails, literally over hill and dale. It is not western skiing at all – the hills are abrupt and quite often very steep, trails are often more uneven and twisty, and the skiing is generally quite a bit more challenging, in that the snow conditions vary throughout the countryside, depending on directional aspects and varying levels of humidity. East Coast skiers definitely have a more built-in hardiness when it comes to the varying conditions and hardships put in their way by Mother Nature -- more on this later.
The Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) was just a fantastic place to drop anchor and ski our butts off for over a week. They fed us well and we got a lot of peaceful downtime, at least when our little 18-month old, Mila, let us. The COC has functioned in various capacities as a sports camp of all sorts (running, rowing, xc skiing, mtn. biking, etc.) since its beginning in the 1910s. Now, it’s a commercial operation that caters to the more adventurous East Coaster, and we felt like we were at a rustic sports camp for adults…mostly senior citizen adults, for most of the early part of our stay. Closer to race day, the clientele changed demographics and we knew it was time to get ready for the races.
We flew to Manchester, NH because Southwest flies there. It was a good plan, but we had to drive ALL the way up most of New Hampshire, cross into Vermont over the Connecticut River at St. Johnsbury, VT, and then drive on very rural roads to our destination. It was a fun trip that took us through parts of the White Mountains of NH, where I had downhill ski raced on one trip back in college. I quickly recognized the part of I-91 that narrows down to one lane each direction to pass through what is called “Franconia Notch” where the Cannon Mountain ski area is located. It brought back memories of my one trip to ski in New England and the very challenging snow that people ski on there.
The first day on snow was great. They hadn’t had a great winter, but it was good enough and the COC had been doing a remarkable job in “farming” snow so that any thin area was covered well. The temps were stable and wintery, but not too cold. It was just about ideal and Dina and I had a great time while we pulled Mila around in a rented pulk – pretty tough on some of those steep Vermont hills, but at that low altitude, I felt really strong.
The next morning, we woke up to a torrential downpour of RAIN(!) and temps in the high-40s. How weird! By mid-day, the temperature had risen into the 50s and the rain just increased. We got out and skied a little bit anyway, but it was just sad to see what was happening, and we literally watched the snow disappear before our eyes. The COC crew got to work and harvested as much snow as they possibly could from any open area, mostly local corn fields. Literally hundreds of local Nordic skiers showed up during the day, and the next, to come lend a hand with shoveling and moving snow for the races. They were smart and focused on a primary 13-15 km loop. Miraculously, they salvaged the loop, despite a winter-time record-breaking 2.5 inches of rain that flooded much of New England as the snow melted so rapidly.
The next day of skiing was still depressing: extremely dirty snow with a LOT of tree debris and even mud and some pebbles. I actually skied right over someone’s discarded klister. They must have been having a horrible ski and just scraped it off like a big ball of slime and slung it right into the trail. It got all over my skate skis and I almost fell right on my face when I slid across it. It was a real mess to clean off of my skis and caused me to have to bail on our outing because my ski would no longer slide on the “snow.”
By this time, I was getting nervous about what kind of wax was going to work in those kinds of conditions, so I spent a good afternoon testing Rode klisters (they work the best in wet, miserable snow types). I had Dina try out some combinations too. I finally found something that worked EXTREMELY well – Tom Berg had given me a bunch of his old Rode klisters for those types of snow, which he said he would never bother with again anyway, so they were mine. I researched them and sure enough—they work like a charm if applied correctly. If I remember correctly, I had a base of Rode Neri, with a blend of Chola and Gialla mixed in layers over the top. Awesome!
