Reflections on a long ski trip

Those of you who know me professionally know that I also do "lessons learned", so for the benefit of any other mad cross country skiers, here are some of the lessons I learned.

1. No-wax skis are definitely slower and a lot more effort - probably 20% slower and 20-30% more effort.
2. I need a wider range of waxes (with a bit of luck I'll get some more when I am in Helsinki)
3. I need to learn to wax skis better
4. For some stretches I need to get some poles with bigger baskets. I couldn't get any this time
5. Ski pole length is critical; the traditional way of relating it to height alone is not sufficient - it needs modifying according to leg length.
6. A few lessons from a good coach made a huge difference
7. Although I was fitter and faster, I need to improve my balance and technical ski control for a couple of sections - the first few 20km of the first and last days.
8. I need to improve my nutrition - I find that I just cannot eat enough

The question is how to address some of these?

I can try Nordic walking now I know exactly what I should be doing with my poles. A few people train on roller skis - this strengthens the arm muscles (one guy - Nikola) can double pole uphill with the strength he has gained this way.

With a balance board, and exercises (such as the Tibetans) I can improve my overall flexibility. That leaves me with the lack of training on snow and practice waxing. By 2014, they are supposed to complete an indoor ski centre about 15km from here. Although it is for downhill skiing, if I go at a quiet time I can at least improve balance and control of skis, and test out waxing. Next year I already have a week booked in early February in Norway, so I will at least get some training on snow.

Thanks to the people who sponsored me for Sports Relief.

Tony

Day 7 - the final frontier

Breakfast today was at 6am so some people were up at 5.15am. We were supposed to wait until the trail was laid at 7.30am, but a lot of people had already gone, so being one of the slower ones, I set off at 7am.

The first 20km or so today are probably some of the most technically challenging parts of the whole trip, being a very narrow track winding up and down mostly through the forest. Contrary to popular belief, Finland is not flat, but I do think they try their hardest to emphasise the point by taking you every rise they can find.

The picture here is passing through a clearing, with the sun not long havng come up.

By now, I am so exhausted that balance and leg strength to control skis on fast one metre wide tracks - never by best skiing ability - fail me from time to time and I fall more today than the rest of the week. At another point, I had only just cleared the forest road I was crossing (being slow at it) when a big truck passed behind me.

Alas we had to use a bus shuttle to cross the river. The traffic crosses a dam, which carries traffic in single file alteratively and the railway line also crosses the dam. With the temperature at +3C, and it has been positive during the day, you can see things starting to melt. Even some of the roads are clear - some of the minor roads they had put snow on so that we could cross them without having to take skis off.

The relief when crossing the finish is a mixture of things - not another step further on cross country skis. I got someone to take a picture of me with my Sport Relief T-shirt on, but I was so tired, and someone else was coming along, that I didn't have time to put my skis back on.

Don't forget you can still give to Sport Relief on the right.

I will make one more post in the next day or two to summarise some of the highlights, and things worth noting for anyone else thinking of taking on the longest organised cross country ski trek in the world. Next year will be the 30th anniversary trek, and yes, there are people who have done every single 29 treks so far.

Day 6 - another warm day

Yet another day when the temperature goes above zero. After yesterday's problems with wax in the afternoon, the question was what to do with the strategy today. We had only one point - 19km out of 61km where we met up with the bus. Thus I had a high risk, lower effort, strategy of staying on waxed skis or a lower risk, higher effort strategy of changing to waxless skis at this point.

So I took the lower risk strategy, as our bus guide had not managed to get me a wax to use around zero. But I can honestly say that there is a considerable effort differential. Instead of maintaining say 10km/hr on good waxed skis, waxless manage about 8km/hr. As well as this, they require probably 20-30% more effort to cover the same distance.

Tomorrow we cannot ski all the way, as the rivers are not solid enough ice - since one river crossing is several kilometers, it is quite spectacular, but not one to be undertaken lightly.

Day 5 - Wax is a new swear word.

Managed good progress this morning, keeping up with many of the faster skiers. This includes someone better not identified because they are skiing with a sort of exo-skeleton on one knee because a downhill skiing injury from a couple of months ago is still healing.

