Who's In?

This is not me. But it’s what I did much of last Sunday. That is, go uphill. And I may well have gone up this very hill, as the photo is from the Waterville Valley website, and that’s where I skied. (Waterville, not the website, silly.) Unbeatable conditions, like skiing through some ski area’s promotional film.

Nature aside, the trails were groomed beautifully, for both classical and skating skiing. (Trail pass = $16 for the day.) Snow squalls blew through the valley, separated by swaths of pale crystal blue—while the big slow flakes kept floating down. Birch trees, pines, clean snow… a concentration of my selective memories of winter.

Waterville Valley bills itself as the 12^th most popular Nordic ski area in North America. I’m not sure that’s the slickest marketing tag I’ve ever heard, but who am I to argue. I have probably only been to seven North American Nordic ski areas (Weston Ski Track, Great Brook Farm, Waterville, Jackson Ski Touring Center, Bretton Woods, Sunday River, and Snow Mountain Ranch), so I guess I’ve got to put it in my personal top 12….

I give it a thumbs up anyway. Would be happy to go back.

Nordic skiing is funny. More than downhill skiing or snowboarding, the range of aesthetics and abilities is astonishing. And these two attributes do not correlate. Woolly three-pinners (and I mean woolly as in venerable as well as what they’re wearing) gliding in from their maple sugaring and granola baking and wicking polylycra-sleek racers on colorful composite skis babbling of anaerobic thresholds both excel in their separate ways, and people who look like they’ve just arrived at the end of a surprise journey, been given unathletic parkas and told to strap those thingies on their feet and walk, all share the trails together. Quite civilly, albeit at different speeds. I have to love that about it.

I skied mostly uphill (truly, given the nature of gravity and velocity, I spent proportionally much more time going up than coming down…) on Sunday. Had to stop frequently; my heart pounded in my ears, but the stops came mostly when the dexterity of my hup-hup-hup quick skating uphill fell prey to lactic acid overload. Butt burning and feet slowing, momentum flagging… at least it was delightful to stop and look around. (The conditions reminded me of the one time I ever saw a porcupine (in a tree at a ski area from the vantage point of the chairlift), so I was always hopefully looking.)

Monday, the temperature got up to about 2 Farenheit with some especially biting winds. Skied classical that day, and slowly, accompanying a learning five year old. That was joyful in its own way. Wish I had photos to post. Skied one 2 km loop and then, with her cheeks matching her bright fuscia jacket, we went in, satisfied.

 

We did get two inches of snow, being generous in the measuring. I strapped on my skis and skated across the slightly windblown, powderless inch that remained a day later on the local playing fields. And determined that my hunch based on towing a kid while on skates was correct. I’m in good shape, but completely unfit for a 50 km race, or even a 25 km race. Or even a 25 km dawdle. Just a lap around two soccer fields, and a couple of trips up a nearby hill had be convinced. The anterior tibialis have just had not enough practice holding my feet off the ground. To say nothing of the rest of the specific muscles required. So plans are revised.

No Loppet in my year. There will be a Play Forever League consolation basketball game on the day of the ski race. Sigh. Would rather be missing a championship game to go off skiing… My team lost our semi-final last week by one basket. Two too many mistakes on our part, but that’s neither here nor there.

My goal now is to get up to ski the course in Lake Placid at some point this winter, so I know what I’m working toward for next year. And to sneak in as much snow time as I can in the next six weeks. Or fewer, as foretold by the Oracle at Punxatawny.

On that topic, The New York Times says: Groundhog Day has been part of the Western calendar since around the fifth century, which means it has survived centuries of Catholicism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the advent of the agriculture of cloned sheep. But whether it will survive in an age of global warming was one questionǿalbeit not the biggest one—raised by the awkward coincidence yesterday of Groundhog Day 2007 falling on the same day a report was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations.

On the plus side, I will stop for a while with writing about this boring and solipsistic topic. Be back later with issues.

Finally it's been cold, but still no snow. An inch is predicted for overnight. I did get some good skating in last weekend. I grew up skating on ponds in hand-me-down figure skates (those things were old). So I'm new to hockey skates. I've roller bladed so I've got the idea, but have none of the direction-changing ability of someone who's grown up playing hockey. And it's silly, I have some very expensive hockey skates—this time hand-me-downs from my nephew who was a serious hockey player for a time. These ones are not so old, and I got them in trade for some dog-sitting.... I can't really live up to such good skates, but maybe they'll help me in the end.

Here was the best skiing like activity I've done since skiing last year: I pulled a sled behind me while I skated the perimeter of a big pond. A plastic sled with a longish rope and a 42-pound kid in it. Not exactly the same as skiing, but the same butt muscles were burning shortly into it. Unfortunately, I only discovered this drill at the end of our outing. Maybe this weekend there'll be a chance for more.

So, I mostly stick to my usual rounds of basketball, running, and lifting. And spectating. This is the best sporting thing I've seen in a long time:

Enjoy. A bientot.

This is bad. I last wrote in August. Now it's the first of December. And it's the same temperature. 65 degrees Farenheit today here in eastern Massachusetts. Not that that's unpleasant in itself. Yesterday, cooler by about 5 degrees, I ran 10k in shorts and short sleeves. Not even fingers were cold. But sometime after that last post I had determined to do more skiing this winter, even to set myself the goal of racing a ski marathon.

I am not an experienced skier. That is, while I have skied for 25 years or so, never very much in a given year, and never with any formal coaching. Tips from friends and relations, watching people who look good, that's about it. Anyway, that means the main thing I need to do to prepare is to ski. I've shifted my weight workouts to be more ski focused; I've lengthened my low-intensity runs; I've added hill running; I borrowed my in-laws roller skis but with no snow.... 

But I just heard some downhill World Cup skiing events were cancelled in Europe because of warm weather and lack of snow. Hmm.

I've told enough people about my plan to ski the Lake Placid Loppet that I gotta pretend it's gonna happen. I'll sign up--despite everyone who knows anything telling me how hard a course it is (it's the only race with a skating category within reasonable driving range and I do have some emotional ties to Lake Placid)--and I guess if I don't manage to get any time on skis I'll just be a DNS. 

Meanwhile, I hope to check back in here more often with training topics and reports of my little attempts. I'm intimidated by the prospect, but I love being at the bottom of the learning curve. Just hope for some snow eventually....