Waxing Lyrical

Well my skis did get here this time - one shouldn't really get a kick out of what should be normal happening.

With a temperature of only -2.5C this morning, we are getting into the area where waxing gets tricky, and waxes only cover a very small temperature range. Probably the most widely used wax is blue - for -3C down to -10C; brown is -6C to -15C and green special is -10C to -30C. Different manufacturers have variations - Swix Red is +3C to 0C whereas Holmenkoll Red is +2 to -1C. Today I went for the Swix V50 Violet, which is 0C to -1/3C (you get different temperatures according to whether it is new snow or old snow).

Whatever. It worked a treat. The tracks were icy - circumstances where waxless skis don't do too well because the pattern doesn't imprint on ice like it does on snow. And icy tracks can be fast - they certainly were today.

So a quick and effortless 17km this morning put a smile on my face. After lunch, the temperature was just above zero, but the Violet wax still managed to work reasonably well. It seems to take a few minutes of being in contact with the snow before the wax gets down to its working temperature, so after putting on grip wax, it might not grip much for the first few minutes - patience is required

I was reading last night about the theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Studies show that this is about the amount of playing time a musician has put in by the time they become really good. The theory is that talent doesn't exist as such and it is just practice, practice, practice. One guy is so convinced by the theory that he gave up his job to take up golf professionally. So far he is 5,000 hours into practicing, so he is half way there.

So I was thinking about this. I ski about 100 hours per year, and I because I was not so serious, I had probably only clocked up something like 300 hours before my first RR, and for the last 4 years I maybe get about 100 hours per year. So I have done about 700 hours, and if I keep up at 100 hours per year, I will finally be an expert by the time I am 153.This, dear readers, proves that I will never be an expert skier.

Skiing round Kuusamo, I observed that there didn't seem to be as much snow as normal. I asked a local skier and she told me that there was over 80cm in her yard at the beginning of the week, buy two days last week at +5C had melted a half metre of it. In the picture you can see the grass around the base of the tree - I have never see this before in Kuusamo at this time of year.

In the afternoon, the Kuusamo town loop added another 18km to the days tally, bringing it up to a respectable 35km for the first day.

Healthwise - as a preventative measure, I used my running support socks inside my running socks to help protect the leg muscles. Seems to have worked.