However, after the last stop, things started to go wrong. Waxes are very temperamental in the region around freezing point. So I set off using exactly the same wax I had been using only a few minutes earlier, but there was no grip. Then after a couple of kilometers, it changed from no grip to being rooted to the spot. I had the same problem with my next wax. Fresh snow then started falling, which calls for a different was again. After everyone had long since passed me, I ended up stripping all the grip wax and ending up with the only wax I had that did not root me to the spot. However, the downside of this is that it did not give me any grip whatsoever. So I had to struggle along very slowly for a few kilometers until the temperature dropped and my wax started to have a bit of grip.

However, waxing apart, it was a nice day, and where else would you be greeted by someone in a polar bear outfit as you ski into a rest stop!

Day 4 - when I make a big mistake

Let me start by posting the map of the day:

Notice anything odd about the trail - yes, it does go round in a circle at one point. I missed the turn off after the first rest point and ended up doing a nice tour of the Syote National Park (just like one of the managers had suggested we do at the previous evening's briefing). When I got back down to the bottom, found an RR sign and followed it, I ended up back at the first rest stop after a detour of 12km. Except now it was packed up, which meant that I was behind the safety snowmobile that follows behind the last skier. However, the rest stop is also a small cafe, so I decided the safest thing to do was to go inside and call the organiser and explain what had happened and where I was. At least I was at a known point. My phone has much better maps on it than my GPS, and even Nokia's maps, which show pretty much every track in Finland showed nothing for a radius of about 10km or more.

When in doubt, it always pays to do the lowest risk thing - in this case, staying where I could easily be found. After all, as competing cross country skiers, we are not usually wearing enough clothing to keep ourselves warm if we are not moving, not usually anything else much (a mobile phone, a bit of high energy food, a space blanket and a small wind up torch are my emergency kit).

What happened next shows just how well organised things are. A snowmobile was despatched to collect me, with a sledge for my skis. This cheerful Laplander turned up, and took me on to the next rest stop, where the second coach was held back and took me on to the next rest stop, where I was able to rejoin ahead of the safety sledge. This is how I ended up only skiing 67.2km instead of the planned 84km.

The sad thing is that I was actually fit enough to have completed it, but this is a remote part of the world and safety must always come first, and I would never want to risk the safety of other people just because of my mistake.

As for the skis, after the prepared waxing wore out, my own call on waxing seemed to work out, and I managed a very respectable progress.

Cross country skiers can never have enough waxes, and now I understand why.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the volunteers. Well, in some places, the entire family turns out to staff a rest station:

Tomorrow is actually the shortest day, and we already know that the ice is not strong enough to support the track preparation machinery. Today, I had no falls until the last few hundred metres. The last 2km are on a frozen lake; at one point there is an amber "road works" type light to draw attention to weak ice some 50-100 metres away. At other points you could see where water had flowed over the top of the ice and then frozen again. But also we had some fresh snow, and a snow pocket collapsed under my weight (I am probably the heaviest skier) and threw me off balance.

Day 3 - just when you thought things were going well

There was quite a lot of snow overnight and it was noticeably warm this morning. Nice fresh, soft, slow snow - just what my family like for cross country skiing, but no s good when you have to travel a long distance with minimum effort.

So I started on waxed skis and was going well for the first couple of hours. But then, as the temperature rose, I got great clumps of snow sticking to the skis. THink of this as being like going out in wellies into really sticky mud and getting rooted to the spot. At times I was having to clear my skis every few hundred metres.

So after lunch I tried the waxless skis. They went up hills an absolute treat, but very slow gliding, even slower than most people's waxed skis. From comparison tests I have done in previous years between waxed and waxless skis on timed training loops in the same conditions, I have concluded that in god conditions, you can average the same if there is enough uphill, but there is a 10-20% effort premium. And generally I reckon waxless are about 1km/h slower. Which for tomorrow's stint would add an hour and a half and a lot more effort.

As you can see from today's tracks, we don't actually go the straightest way across Finland.

Whether I do the full 86km tomorrow depends very much on conditions. Based on today, I would not be in until after dark. So it will be a question of seeing how it goes.

