On Friday my brother called me. I know as soon as I saw the caller ID that he wanted something. In this case, someone to chase after during his intervals. His plan was for him to ski a hard interval up Tripoli Road at Waterville Valley, ski back down, and race me (I would be fresh for this effort).

If you are reading this you are probably connected enough to the world to have heard that Marion Jones is going to prison for six months. It’s about time.

Here I am, still at my computer. It is 10:41, and I haven’t finished puting together a sample exam for my students, or doing a couple other tasks that need to be done by tomorrow morning. And it is going to rain tomorrow…which I suppose is less bad for me that it would be if I was racing full time and had to train in it. But then again I am foolish and stubborn enough to go out in the cold rain anyway.

Since I have a blog now I can give myself free publicity:

I am giving clinics at Waterville Valley Ski Area on the next two Saturdays. Both will be on snow and run from 1:00 to 2:30; this Saturday (the 12th) will be classic technique and the 19th will be skating.

On both days I will be talking about technique, demonstrating drills, discussing training, life as an elite skier (and life as a former elite skier and dad), taking general questions and maybe asking questions about this math problem I’ve been working on…

As I probably mentioned in my last post, a top 10 was my stretch of a goal for Nationals this year. But of course after achieving this in the skate race I was hoping to do even better in the classic, and certainly many people I spoke to expected the same of me.

I was not optimistic yesterday. This course didn’t treat me well last year, and skiing around I did not feel good. Also, the forecast called for significant snow, my least favorite condition. I told someone I would be lucky to break the top 70 on a course and day like this one.
I was a little more optimistic as I warmed up today. The snow was much faster than I anticipated, and my new skis were running very well. I did a couple of pick-ups on the course and felt fast, but worried about the amount of lactic acid I was building up.

I skied some intervals yesterday. They weren’t really what my training plan called for; I have been hoping to focus more on fast, short, intervals or on longer level three efforts this year, but the demands of work and family have made that difficult (or at least serve as a convenient excuse). So when I had the chance to go hard I chose a familiar way: level four intervals up Upper Osceola at the North End of Waterville Valley.

Last year at this time we were still hoping for snow. This year, I have the luxury of being disappointed by the rain which means not quite all the trails at Waterville Valley are open.

I got out today for my first real overdistance day in far longer than I care to think about. I skated for three hours, skiing most of the trails at Waterville, including some of the trails that were closed; for whatever reason skiing on sketchy ice with melted out streams is my idea of a good time, even when there are perfectly good groomed trails I didn’t get to ski. I think it is because in the last ten years I have rarely skied the South End trail system there so any chance I get I take.

I didn’t have Iris with me today; I am going to have to take a look at my log and figure out if I have skied more hours pulling her or on my own. When skiing is limited it is nice to pull the Chariot; it lets me get more time out of less trail. But on a day like today, when I could ski over 50 kilometers and never ski the same trail twice, it was kind of nice to go alone.

Unlike the other Fasterskier bloggers, I am not trying to compete internationally (well, technically Kikkan isn’t trying to compete internationally right now–she is kicking butt and taking names). So my workouts look a little different. For instance today, with all the beautiful snow we have in New Hampshire, I didn’t have time to ski after work. So I went for a six mile run with my daughter, Iris (you can see her at the top left of my homepage). I bundled Iris up, put her in the Chariot carrier (configured as a jogger today, not as a pulk) and pushed her six miles through the two inches of snow and ice still on Old Bristol Road in New Hampton. This is a great road with light traffic; a good thing since on one steep downhill I was sliding as much as running for a bit. Tomorrow I finish teaching early and get to ski. Tomorrow is a good day!