Training Log Archive: 'Bent

Gatineau Loppet- GPS to follow.

Cold, snowy conditions, windy and below -20 at times but actually not too chilly once skiing. Bash and I started way back in the last wave, and it was hard work moving up through all sorts of bottlenecks at first as pokey skiers would ski side by side. After about 20 k it opened up and I got into some decent trains moving at a reasonable pace. Beautiful forest trails for the first 2/3, then more monotonous road.
My Goosed skis were fantastic, decent glide and great grip even at the end.
I found the climbing fairly easy, and that's where I passed most people. By 35k I was only with a small handful of folks, and the tracks were snowy and slower.
In the last 3k we ran smack into the back of a kid's race, which took a fair bit of effort to get by. The kids were giving'er!
I was close to cramping at the 50k mark, so probably did it about right. Layers were perfect.
Apparently this was a very slow year. The winner was just under 3:30. Good skiers I know were pleased to finish 45 min slower than last year.

It looks like I was about 30% back overall and in my age group, which is fine for my second ski race and lack of long ski training.

Bash did really well I'm proud to say.

C • Well done! 9

Nice ski in with fairly mild temps. Much colder on the way back as I'd dressed for -8. Bazingadog hustled on the way home too- no dawdling in -18 with a strong wind. Ski tracks like machine grooming all the way!

Fast commute with BZdog- spent too much time prepping skis for Gatineau and fiddling with other stuff to get in a decent ski.

Easy night ski home. No coyotes this time.

Another perfect ski to work. Tried the Pursuit boots without the cuff to see if it's more heel-friendly.

Skijor to work with the big guy.
Palgrave West has a nice ski track next to a good snowshoe track! Someone read the signs.

Palgrave East is pretty stomped. Oh well.

Wow , great dog-MTB vid here. I can appreciate all the work that went into filming all the angles, pooch cam, helmetcam, dronecam, trailcam...


I'm hoping Adventuredog can bike with me like that.

C • Cool!! 1

Stars WAR with Bash. (GPS to follow)

We decided to start on classic skis, carrying snowshoes and running shoes in big packs.

The plan was to clean the ski CPs first, including bonus CP combinations. We then planned to drop skis at 40 and snowshoe the rest.

Conditions were excellent and skiing went fine, other than a nasty bit on a dirty snowmobile trail, and we found that we could ski well on the main snowshoe trails too so we never switched to snowshoes. Bash's nav was quite clean, despite having to use my home-made map board.

The wheels fell off when we headed into 39 where I took a turn onto some promising tracks, and we ended up doing an awkward bushwack powder flounder for 27 wasted minutes before coming all the way back and finding the CP right where I had seen a team go in (G-stix and Hermes as it turned out- d'oh!) My bad. Bash figured it out.

From there we had to high-tail it back, hitting a few CPs on the way.
We missed 3 controls and the matrix.

If we hadn't wasted so much time at 39 we could perhaps have gotten everything but the matrix. Tarno/Rydlo won, and MBR and the Wadd Squad were close on their heels.

Nicely put together race, and so great to race with Bash in real winter conditions.