victoire! part deux!

yes, i am still the undisputed champion amongst my age group among people of my age group who elect to show up to ski in the race!

suck it, those of you, in my age group, who didn't show up to kick my ass! yeah!

today was the classic leg, which means, you have to do the traditional 'diagonal stride', which looks kind of like a shuffle. you put grippy stuff in the middle of the ski, so when you weight it, it grips, and you get 'kick'. I spent two hours helping getting skis ready for kid skiers. used mine as a test pair for a variety of waxes, which left them... uh, manky. i should have taken the time to fix them, but, they seemed 'ok.' i spent the time left warming up. it was reasonable to think i'd miss my start...

but, with the help of 30 plus people, who kept telling me when the start was i made it.

and then, promptly fell on my face in the start. literally.

it was a pursuit start, which meant, i started behind the guy who finished in front of me, by the time he finished in front of me. i made up some time on him, and basically did ok, but i would have liked to have don better... the course went flat, down hill for about 1.75 km, then turned and climbed, for about 2.5 km, and then a screaming downhill. (total, 5km, 2 laps). so i slowly reel dave in, catch him at the top of the climb, and watch him glide away on faster skis (that's why i think i should have re-done my skis after all the testing)...

i'll try to throw a couple pics up, yes, including the one of me on my face.

all in all a good weekend... 59/68 days on skis. so, some rest, some travel (travel days don't count as rest days, i hope you know what i mean), with lots of hard stuff and long stuff thrown in. the next three weeks will be more restful, but w/ a 30km skate race, a 15km race where you change gear in the middle of the race, and a 10km race that i'm trying to improve my time from an earlier race on the same course. i'll cut my skiing back a little, but i struggle with the fact that skiing for fun is more fun than training for events... this week, a mandatory taper (exams, and travel), next week, 3 days only (all shorter, harder), and the last week, 3 days, all short and fast. goal is to ski the 10km in 32min (weather dependent, of course): by my ridiculously complicated spreadsheets, i'm half way to the 32 min goal (from 37.5min), with no taper. taper research indicates that properly tapering (significant decrease in mileage, like down 80% with all work done at race pace, resultes in high benefits. ex: 29 seconds for 5km runners). that's a lot. If I can get 2 minutes from base, 1 minute from taper, 1 minute from technique improvements, and 1 minute from luck, and 30 seconds from desparation, i'll be there.

i'll let you know.

not breaking a pole, falling over, missing the start... well that's worth negative negative time...