Less than a month to go!

One month to go (well it was when I started writing this post). No matter what I do, I don't seem to be able to lose any weight, and I could do with losing a few more kg. Why? Well it is a few less kg to carry for 450km, but also cross country skis are matched to your weight and only work for a narrow range of weights. This is because when you are balanced across both skis, the middles need to be clear of the ground so that you are running on the front and back glide zones. Thus if you are too heavy for your skis, then they will run slower. Equally, if you are too light, then when you put your weight on one ski, it will not flex flat so the sticky (grip) wax section is fully in contact with the snow.

I also looked up the long term forecast for March. The current indication is that Feb and March will be slightly warmer than average in Scandinavia. This led me to think what the best temperature range is. From someone without the innate understanding Scandinavians have of wax, it seems to me that firstly you don't want the temperature to vary much throughout the day, as different waxes are needed for different temperature ranges. The colder the snow, the harder the wax needed - grip is created by the ice crystals poking into the wax, so softer snow needs softer wax.Between -5C and -10C is probably a good range.

Staying in a hotel with an exercise room enables me to get some training in every day, but also to experiment to try to find the optimimum between heart rate and speed. But I may have discovered another trick. I tried using the elevation on the running machine, and adding a few degrees starts to work some slightly different muscles - possibly the ones that swelled up last time. This might be because when cross country skiing, although you are mostly on the flat, you are angled slightly forward to be able to propel yourself along. This is equivalent to being more upright but on a slight slope. Still anything that can exercise and strengthen my leg muscles in different directions is probably good. I remember last time thinking that after 450km I would turn in a fast running time when back to my 16.4km Saturday runs only to find that for the first few weeks back I was really slow because now my running muscles were a problem.

There is one glimmer of hope on the horizon for training, but it is not due for a couple of years. This is the snow dome to be built at Locking, less than 10 miles from home. Although this is designed only for downhill skiing, I expect that at quiet times it will be possible to do some skiing there, even if it is only to practise going up and down hills or even just using the drag lift up and skiing down.

Training is all ups and downs. I have now lost a few days through a wonderful dose of sickness and the runs, but on the bright side, it might help me get the weight down, and at least it is better to get the virus now than half way across Finland.