Last minute training - part 2

Well sometimes the results defy all logic. Having done 7 laps of a pretty much flat 7.35km circuit round the lake yesterday, today I did more, but with variations on skis. This is the training circuit I have been using in Kuusamo - starting and finishing behind the Sokos hotel.

I expected to find that waxed skis were faster. This is NOT what happened. I had to exclude the first lap, as the tracks had not been recently prepared and it was fresh snow. So the effort was higher and the time longer, as would be expected.

To cut down on the number of tests, I am comparing skis that have not had glide wax ironed on for quite a while - so the glide on both waxed and waxless (skintecs) is typical more of what it is at the end of a long day's skiing. It also takes another variable out of the equation.

For the second lap, I put the full width skintec module in for the first time - this should give more grip but glide less well. It pretty much matched the second lap of yesterday on every measurement - not what would be expected unless today's conditions are faster; the temperature is the same +1C rising to +2C.

For the third lap, waxed skis - my Salomons - with a red wax. Definitely not as good a grip, but when repeated later, with the grip wax redone, the grip was pretty good, going up the same short inclines much as the waxless did. This lap was slower and more effort.

Lap 4, after lunch, back on the skintecs - heart rate and effort higher - very much as yesterday's lap 4 - so it is consistent (and demonstrates why you don't ski on a big meal).

Lap 5 - back on the waxed Salomons, and the slowest lap of the two days. The waxing was good, at least to start, but towards the end of 7km, it felt like it had been abraded off.

And the conclusions are:

1. In tricky conditions, the skintecs move from fresh snow to ice to corn snow without any problems. On the other hand, with the waxed skis, the waxing that was good for the tracks was not so good when stepping out into fresh snow and sticking if you came to a stop. For a skier with poor balance like me, this is definitely a plus point for the skintecs.
2. On the very slight downhills, the waxed skis did glide slightly better and I was just able to double pole for a bit longer. And although they seemed to glide better, the GPS and effort measurements suggest that at least for me and this set of tests, this was an illusion.
3. So why are the skintecs better? They should not be! Well the guy who sold me them (in Norway) said they didn't lose much on the glide. And his workshop had a stack of calibrated skis that he and a colleague use for glide wax testing, so although he didn't give me a figure, his "not much" is maybe something I can't measure. It could well be that I am gaining more from a better kick than I am losing on the glide.
4. At the end of the day, someone told me that today's conditions were tricky, so it might just be that round that particular circuit, the changing conditions are such that I am gaining from the wide operating range of the skintecs, compared to it not being possible to optimise waxed skis (at least not when I am waxing them) for a varying set of conditions.

All very interesting. I still find it hard to believe the results, but there they are. The reason this is all so critical to me is that I have only just got the strength/endurance to complete 60-90km per day, and any extra effort required may be just that bit too much.

As can be seen in the above diagram of a week's training, you don't have time to recover from each day's exertion before you start on the next, and most of the above was skiing much shorter distances in Norway, although it did include a lot more climbing - as much most days as for the whole RR. My fitness levels have improved, as a 50% greater training load did not push me up as far into the red. The image above is not cropped - literally I end up going off the top of the scale.