Those klisters are weird. They also smell like pine tar and horse liniment. One funny moment was when Denny showed up (over 4 hrs after he was scheduled to arrive due to having a disastrous trip) in the middle of the night – he walked into the room where I was now staying alone (while Dina and Mila stayed in the room next door) and smelled the combination of klisters and all of the wet clothes from the weather, which I had apparently gotten accustomed to. He let out an exasperated gasp that woke me up and I then had to explain about the weird klisters, etc. He didn’t believe me and replied, “…that ain’t ALL klister!” The next day, I had to make him sniff the bottom of my skis to prove my point, but he still thought it was weird. All that klister finally killed his senses too, because he got used to it after only one day. When we all got home, we opened our bags and that musty aroma came rushing back to remind us of the ordeal we all went through there.
So by Wednesday, unfortunately, or depending on how you looked at it, the temperature began dropping dramatically and some light snow fell. The next day was Thursday, the day of the 11km freestyle race. That changed everything and I didn’t have time to keep testing classic skis, as it was time to prepare for the skate race. I had to figure out which type of skate ski I was going to use for the race: a stiff, cold snow ski, or a softer, warmer (and wetter) snow ski. It was a toss-up because the course was getting more firm and crusty by the minute, but it still had an unbelievable amount of moisture in it from the rain and the new snow. It just wasn’t intuitive to us there – lots of humidity with cold temperatures and aggressively crystalline wet snow – just something we’d never really seen.
Denny and I scrapped thinking about the classic race and went out to test skate skis. We both had trouble deciding and it was especially hard for him because he had a pair of untested “warm/wet” snow skis that just didn’t have any racing miles. I told him that I felt the drag of the wet snow, despite the cold temps and hard (more like crusty/icy) trail conditions and that I was going to go with my soft, “plus” base skis. I knew I would give up the control and responsiveness of my hard-flex cold snow skis, but I would get some better glide out of my “plus” skis. He was on the fence, but gave into the logic and decided on his “plus” base skis too. Dina only has one “good” pair of skate skis, so I waxed those up, put structure into them, and we called it good. She said, “whatever!”
Before the race on Thursday, they were calling for a big storm to come in. Denny and I went out to ski and warm up on our “other” skis, the ones we decided not to use. We went between skiing easy and making some pretty good efforts for warm up, and I felt like my cold-snow stiff skis were gliding well and also that Denny’s were too. He seemed to be skiing quite well, so we were confident, but wondering if we had made the right choice.
Lots of New England and mid-Atlantic (i.e. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) skiers were there, even for a Thursday race. We found a young lady who worked at the COC who volunteered to watch Mila for the 40 minutes or so that Dina and would both be away, and Mila got to watch us and everyone else race and had a good time picking the little Toko course flags up out of the snow (we consequently had a few of them in our room the rest of the trip). That worked out well.
Denny and I were in the same wave, which consisted of the M0 – M3 groups (M0 is 25-29 “pre-masters” and M3 are the 40-44 group), so we fit right in the latter half. I tentatively found a front row start position, as no one was overly aggressive about being in the front right away. Lots of “pro” sponsored skiers were in the group, so I could see why most guys seemed to hang back in the 2nd through 5th rows. I felt a little like a sitting duck in the front, but decided that I didn’t have to take off like a bolt of lightning, even though the start went straight up a stiff little hill right off the bat. Denny opted for the far side of the 3rd row, so we never really even saw each other during the race. Dina’s wave would take off some 15 minutes later, so I knew I would get back quite a bit before her to take Mila.
I felt pretty relaxed at the start and figured I didn’t have to kill myself since it was only a warm-up event for Saturday’s marathon. The gun went off and I was cautious not to get stepped on up the steep starting hill. I quickly found a group not far from the front runners that seemed about my speed, if not a little quicker. I really had to stretch out my technique to get everything I could out of it at that quick low-altitude pace. Everyone was so fast and had solid technique, so it was a booger right from the start. The course was a real mixture of technical turns, twists, and short, sharp hills and false flats that required a sort of double-time level of effort. It was fast with the frozen-rain base, but also sort of ground up sugary consistency from the Pisten-Bully tillers and traffic.
