Night Skiing

Work has been particularly busy lately. Long hours with little pause in the day for skiing. Tie that to two kids that need to be fed and in bed by 7 and it leads to only one option for skiing mid-week: at night by headlamp. For the uninitiated, skiing at night, or snow shoeing, mountain biking, running, or much of anything else for that matter, is awesome. It brings a whole new level of awareness to the experience. Last night, prior to beginning a set of intervals on Frog Run at Morse Farm, I stood among a grove of hemlock listening only to very far off traffic and snow flakes hitting the ground. Pretty soon, that quiet was blown out by very heavy breathing and a rapidly beating heart, but more on that later.

The goal for the evening was originally to do some double pole intervals: 4 to 6 X 4 minutes with equal rest. I have been working on modifying my technique such that my hands are much higher and closer to my chest. This has been shown by lots of skiers that it produces a lot more power during the poling motion. The photo here is of Andy Newell, US Ski Team member and world class sprinter. Andy puts so much force into is body getting ready to pole again that he lifts himself several inches off the ground. I can't imagine that this is how a marathon skier will ski, but it definitely illustrates the point of high hands.
When I got to the farm last night, I was sporting VR 40 over binder. This worked great on Sunday, but at 4 degrees F, way too warm. I tried to cover this with a couple layers of VR30, but still had a ton of drag. Double pole intervals were out.

Instead, I thought I would do a repeat of a workout I had done last week during the nasty cold snap. 12 by 1:00 at best effort. I picked out a section of Frog Run that has a gradual climb into a nasty steep section, followed by more gradual climbing. These ended up being real hard. The first few went well, but by number 6 and 7, I was falling shorter and shorter of where I had started. It was pretty apparent that I just didn't have it, so I ended up doing 8. Not too bad, particularly considering that I was still pretty wiped from Sunday's race. I think it goes to show that following a race, it's really important to have a day of active rest before starting up on soem intervals.

The rest of the ski was awesome: no wind, nice nighttime views of the Worcester Range, and really great snow.