Sibley...AWESOME

Some more pictures. Don't tell my Mom I was dangling my legs over 100m lookout. She thought I was squimish about heights...ha.


Phil, Timo, and Mike at the Lookout
What a ski! Sibley has yet to let me down. Thomsen, Mike, Timo and I got out to the park ready for a great ski. But it turned out to be incredible, we skied 4.5 hours on amazing trails, sun blazing warming from -5 to just above 0. I skied on a new pair of skis I have been working in. They have a fairly aggressive wet grind in the base, so I was hoping it was going to warm up to really try them out. They were rocket fast, they were skiing well in the morning when it was colder, but really pulled away from the other guys when it started warming.

Great ski boys, great ski.

The Sibley ski tour is next weekend, the boys and I will probably do the 20k skate, and the men will pound out the 50k skate. It would be an awesome race, but for us it's too close to nationals to try to get in adequate recovery, while still getting in a good two weeks of training. But I'm really looking forward to next weekend at Sibley.

Lappe Part 2, and Biathlon

Day two of the Lappe Invitational was a skate about 12k, pursuit start. I started 25 seconds or so ahead of Jeremy Hecker and Timo. My game plan was to go out conservative and then finish strong. I knew they would catch me, it was just a matter of time. They caught me going down into the swamp. Jeremy and his hibby's were rockets, standing up behind me in my draft trying not to run me over. Timo put a push on up Massaro's trying to drop the young grasshopper, Hecker, I suppose. He caught up easily on the downhill. Timo's energy reserves were dwindling, Hecker and I carried on, I let him lead at his pace for the time leading up to Klukie Line. In the warmup I had skied Klukies well and felt I would make my move on it. I pulled up beside Jeremy, and said "you ready?" He said, "yup" and we took off. It was fun, I wasn't going to sprint by him and have him feel caught off gaurd. I was wanting to finish strong and catch back up the time I had lost to them in the beginning. I finished strong but not strong enough, only gaining back maybe 15seconds of the time lost. Jeremy skied a great race and I had a lot of fun playing around with tactics and energy levels.

Again thank you to the Lappe staff for putting on a great race. I received a Lappe t-shirt as a prize. I feel part of the gang now.

Monday I was invited to Biathlon practice with Becky Purias. They set me up with a 22 and showed me the basic of shooting. First time shooting a gun so I wasn't expecting much accuracy. We set up prone (lying down) it's easier, a lot less movment and pracitce dry firing along with hitting some paper targets. I got to keep my target and was told I had some nice "groupings" by Thomsen, the wiley Biathlon vet. Standing was a lot more difficult, a lot more movement. Then we were set up infront of the targets, that was the best part, seeing the black circle turn white when you actually hit the target. To say modestly, "I'm an ACE shot" I destroyed Timo's shot.

I was shooting without skiing 2k at an all out effort, my chest wasn't heaving, and my arms weren't tired from the skiing, so it wasn't a fair estimate of my biathlon abilities but it was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot Becky for bringing me out and letting me try shooting.

For all those cross country skiers out there that trash talk Biathlon, "Try it before you fry it"



Timo...missing haha

Cheers

External Motivation

Lappe Invitational…I was invited.

10k classic interval start. Packed field of 4 open men. The remaining NTDC crowd, Timo Purias, Thomsen D’Hont, Phi,Wood and the local Werner Schwar were out to battle for domination. The home course advantagers Purias and Schwar were in their element both having good starts and edging the field to a marginal gap. Splits were taken at 800m intervals by Pauli, Rejio, and Somppi (I don’t know how). Wood reeled in Purias who started 30 seconds in front. Wood was experimenting with a source of external motivation with donning D’Hont headphones and Wood’s infamous ‘pump up’ playlist. An aggressive pass after Leena’s Leap with a slight surge gapped the fading Fin. An edgy battle between NWT’er and Thunder Bay’s staple, Schwar, were shaping up. D’Hont starting a meger 30 seconds back. Caught Schwar and used his momentum to catch a draft. The tag team were starting to put time into race leader Wood. Klukie Line, a mere 2k from the finish, proved to me a struggling battle for Wood as Purias caught back up and comfortably sat in Wood’s heels going into Maarita’s loop. The failing Wood, obliged Purias to pass, quickly attaching to his heels. D’Hont and the battle continued into the stadium before heading out onto the pond loop. This is where an epic move of speed and tactics put D’Hont in the lead and out of reach of a slowing Schwar. D’Hont quickly raced to gain the lost time he was down of Wood and Purias. Purias put a valiant finishing burst on, gaining valuable time against follower Wood and chaser D’Hont, finishing with a 7 second gap into Wood, being relinquished to 2nd place. D’Hont battled solo, for the finishing hill, called the Grunt, duly noted. The finishing stretch was not long enough for D’Hont to gain the time he needed to outpace Wood’s time. He edged out the Fin by 6 secs, and finishing 17 seconds behind Wood and 35 seconds better than Schwar.

A hardy round of handshakes were had while enjoying some Lappe pancakes afterwards.

Thanks for a great race boys, and well done to the race organizers.

An honourable mention goes to the Winner of the Open Women race Karla Mika, edging out Thunder Bay local Kelly Henry. (she also stole my cork…Karla, not Kelly)

Here's my playlist. I tried to set up an imix list, so that you could actually listen to them, but only 2/12 songs would play, being from itunes. Sorry. Check out Rollin with Heat- by The Roots. Good Tune, Nice one Kate

Eye Of The Tiger- Survivor
We Believe- Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rolling With Heat- The Roots ft. Talib Kweli
New Noise- Refused
Guerrila Radio- Rage Against The Machine
Until the Day I Die- Story of the Year
Paper Airplanes (Makeshift Wings)- AFI
Timberwolves At New Jersey- Taking Back Sunday
Girl's Not Grey -AFI
cute without the e- taking back sunday
See Right Through Me- Mobile
Money City Maniacs- Sloan

Solid Workout

Hey, It was pretty cold here in Thunder Bay Sunday. I had a legs only workout on the schedual, I decided to do it in the comforts of the indoors. To my roommates hasseling, I still had a solid workout. I put on my favorite pump up play list, blasted the tunes and had a awesome self driven workout. I've included a short video highlighting the workout.

I thought it was funny videoing my workout, but when putting the video together I learned just as much from it doing strength as you would doing technique in skiing. I felt as though I was really pushing the max, getting as low and deep as I could go, but clearly I can still get more out of my legs. This is the aim, so gaining from this is the process.

Hope you get a laugh out of this, I know my teammates will be jabbing at me..."who's the poser doing workouts in his living room...too cold"

Solid Workout

What to do...what to do

Traveled to the nation's capital this weekend for two races, a skate sprint and a classic 30k. I decided not to race the sprints. The classic race was on a balmy Sunday morning. The snow was warming fast which meant finding grip was a tough chore for our wax technicians. We started the race and I knew right away my triceps were in for a haul doing most of the work double polling.

I wanted to quit after the first lap of 7.5k and I convinced myself to at least make it through to the 15k mark and then you could drop out after that. I rolled around the 15k mark and struggled with the decision to quit or to keep going. It was an ongoing battle to quit from probably the 5k mark. I finished the race, in 23rd position, 11 minutes back of the leader. That's no way to ski a race, fighting with the decision to quit.

I was very pleased with myself that I didn't quit, and that I kept with it after I started it. It didn't make my results, or feelings of the race any easier to deal with.

I'm back up in Thunder Bay for a while, until Nationals near the end of March. I quess the next question is whether to stay low and get some rest, or to grab some quality training over the next couple weeks and try to get into some racing shape.