Despite skiing as aggressively as I could, I felt like I was more or less struggling to hang on until we hit a long, fairly steep hill that was about 1,200 meters in length. At that point, I had relegated myself to the back of the group I was with, which was really the “main” pack. It was about 8 or 9 guys and I was just focusing on not getting dropped. At the long hill, I noticed our tempo slow just a notch and suddenly the first two guys in our group were pulling away. Gaps started forming and I didn’t really feel too badly, so I started to go around the guys in front of me until I was on the front chasing those two who had attacked in front. Near the top, I caught the 2nd guy and we went over together and I was pretty pumped up. I didn’t notice it until we were at the top, but my heart rate had gone out the roof and I was still working at 100% power level – at our altitude, I would have had to back off. It stayed that way until I just ran out of gas in the sprint finale.
That guy and I worked together but couldn’t catch the first guy who split off our group. He dangled tantalizingly close, but never seemed to lose ground. I took over the pulling after a while because I could hear some guys working their way back up and didn’t want to deal with the group again going into the finish. It was a little too late and a little group caught us. I backed off to catch my breath and got passed by two or three guys. I stayed behind until the top of a particularly steep hill, and then I punched it and got a little gap. I worked my butt off until the 1km to go mark, when I could hear someone behind. Over the last steep hill, two guys were tussling behind me and one made his move to pass over the top. I gave it everything I had to get on him, but he was in an all-out punch on a grinder false-flat. I could hear others behind and just had to focus on giving it 100% and not fall flat on my face because my muscles were quivering and twitching like crazy and I wasn’t used to that. At the end of the false flat, the guy breathing down my neck finally caught me and inched around me as I agonized toward the finish line. It was a fun race, but that type of finish is frustrating. I just mistimed my effort and it cost me. But, I was really psyched about the race and had a blast mixing it up out there with a different group.
Minutes passed and I wondered what the heck had happened to Denny. I realized at some point that he had taken just about as much time to race the course as we had taken to just warm up and ski it for practice earlier, even talking quite a bit. Sure enough, when he came in he had the most perplexed and frustrated look on his face. His skis were just horrible and were completely white and fuzzy looking when he took them off. They didn’t hold any wax and the bases looked really bad. He had indeed taken the same amount of time that we had to just warm up on the course. So, the race was a complete bust for him and he was bummed but a good sport about it. We talked it over and he knew he needed to get those skis fixed…which I think are currently at a shop in Boulder, where the techs said they were the most sad thing they had ever seen and admonished him for just ordering skis from any old online shop.
Dina’s race went well, but she got hit by the very sudden blizzard that came up about one minute after Denny finished. Holy crap, that was amazing and it snowed about 3 inches in one hour. In all, it snowed about 5 inches that compressed down to a wet consistency.
We went to the awards, where they provided wine and cheeses and Dina and I both won some very nice glazed pottery bowls.
The next day, we just went out for an easy ski, but I felt hosed. We had all signed up for the “Dash for Cash” sprints that night, but the temperature had dropped into the negative numbers and I had a lot of ski waxing to figure out and get done in a very frigid little wax shed. It took way too long because these clowns from California kept trying to get us all to leave so they could apply their toxic magic flouro dust. I had banked on skiing on one particular pair of skis for the wet conditions, but with the new snow and the arctic temperatures, I was faced with having to change my ski selection to my stiffer, colder snow skis. Plus, the entire kick wax / klister scenarios had changed, and gotten even more complicated.
Everyone had different ideas and I had my own too. I ended up following the Swix recommendation, which was not intuitive at all, so I was extremely conservative with how I applied it. Despite the cold temperatures, they called for using a very warm klister applied in layers over the Swix KR-20 ice klister. We just weren’t sure what to do and so I applied a very thin layer of the warm klister with a cold hard wax over that. On Dina’s skis, I was much more liberal with the warm snow klister and ironed in 3 different layers.
Well, she was the only one of us three who had good kick.