Day 2

Before I write anything else, I should say how grateful I am to all the volunteers who stand for hours in very cold temperatures to supply us with hot drinks, raisins, chocolate, slices of orange, pickled dill cucumbers (for salt).

It makes a huge difference to skiers like me - at 92kg I am already top weight and if I had to carry a few kilos of hot drinks, it would be debatable if I could do it. It is surprising how much you do drink.

Today I was treated to the Lapland "mirage". The notable thing about a mirage is like the end of the rainbow - it moves away as you travel, so you never get any nearer. My Lapland "mirage" are the three thirty something girls skiing together who never go closer or further away.

Conditions were good today; for the first section, I mantained an average of 10 km/hr even after the first rest stop. However, a stretch or two on icy roads, a strong headwind (which also at times obliterated the tracks), and a 20 min lunch stop reduced this average bit by bit. Finally, I have to say that the trail planner must be some sort of sadist, as the last 5km are designed to go up and down the same hill about half a dozen times in the last 5km.

The good news is that I was about an hour faster on this leg than I was two years ago, and the final average of 8.3km/hr is above my minimum target of 8km/hr, which would see me cover the longest leg in under 11 hours, compared to the 12 hours last time which saw me finishing in the dark - something that really slows you down. The overcast sky today gave a very flat light, which made it impossible at times to see where the track grooves actually went - something that is a little disconcerting when doing 40km/hr downhill.

Currently it is snowing heavily - we expect more than 10cm and it will also be warmer tomorrow - probably starting at about -2C and going to +2C by the afternoon. This is not good for skiing. I am having glide wax put on my waxless skis, as in warm and soft snow condtions, the waxless skis keep a more constant performance than waxed skis. The downside is they don't normally glide as well.

I have gained some raw patches on my right forefinger, but these are manageable. I also skied today in the new boots - the ones I am still breaking in. As a result, I have a nice blister. But this will go down, and the next couple of days I will ski in the older, softer boots.

For Chloe and Bethan - I am skiing close to where Father Christmas lives, so if I see him, I will tell him to remember you at Christmas.

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.

No going back

Well I am now at Ovianki International Center, ready for the briefing and an early start tomorrow when we will head out by coach to the start near the Russian border.

I have seen Alfred - he looks good for someone of 73 who is now doing this trek for the 21st time. I would be ecstatic if I could still do this at 73. But then again, cross country skiing (classic style, not the skating style) is actually a good aetobic workout and if you do it gently, not like my "bull in a china shop" approach, it is fairly low impact on the joints.

I am certainly around the same times, or even slightly faster for certainly less effort, and for that I must thank my coach, Wolfgang. I really did not expect that I would make enough improvements in such a short time. I still have not quite mastered the art of releasing the poles unless I am consciously thinking about it. It is as he says - a block in the mind.

The hotel Sokos were as helpful as ever, letting me have a late checkout, so that I could get a full morning of training in. I also discovered a new way of drying clothes, which I would not want to do in many hotels. The bathroom floor has underfloor heating, so I discovered that after washing things and hanging them for an hour or two, so that they are then just damp, they will then dry more quickly if you spread them out on the bathroom floor. In the Sokos it is, like most of Finland, spotlessly clean. They also make it easy to work from their - the rooms have wired internet in every room, which is more reliable and secure than wireless, and a guest PC near reception with a printer. This saved me big time, as I had to print out a contract and mail it back.

A quick 5km on my new skis - not enough to wear the wax off, but enough to make sure there are no problems with them, before doing my Kuusamo town loop in the opposite direction for a change.

The Kuusamo town loop is a good test - it is 18.2km and undulating, with quite a bit of taking skis off to cross roads. The new training regime is working, because I can actually bend down to release my skis without wishing I was 30 years younger each time. Without trying, today was a few minutes faster again.

On the RR, distance to go is posted occasionally - usually at 20km intervals. So with the distraction, time and effort crossing roads on the Kuusamo town loop, I think of every 20km interval as a Kuusamo town loop, which takes me about 2h 15m. This enables me to focus when covering the long distances - I just think of one circuit at a time. Divide and conquer, or one step at a time. This seems to be the technique used by many successful people at the limits of endurance.

