Observations on snow travel techniques

Everybody knows how much I love snowshoers :) Yes last year they were the source of many poke-funning blog entries. Hey I even went snowshoing a few times this year with my kids, notably the time when we dragged the 14-foot tree out of the woods. Well my snowshoes are huge - though not as big as those traditional wood-and-gut creations of old - they have a large surface area and can transport me with relative ease through deep snow. If I remember right, they were spec'd to support up to 200 lbs through deep snow - just right for me and a full overnight pack. Now I have to wonder when I look at the itty-bitty snowshoes most people are using these days : barely larger than their feet, and sporting all kinds of spikes and claws on the underside to facilitate grip in icy conditions. These look cool and all, but methinks they are better suited to mountaineering than traipsing through the gentle undulating terrain where I see most snowshoers as I'm skiing around. The snowparks all have marked snowshoe trails now, and 99% of the time that's what the snowshoers follow. They don't have much choice, because the teeny-tiny snowshoes they wear are only good for following a firmly packed trail. So they rarely venture off randomnly into the woods, which is when it actually becomes fun.

Now for an observation on skate-skiing, which I do a couple of times a week. It is kind of analagous to road-biking, being restricted to wide groomed trails (roads), and therefore a bit sterile and not so much fun in an exploratory way as charging into the wilderness on backcountry skis (which is my other pair of Nordic skis). However it is fun technically, as small gains in technique enable you to propel yourself more efficiently and with greater speed. It is competitive in the way cycling is, in that without acknowledging it, people engage constantly in subtle speed duels (well at least I do). When someone passes me, I try to up my speed to match them and stay with them. And if I see someone on the trail ahead, I do my best to catch up to them and pass them. This makes it 'fun' for me, otherwise I'm just going around in circles.

My first observation concerns the V2 skate technique. This is not the first one you learn, but a more advanced technique for high speed skating on flats and slight downhills. Personally I find it quite difficult, and unless I'm on a decent down-slope, I get out of breath doing it and it feels inefficient. So I'm usually doing V1 or V2 alternate. Now I see everyone else doing a lot of V2, as though it's the trendy thing, kinda like itty-bitty snowshoes with spikes. But it seems to me as though most of these V2'ers are quite inefficient and would be better off perfecting their V1 first (this I notice as I glide by them V1'ing).

That's it for today's observations. In the future I may actually say something that is helpful to somebody, if you are lucky.

Season over

...for at least a few months now. Since then been cross-training, doing XYZ intervals and bulking up the lower fectoralis, to get ready for next season. I will have bionic surgery on my legs to rectify the problem I had with not enough power, speed or intensity.

But siriusly folks it was a great season. I moved up to Expert class, and it was nice to be racing against a group of rabid competitive freaks. There was rarely any 'pack fodder', so you actually had to work your butt off to not place last. Similar to last year, I didn't place so well in the first few races, due to the high number of contestants, and my specialized training program, where performance peaks assymptotically around June. Then all of a sudden I surged ahead in the standings, grabbing medal after medal - of course this started happening when attendance waned in the early months of summer - but hey even though I was in a huge field of often 2 or 3, I didn't DNF !:) So from Figure 1 below you can see I finished at the top of the point standings for Master Expert. This is really not too hard to do - it's mostly a matter of attendance. For some reason people are nuts about racing from March to maybe June, and then they stop showing up. Personally I'd much rather race in the summer than in the cold wet months of spring, but I'm in the minority. And the race schedule for next year is packed in spring, but there's like 1 race all summer - WTF? In fact there's many overlapping races, so it appears everbody's fighting to hold races during the peak seasons for mud and mosquitoes. You all @#$!:)

So as someone I know once said "Are You Dead !?". This is for all the people who may be reading this but don't comment. I'm just not getting enough stroking here. So say something, even something frivolous like "Dude!" or "Asshole!". Yes, that will make me feel better. Otherwise I will go back to my other career of playing my guitar stoned into the wee hours of the morning, recording it all on my 4-track, and then playing it back 6 years later and exclaiming "This stuff rocks!".