After all of the waxing and freezing, we got ready to go watch Dina do the Dash for Cash sprints in front of the Nordic center. It was moved from the little local town “common” due to the loss of snow, so it was closer to where we were staying. That’s a good thing because it was like -10*F and hard to stay outside for very long just being a spectator and having a baby in tow.
We watched the first few pro guys and gals go off, and HOLY CRAP! -- did they ever go fast! It was weird seeing that much speed on skis. Dina had a good run of it and got a big mention from the Bulgarian girl doing the announcing over the loud speaker. It was quite fun to watch. Dina also advanced to the heats in her age group, but they were taking a long time, it was frigid and getting colder by the minute, it was late, and she wanted to make it to the chow hall for dinner, so she bagged the rest of the race and an assured prize.
When we woke up the next morning, it was COLD! REALLY COLD!!! The temperature on the tree outside of our dorm/barracks/lodge was reading about -22*F. And, it didn’t seem to be rising while we got ready for the event. But, they announced that the race would go off without delay. We all wore extra everything, and had even gone to the little Nordic gift shop the day before to buy extra balaclavas…good call!
Denny and I applied our hard kick wax over the klister, opting to go colder than recommended because we were certain they hadn’t expected it to be this cold. We figured that anything would grip on the arctic snow. Were we ever wrong!
We both started in the first wave, but now we were in a huge group, so I opted to start further back this time. 50km is a long race, especially in those conditions on that tough loop, so I wanted to be conservative for the early parts. I was feeling pretty good early and found a good group that seemed to be right about my level, and my skis felt quite fast. But when we hit the first series of steep climbs, I was slipping badly and had to get out of the tracks to get any purchase at all. I got gapped, but easily strided back up when the gradient lessened. This was the pattern of my race for the entire first 25km. It really took a toll on me and going through on the 2nd of 4 laps, I was not feeling that great. We went up that first steep hill after the start/finish and I was slipping horribly and just instantly made the decision to throw in the towel. I kept skiing, but was frustrated and tired despite skiing with guys who were not any better than me. I just had to resign myself to skiing as best I could to even finish because things weren’t good as far as my kick was concerned. In summary, I had completely hit the wall at the 25km point and still had 25km to go…not good.
The next 25km were miserable. I just hacked, clawed and cried my way through. I was so exhausted by the finish and had considered giving up entirely several times, but am glad I didn’t. I did get passed by something like 85 people, including what I can only best describe as a lot of senior citizens and members of the opposite sex. That’s something I’m not *ahem* entirely accustomed to.
Dina was waiting with Mila at the finish and gave me a lot of good cheers. I wanted to sit down and cry, but it was only a balmy -4*F in the sun and I was so cold, tired, stiff and bonked that I had to keep myself moving to get into our room and get some sustenance in me. It was a while later that Denny came in looking just about as bad as I did and felt just about the same. We got our butts kicked by the elements and the competition that day, that’s for sure.
On the other hand, Dina had a fantastic event. She skied the 25km and had perfect kick and glide the entire time. She was careful about letting me know what a great time she’d had until I was sufficiently over my grief. At one point on the course, I was lapping around some skiers and catching up to her and remarked at how much better she was kicking uphill than I was and noticed how long it took to catch her, really only after the hill was over. She cheered me on like crazy and that kept me moving.
So, we learned some valuable lessons about klister, once again (remember our McCall MWC long classic race story?). From now on, I’m going to do a lot more asking questions and getting a lot of opinions, and even getting someone who knows better about those complicated scenarios to do it for me (which a lot of racers do, I’ve come to know…). At least I got it right with Dina’s skis…she still remarks at how great her skis were that day…so close! She says that was her favorite classic race so far.
Denny packed up and left the next morning. I was resolved to just watching Mila the next day while Dina skied, but the temperatures had helped the lakes to refreeze, so they had gotten out there to groom them. We both went out for an amazing ski on the lakes and a few more of the connector trails that we hadn’t been able to ski earlier in the week due to the loss of snow. Wow, that was just amazing. We got to see what New England skiing was all about.
