Very good skiing at Callaghan Saturday with Katja and John. We all managed to ski 3 hours to help us prepare for upcoming loppets. JG and I were moving pretty fast, taking advantage of good snow conditions. The snow outside the tracks was excellent, very little build up of soft snow, but not icy so we could take the corners more aggressively, maintaining more speed through the winding trails. The only tricky part was the 3 long climbs up Madeley Road where grip wasn’t so good. The thin layer of fresh snow was covering hard packed tracks so glide was good but seemed my crowns would grip the fresh snow but this layer would slide over the harder snow…at least that is how I rationalized my lack up grip. We ended up skiing/running up the hills outside the tracks on the first lap, then before lap 2 JG applied red special which helped him climb in the tracks. My legs were slow to recover after the 2nd round of the 3 long climbs, but they eventually came back and I could enjoy hammering over the short steep hills on Norwegian Woods. Seems my thighs were in fact suffering somewhat from Friday’s running, they were tight/sore Saturday morning before the ski, then after the drive home they had really tightened up and were sore…can still feel them this morning. Will probably not ski today, might go paddling.
And in racing news, Canada’s Devon Kershaw finished 4th in the Tour de Ski, a 9 stage (11 days) event modeled after cycling’s Tour de France. The final stage was brutal, only 9 km long but finished with a 3km climb up a downhill ski run. Some good videos of the racing can be found here.
