Saturday 28 February 2015

En route

3am coach to Heathrow, uneventful, but surprisingly full - only a handful of spare seats.

Arrived Helsinki for a few hours before the connecting flight to Kuusamo. Only a hint of snow in the edges of the fields coming in, and nothing at the airport. There are usually remnants of where the snow has been ploughed, but not today. This means it has been above zero - at least on and off - for some time.

The weather forecast for the RR route several days out is still fluctuating quite a bit, but it is clear that there is some warm air around both this week and during the event.

Just saw an airline I had not previously heard of - Corendon - so Googled it. Interesting, as it does not list flights to Helsinki, which makes you wonder what it is doing here.Hanging around airports has been much less tedious since my bank upgraded its lounge access as part of my banking package to Priority Pass. Before you only got free lounge access if you booked your flight through them.

Still, hanging around the airport is a good time to review what I want to get out of my last few days training. The first objective is to determine how the skintec skis compare on the test track I use in Kuusamo (Tolpanniemen valolatu). By using the heart monitor and GPS, I can measure the effort used for a lap. To be representative of real use, I need to do a set of comparisons


  1. Skintec (waxless) with professionally applied glide wax
  2. Skintec (waxless) with well worn glide wax
  3. Waxed with professionally applied glide and kick wax
  4. Waxed with worn glide wax, but kick wax reapplied

(3) should give the best performance and (2) the worst performance. The interesting comparisons will be (1) and (3) which give the starting point for a day's skiing and (2) and (4) which are indicative of the latter part of a day's skiing.

I will try to aim to ski at approximately the same speed, and do the circuit in roughly the same time. Observations on how well the skis grip uphill will be partly subjective and partly from analysing the data afterwards (bit like in F1 racing).

Comparing effort is quite difficult - my normal Saturday 16km run takes about 93 minutes when I am at full normal fitness. But if I push on, and reduce it to 90 mins - a 3% improvement, it takes 30% more effort (according to the Polar training load). You very quickly get into the realms of diminishing returns. For skiing 60-90km a day, finding the right pace becomes important.

The Tolpanniemen training loop has very varied terrain packed into a short track - up and down, so in later analysis, I will be able to compare the terminal glide velocity on some of the hills - both steep and gentle - to compare the glide performance of the skis. I will also look at how they compare on the flat run to/from the training track, as this is typical of a lot more of the RR in practice.

Armed with these results, and the weather forecast each day, I can determine strategy on a daily basis. If the difference is significant, then waxed skis may be the better choice on colder days when the temperature is stable e.g. mornings and the skintecs in the afternoon, when the temperature is warmer and conditions are fluctuating more. Somewhere around the upper end of the blue kick wax range is probably the dividing point where the more reliable grip of the waxless starts to outweigh the reduced glide performance. The time lost messing around in some conditions trying to get a kick wax to work should not be underestimated. Stop for 6 minutes, and you lose a kilometre! One year, on that day's last section, I lost a good half hour or more. I had three kick waxes covering the range, but whatever I tried, I either had no grip, or was stuck to the spot. Hopefully I am now better at waxing, but there are always conditions where you just don't seem to be able to get it right.

Friday 27 February 2015

On my way in the morning

Doing the last minute packing. How many pairs of skis should I take? This is a bit easier to answer now - stick with 3 because the Skintecs have most of the advantages of waxed skis with few of the disadvantages of waxless skis i.e. they don't lose much on the glide. But I still don't know how they perform in the really cold temperatures we get e.g. -30C.

At the moment, the long term forecast on www.yr.no for the next 10 days takes me to half way through the RR. It shows a high of +1C for my last two training days in Kuusamo, 0C for the first day of the RR. 0C for the second day (Taivalkoski). -2C for day 3 (Iso Syote) - but this may be at the top of the hill and 0C for day 4 (Ranua).

Of course, there is plenty of time for it to change - a couple of days ago, the forecast showed it dropping to -11C for the end of next week.

The outlook isn't improved by the news item (only available in Norwegian, but thanks to online translation you can get the essence of it) - "This is God-awful things. Mild weather and halke lead goes on the mood loose for the skiglade TV metereologist John Smits. Now he fears plus the degrees for many weeks to come."

Basically, it is looking more and more like last year's weather. Still, I am better prepared - new ski boots with an outer waterproof skin so that my feet don't get wet skiing through water on top of the ice. These are Norwegian boots designed by a specialist company, and design is now taking into account the conditions we face more frequently.

I suppose the next ski evolution should be "hover skis" - they would have fantastic glide; maybe when you weight the ski to get grip, spikes automatically extend into the snow (goodbye klister). These would work with tracks with water in them, and more importantly (for me) I could train without snow. Alas, the theory is good, but the practicality of carrying the energy to produce the air cushion is not. But maybe in 450km of skiing, there may be an eureka moment; who knows?

Wednesday 25 February 2015

One week to the start

.. but I am off for my usual few days training in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Today did some last minute shopping and came across some short strap on "crampons" for boots. Very handy for the stretches of the RR where we occasionally have it very icy - usually a logging track.

The long term forecast on www.yr.no goes 10 days ahead, and I have been tracking it for a while now. Kuusamo has been above or around 0C on several occasions in the last few days, and at present will get to 0C or even +1C on several days up to the start of the RR. The first afternoon of the RR is a forecast of 0C and snow, but then temperatures look like they drop quite quickly.

So it looks like my skintec skis will certainly come into their own for the last training sessions and the first couple of days. These have a waxless replaceable grip module with Mohair grip zones.

They claim that they "provide the feel of a perfectly waxed ski, but without the need for waxing" - quite a benefit if you have seen how good I am at waxing in conditions around zero.

Sunday 1 February 2015

Training week is over

The ankle held up although I did think after a couple of days I might need replacement knees. However, after a couple more days, the muscles have strengthened and fitness is improving.

Equipment has been sorted and updated. Technique has been "refreshed" and hopefully improved a bit.

I have one problem to solve still - how to stop my glasses fogging and freezing up.

Less than 4 weeks and I will be in Finland for final preparations, but at least I feel that provided I can maintain and improve fitness over the next few weeks, I should be OK. According to Polar Trainer - the app that takes my exercise using the heart rate and GPS data, I am now off the top of the red scale and should not be training for a day or two. Only improved fitness will enable me to do more without pushing up into the red all the time.