See all of our photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/SWNSKIboard/MasterSNationals2010CraftsburyVT#
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Paul and Clay score big time with the IRS!
REJOICE
SING HALLELUJAH
It has been determined that you are exempt from Federal Income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Contributions to you are deductible under section 170 of the Code.
You are also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests, devises, transfers or gifts under section 2055, 2106 or 2522 of the Code.
More details:
We determined that you are a public charity under the Code section: 170 (b) (1) (A) (vi)
Effective Date of Exemption: January 20, 2005
Friday, May 21, 2010
Legendary Runner in Los Alamos for Jemez Moutain Run this weekend!
Jemez Mountain Trail Run is this weekend Sat May 22nd! The event always sells out early and often attracts top ultra runners and this year Micah True or "Caballo Blanco" will be participating. See the Los Alamos Monitor story.
If you havent read Born to Run its highly recommended. Its a great story and extremely interesting for anyone who has done any running and avid runners in particular.
Micah is from Colorado but lives most of the time down in Batopilas, Chihuahua, in the copper canyon of Mexico with the Raramuri, or more widely known as the 'running people', the Tarahumara Indians. He has adopted their way of life and style of running. He puts on a 50mile ultra marathon in the rugged "Barrancas Del Cobre" each year that attracts the local running people and few legends from around the world. Everyone donates their race winnings back to the local communities.
Caballo Blanco will participate in the Sat race and will also give a talk on Sunday at 4pm at the Unitarian church in Los Alamos, donations requested for his charity Norawas de Raramuri. This should be very interesting so try to attend!
If you havent read Born to Run its highly recommended. Its a great story and extremely interesting for anyone who has done any running and avid runners in particular.
Micah is from Colorado but lives most of the time down in Batopilas, Chihuahua, in the copper canyon of Mexico with the Raramuri, or more widely known as the 'running people', the Tarahumara Indians. He has adopted their way of life and style of running. He puts on a 50mile ultra marathon in the rugged "Barrancas Del Cobre" each year that attracts the local running people and few legends from around the world. Everyone donates their race winnings back to the local communities.
Caballo Blanco will participate in the Sat race and will also give a talk on Sunday at 4pm at the Unitarian church in Los Alamos, donations requested for his charity Norawas de Raramuri. This should be very interesting so try to attend!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Club news from Dina
Hi everyone,
Unfortunately, we found that our 501c3 application has not been processed yet.
In fact they said they are still processing applications that were recieved 3
months before ours. In view of that fact, we've decided to wait until the fall
to run a fundraising effort with the expectation that we should hopefully have
our 501c3 status by end of summer.
You are welcome to contribute any time and we thank the many of you who have
been so generous this winter - it is what's been paying the monthly payments for
the snowmo and keeping other expenses taken care of! But we think a lot of
people will be able to contribute a significantly larger amount once we have
501c3 status, plus by the fall hopefully more people will be back to thinking
about snow and skiing :)
Dont forget that we still need to have a trail work day to put away snow fencing
etc. We are hoping to do this on the weekend of April 17-18 weather/snow
permitting. So watch for emails on the final dates and time (or check out our
facebook page for
updates http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southwest-Nordic-Ski-Club/106412086050153 \
)
Thanks for your patience and support!!
Dina
Unfortunately, we found that our 501c3 application has not been processed yet.
In fact they said they are still processing applications that were recieved 3
months before ours. In view of that fact, we've decided to wait until the fall
to run a fundraising effort with the expectation that we should hopefully have
our 501c3 status by end of summer.
You are welcome to contribute any time and we thank the many of you who have
been so generous this winter - it is what's been paying the monthly payments for
the snowmo and keeping other expenses taken care of! But we think a lot of
people will be able to contribute a significantly larger amount once we have
501c3 status, plus by the fall hopefully more people will be back to thinking
about snow and skiing :)
Dont forget that we still need to have a trail work day to put away snow fencing
etc. We are hoping to do this on the weekend of April 17-18 weather/snow
permitting. So watch for emails on the final dates and time (or check out our
facebook page for
updates http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southwest-Nordic-Ski-Club/106412086050153 \
)
Thanks for your patience and support!!
