Over the couple days since the City of Lakes race, the event photos have filtered onto the internet, and, not unrelatedly, I’ve mused up fifteen observations about the race:
- I could look photos of ski-race starting lines all day. Something about all those skis in tidy, multicolored rows…
- A lot of people in my race were wearing the high-cuffed boots that are usually used for skating, the other XC ski technique. Given the soreness of my ankles and shins on Monday, I might see the point…
- I will certainly ski faster next year if I can master the ability to run uphill on my skis. The one guy whom I really wanted to catch (besides all the other people who finished ahead of me, I mean) got away mostly because he ran all the uphills, which gave him just enough of a gap that I couldn’t catch him by the finish line. In short, running > striding > herringboning
- I will probably ski faster next year if I have a big old beard.
- I might ski faster next year if I have an uglier ski suit, like the classic U of M team suit or this thing. Maybe Carleton’s nordic ski club would let me wear their colors.
- Gaudy suit or no, my form didn’t look horrendous, either at the start or here, very late in the race.
- As you come up behind another skier, it can be quite hard to tell if it’s a man or a woman: most lycra-clad asses look the same. I stopped guessing after a few minutes of trying and being 180° wrong more than a few times.
- Next year, I have to stick my gels into the zippered pocket on my drinkbelt to avoid having them fall off again.
- Next year, I should invest in some cork grips for my pole. The plastic grips get awfully slick when your glove is wet or snowy.
- Cowbells being run by spectators are a great, great sound, especially at the top of a hill.
- Flat, cold Coca-Cola is a great, great taste, especially when you’re depleted.
- The City of Lakes Loppet events must be one of the very few ski races in North America (or the world) during which you can see a downtown skyline.
- Interval workouts kinda suck, but in a good way, especially when they pay off in the race.
- Among all the reasons that I like skiing, I think that the uppermost is the ease with which it allows me to slip into “the Zone” or a “flow” state – that blessed but rare condition of being totally, satisfyingly, untiringly focused on The Thing You’re Doing. I can occasionally get into this state while running or cycling, and very, very rarely at other times (writing proposals at work, playing with the girls), but skiing is the king’s highway into it. Twenty minutes of skiing (not coincidentally, the period of time needed for my fingers to warm back up from the initial chill) drops me right into the mental and physical place where I am just doing it: thinking about how to ski a little better, enjoying the feeling of gliding along (or of working up a hill), looking for a better line through the next corner… All the usual clutter-thought disappears for the duration of the ski. And racing – at least, the few times I can do it each year – accelerates all of this in the best ways. I don’t think I thought about anything except skiing faster during the entire time between the starting gun (a little black powder cannon!) and crossing the finishing line.
- Speaking of crossing the line, next year I’ll have to take more care to notice where the finishing line actually is – I thought it was further than it was, and skied right into some young volunteer who was just trying to take my timing chip. Sorry, kid!
City of Lakes Loppet Classic Start (by David Owen)
1) Is that a Team Xtra Personnel hat? You join auspicious marathonning company.
2) Cork grips are expensive and like to wear off and break off. If you are gripping your poles tightly you are doing it wrong, most of your connection to the pole should be through those fancy straps, not from your fingers around the pole.
3) A good explosive stride is going to be faster than a run at all times. Running should only be helpful on steep little pitches or when your wax is dying and you need to stomp on the skis like that to set what little wax is left.
4) Good race! I would never have attempted a 25k classic with your level of experience in the technique.
1) It sure is. I wrote to them last winter to see about buying a hat, and they sent it to me for nothing! Pretty swell. I’m a big fan of the Brøderna Aukland now.
2) I’m good at the technical side of poling, but when the plastic grips get slick – like when I crashed and got up with my gloves covered in fine, icy snow – they slide around a little too much for a few minutes, till the gloves dry. But if a cork grip will just wear out, it’s not worth the hassle.
3) That’s exactly how he used the run – to zip up little ramps of less than 10m or so that were just to sharp to stride. Partly I think he did it to sneak past herringboners (the last half of the 25k overlapped with a noncompetitive “tour” that put a lot of very slow skiers on the track), and partly because he’d lost his wax.
4) Thanks! It was an experiment, and it worked okay – a B.
If you need to grab the poles tightly then your straps are too loose! For real.
Also, protip: Safety pin your gels to the front of your drink belt (or inside of your waistband, even). Much faster to consume, and you don’t litter the little top part!
My straps are as tight to the grip as I can get them without losing feeling in my fingers after doing up the velcro across the back of the hand. As someone recently said elsewhere, “The pole should be tight against the crotch of your thumb/forefinger (hur, hur, you said crotch). This is because releasing your poles as you push off is a crucial component of poling fluidly.”
The gel tip is appreciated. Last year I put them on the front, which was handy, but I discovered on finishing the race that I had two open safety pins waiting to poke my guts out. Hence the back-of-the-belt location this year. FAIL. Frankly, this is one of the worst things about only doing one real race a winter – no time to experiment.
Did you know that Dr. C has been the external on a bunch of Fielding dissertation committees? I wrote a Human Learning and Motivation paper about flow and peak experiences and apparently he would have been happy to read it if I had asked. But, at the time (near the beginning of my program) I was unaware he was so tight with the school.
The bearded fellow won a gold medal in the beardsicle event at the Mora last weekend. He just killed it. The combination of water feeds and blueberry soup feeds led to a near-world record finish. http://skinnyski.com/racing/results/2010/photos/moravasaloppet/IMG_8062.JPG
Also, trial and error, for me, has put the gels inside my waistband, each stapled twice, and with a little extra tearing to aide in their opening by cold, blood-starved fingers. The harder part, of course, is convincing myself to eat them early enough in the race.
And, yes, I agree with Colin: if you have to worry about gripping your poles, your straps are not properly adjusted.