Spring is here!! The weather in North
Bay has been nice lately. Not too warm so the snow has
been melting gently. I’ve been doing a bit of running and cycling, getting
ready for the spring/summer season. Fitness feels pretty good but the legs aren’t
quite ready to go too hard yet! I’m looking forward to doing more running this
season and hoping to stay injury free. So that I can hit the threshold in the
10k!
Well, another Wednesday approaches more crazy weather! Seems
to be a weekly cycle again this year. The trails are not in the greatest shape.
This should give us a very firm base though for the rest of the year. I hope it
snows a bit more though as I know they’re reluctant to till too much more with
the base we have now. Today I skied in the freezing rain, not much fun. It was
about -8 and I had at least half a cm of ice covering everything I was wearing.
The S-turn and Blue downhill were treacherous to say the least!! Snow would be
great, here’s hoping!!
Training at Silver Star Resort and Sovereign Lake Nordic was great. All the international skiers were somewhere out on the trails. I had an opportunity to see the Norwegians a couple times, the Germans, the Swedes and the Italians out skiing. They are pretty impressive skiers. They appear not to be superhuman, just very smooth and efficient yet powerful. On race days the good skiers certainly get separated from the great skiers. Encouraging is the fact that even between the elite skiers there is a wide range of techniques (subtle differences). Off tomorrow to Duntroon, hopefully the skiing will be good.
The Canmore trails aren't open to public skiing this week. The past two days have been spent at Moraine Lake Road (Lake Louise). Skiing has been ok, tracks blown in a bit with new snow. Skis haven't been super fast either, yesterday was -21!! Today is a bit warmer (-15), looks like it'll be back there for some more! Off to Vernon (Silver Star) tomorrow, change of venue will be good. Looking forward to seeing the world cup races.
Well the races went off today without much trouble. In the end I was glad I raced. I was a little concerned though, on my warmup I got my HR to 175 up the first hill - just going up to take some photos!! Also, the first corner after the start I stuck my pole between my skis and almost wiped out. Saved in though - luckeeee. The Nordic Center is closed this week to the public, they're getting it ready for the world cups. That's ok because I have no ambition to train on those courses. Looks like it's off to Lake Louise this week to train. Thursday I'm headed to Silver Star (near Vernon BC) to ski and spectate the World Cups. Should be fun...
Well today was supposed to be my first race of the season. I decided to forgo the honor and take some pictures instead. I was entered in the 10km event to take place on part of the new world cup courses. As it was my second time skating the other day, I'm still recovering from an ankle injury and the temp was -19 at race time, I decided to take a pass. Previous experiences with Asthma on tough courses, early in the season, close to the cutoff limit (-20), have not been good. The sprint NORAM races went on for the WCup selections. They were fun to watch. I'll post some pics and a brief story after tomorrow's races. I'm hoping to start tomorrow in the 10k classic. It is -26 right now but supposed to warm up by race time. We'll see....
Team info (top menu) finally updated. Also available is the official NBNSC team announcement: www.nsxc.ca/NBNSC_Announcement.pdf (you need Acrobat reader).
The new website layout and team plans for this season are finally coming along... I've added an interesting training log function to the user menu. If you'd like to be a site user (post on the log book, utilize the training logs and view online documents) please feel free and sign up. More team info will be along soon as well, thanks for stopping by!
NSXC (B)Log