Dina
Saturday, April 3, 2010
A bit more grooming
FYI, In conjunction with some other trail work the skating lane on the woods trails was regroomed this morning...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Season Wrap up
Hi all,
Well, by all accounts it's been a great season! And although things are still
quite skiable, all good things must come to an end.
This past Saturday evening, we had a wonderful "Walpurgisnacht" celebration with
lots of food and libations, and an awesome fire. The skiing was fantastic, the
air was cold, the moon was bright, the food was delicious and the fire was warm.
See some of the photos I've attached to this message -- we'll put more up on the
website album when we get them sorted out.
Anyway, with this round of spring temperatures, we have decided to end the
organized grooming for the season. It just gets too weird with these long days
that get warm. The crust out in the meadows will stay skate-skiable in the
morning for some time to come, but the regular groomed trails will begin (or
have begun) rotting out.
With that, I am begging and pleading with all of you to help us get some of the
end-o-season chores done. My first question to all of you is when is the best
time to have a general club clean-up day(s)? I am thinking toward the end of
April (17th-18th, 24th-25th?), or even early May, as we need to wait until the
ground thaws more to pull out the fence posts.
Some of us groomers will be making some trips out to the meadow to gather up all
of the wands and bamboo marker poles to stash in the off-season, so that task
will be done before then.
Please take a look at your calendars and try to make it out to one of the work
sessions. It's not so bad with a few hands helping, and it's what makes our
volunteer organization work.
Thanks in advance,
Clay Moseley
club prez
Well, by all accounts it's been a great season! And although things are still
quite skiable, all good things must come to an end.
This past Saturday evening, we had a wonderful "Walpurgisnacht" celebration with
lots of food and libations, and an awesome fire. The skiing was fantastic, the
air was cold, the moon was bright, the food was delicious and the fire was warm.
See some of the photos I've attached to this message -- we'll put more up on the
website album when we get them sorted out.
Anyway, with this round of spring temperatures, we have decided to end the
organized grooming for the season. It just gets too weird with these long days
that get warm. The crust out in the meadows will stay skate-skiable in the
morning for some time to come, but the regular groomed trails will begin (or
have begun) rotting out.
With that, I am begging and pleading with all of you to help us get some of the
end-o-season chores done. My first question to all of you is when is the best
time to have a general club clean-up day(s)? I am thinking toward the end of
April (17th-18th, 24th-25th?), or even early May, as we need to wait until the
ground thaws more to pull out the fence posts.
Some of us groomers will be making some trips out to the meadow to gather up all
of the wands and bamboo marker poles to stash in the off-season, so that task
will be done before then.
Please take a look at your calendars and try to make it out to one of the work
sessions. It's not so bad with a few hands helping, and it's what makes our
volunteer organization work.
Thanks in advance,
Clay Moseley
club prez
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Weekend Grooming Report
Ken got out early this AM and regroomed the trail system:
"All trails groomed for classic and skate. Klister hard wax combo. Best skiing ever for march 27!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry"
Don't forget, tonight is the moonlight tour and potluck.... check the website for details.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thanks for the tracks, Ken!
Great winter ski conditions with some awesome classic tracks -- compliments of Ken Kisiel. It was great, and the temps stayed below freezing all day. Super cool.
Tomorrow will get wet and warm, but there's more snow on the way. Get out the BBQ brush, put some big rills and wax up the base of your skis. It ain't over yet.
Tomorrow will get wet and warm, but there's more snow on the way. Get out the BBQ brush, put some big rills and wax up the base of your skis. It ain't over yet.
Grooming Report
All trails were groomed perfectly this AM by Ken, conditions are just amazing for both classic and freestyle.
