First day of the real thing.

Well it was a good day. Although I am tired after 64.9km (yes, I know this is more - I was following the guys in front and they missed the turn and carried on up icy road (my favourite skiing surface)for a mile or more before I convinced them we were on the wrong road - I could have gone on longer. I got here at about the same time as I did 2 years ago, but had the best part of half an hours detour.

Although not much faster, I am closer to my planned average speed of 8km/hr, including stops, and certainly skiing with less effort. And it is even less when I consciously remember to release my ski poles as instructed by Wolfgang.

Today was the most difficult day technically - hurtling through trees on a windy woodland path covered with snow at 40km/hr is not for the faint hearted. However, when following the frozen forest trail, we had been warned to watch out for trucks. Timing is everything - at one point I could not keep in the trail near the side of the road and ended up doing 40+ km/hr down the middle of a rutted icy road. skis flailing and madly trying to keep my balance. Fortunately no-one saw this kamikaze episode. But less than 20 mins later a large forest truck and its trailer laden with logs passed within about 20cm of me - actually the clearance was a bit more because I stopped and leaned out of the way. I skied quite a long way on the last stretch with a Frenchman and a German lady. The stretcher sledge went past, but the passenger was only there because she was tired. Her comment earlier had been that she was obviously not skiing well as I was skiing past her.

Anyway, I have obviously got the training about right. I only burned 4663 calories today. However, the training load is through the roof - according to the graph I should not even contemplate any effort for two days, and it is four days before I am in theory OK to start training.

In the training load plot above, you can see how the effort compares to my normal Saturday 18km runs, and the effect of how it builds up.

However, although tired, I do feel well and little in the way of aches and pains.

The path of my 64.9km from close to the Russian border to Kussamon Tropikki.