Remember, our club moonrise ski event next Saturday PM... check the club website for details: http://swnordicski.org/
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Clay and Denny's Grooming Report
Lots of new snow up there over the weekend. We didn't get around to getting it groomed until Tuesday night.
Things looked amazing when we were done, except for a couple of bad holes where we buried the machines =P
Classic track set on most trails, and skate lanes groomed out nice and wide. It'll be fast in the mornings; soft and variable in the mid-day to late afternoon hours. There's now about 12 hrs of daylight, so enjoy it while we got it.
We'll be having the end of season celebration "Moonlight" ski on March 27.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Monday, March 15, 2010
2010 Pajarito pinhead challenge race report
The race, for those who do not know, is the best race ever, and perhaps one of the races I am most poorly suited for. It begins with a mass start from the ski lodge up one of the jeep road. After a bit of climbing the race diverges and one of two paths you may take. If you are on backcountry/at/tele gear you may skin straight up dogpatch to the summit. If you are on nordic gear you keep on going up the steep but not too steep jeep road. The course comes together at the top of dogpatch, hits the steep trail over the top of the mountain and then across the top, down the fairly steep I-don't-care run and then back down the jeep run to where you start. Total elevation something like 1200 feet climbing followed by the same descent. The first year, the skaters took one-two. Last year the skinners took one-two. This year, well, read the rest of the 2010 Pinhead Challenge report over on Moscaline
Pre race assemblage. Note Zack is facing wrong way and Mike starts with skis in backpack
Pre race assemblage. Note Zack is facing wrong way and Mike starts with skis in backpack
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday Update
Skiied classic today from 10:30 till 12:30, just the right amount of new snow (2-3") to cover up the ice left from saturday's sun, and snowing steadily the entire time I skiied. Skiing in Denny's tracks from Friday (thanks Denny) was very nice; Ranger Lynn was out skating, and said the amount of snow in the skate lanes was just about right for good skating.
Should be good for an evening daylite savings time ski, or perhaps first thing tomorrow, tho it may snow enough overnight for tomorrow to be more like an ungroomed ski tour!
Friday, March 12, 2010
weekend Grooming
Since the last post, Gene groomed last night and Denny groomed for classic this morning so the entire trail system is ready for the weekend.
Clay skiied it at noon and made this observation:
"skating was great at noon -- especially out in the meadows. The sun is strong, but the temperature was nice and cool.
We are now in the time where a good amount of structure (rilling the ski base) is necessary to avoid the suction from the moisture, especially in the new snow. After it fully transforms, the granules are much bigger and the suction and stickiness isn't as big of an issue.
Skiing in the morning is best, but you can use waxless or klister (after the snow transforms) in the warmer hours if you have a lot of structure.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Thursday grooming update
Here's Dave's grooming report from last night:
"I did two laps with the Eric the Red pulling the 6 foot tidd, I went up the lower road, up the outer meadow and down the main trails (2x) I did not set classic tracks"
Saturday, March 6, 2010
John and Ken's Grooming Update
Ken and I groomed the entire trail system (bladed the skate lanes with snowmos pulling Tidds with teeth) and a few cut-offs last night. Should be good skating everywhere for today. Ken set new classic track in the upper trails where it needed it, and out on the lower road and meadow. Repaired a few holes, except the monster at M. John B
Friday, March 5, 2010
Friday Night update
Skiied this AM from 10-12. Classic. Very nice, Swix VF55 over a thin coat of blue klister worked very well. Skating was good by 11:30 but was a bit bumpy/icy before.
Hadn't been much trail use in the woods mid week, skating or classic, so the grooming was still pretty nice from Tuesday's evening session. I didn't ski the meadow at all as it was very windy, so expect it's all blown in there......
However, Ken and John B are planning on a regrooming tonight, so it should be excellent tomorrow AM, no ice or glaze....
Storm moves in Sunday PM....
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