Must go now to wax my skis, before the experts get here and have a good laugh. Stay posted for "Zen and the art of ski waxing". I feel for one of the people on this year's RR as I can guess the joke they will hear from everyone when waxing skis - we have a Brazilian competitor this year.

2 inches makes a big difference

No, this is not what you might think.

The story starts with the fact that I had booked a couple of 2 hour lessons with a coach. This is because it is easy to develop bad habits, and you can't see them yourself. Also, without any means of training on snow in the UK, I don't even get to practice from one year until the next. Last time I did the RR, people told me that I was powering my way along, rather than doing it with minimal effort.

Thus I had set a goal of improving my technique to either get faster with the same effort or keep the same speed with a lot less effort. A fairly ambitious request for a coach in two days.

We started with some warm up stretching, explained for what each exercise does. This highlighted a problem that is true of most people who work at a desk - my upper body is quite rigid and inflexible (but more on that later).

After a few minutes of skiing, Wolfgang (Woki) identified the first problem. At 150cm, he thought my poles were too long. Traditionally poles were related to you height, but the latest thinking is that is not the whole story, and they have also to be related to your leg length. Thus for two people of the same height, the one with shorter legs needs shorter poles. So I skied the rest of the lesson with his 140cm and he recommended that I get some 145cm poles - I was planning on getting new poles anyway.

Two inches may not seem like a lot, and when you see the poles side by side, it looks trivial. However, the difference it makes is truly dramatic. Now, when planting the poles they are in the right place and at the right angle, whereas before because they were too long I was having to plant them too far forward.

I also discovered that you are supposed to only grip the poles when you plant them, and let go after a fraction once you are no longer using them to propel you, so they stream out free behind you, and you only grip them again after you have pulled them forward. This stops the arm muscles being held completely tense all the time.

Here is where we discovered the second problem - I keep my left arm bent. We think it is down to the fact that I am right handed and the right hand is extended more of the time for the mouse (or trackerball). Allied to this, my upper body is more flexible to the right than the left. Again, this probably comes down to the fact that I have a second monitor to the right, and anyone entering my office is to my right. Thus, day to day, I turn to the right much more than I turn to the left.

This will take much longer to fix, through a long term exercise schedule. However, I was planning a redesign of my office, and will now make sure that I try to ensure that I have to turn to both sides equally. Not a side effect I had originally considered from cross country skiing.

As an aside, if any of the girls from Burnham Harriers is reading this, I know many of you are fans of zoomba dance exercise. Apparently, the person in the US who developed this has her roots back in Taivalkoski, just down the road, and our second night's stop across Finland.

It has taken two days to get my new skis prepared, so I will have very little time on them before setting off. I have also extended my range of waxes. The temperatures changed rapidly during even a 2 hour morning session so that after an hour, the wax was no longer gripping.

I have new gloves, and my new poles have a wonderful, brilliantly simple, new feature - a quick release on the grip. Thus instead of having to release the straps and then refit them to the right position round your hand, you simply pull a release knob on the top of the pole and the strap is release from the pole and then it just "plugs" back in. That is a significant time saving in getting a drink, or wiping your nose, and will add up to maybe 10 or 15 minutes over the course of a day.

I think I have broken my new boots in. Two pairs of socks were required until they become more supple, and liberal applications of Lanocaine prevented blisters on the pressure points. Lanocaine is to sports what Teflon is to frying pans.

This time around, I have not been aiming for such large distances in my last minute training, because I know that I can cover the distance, so I limited myself to 30-40km each day. On the Polar training load, even this much takes me from the green to yellow training zones in a day, and into the red after 3 days. My Saturday 16km/90 min run is about equivalent to 40km/5-6 hrs (with stops for adjusting equipment, taking skis off whilst crossing main roads etc).

So will the training regime this time be overdone (like last time), just right, or underdone? Like Goldilocks porridge, I won't know until I have tried it. Does this mean I might need to come back and do it for a third time?

Certainly the time with a coach was time well spent, not least because what I discovered about my posture allows me to make improvements that may help keep me more flexible for longer into old age. And that is pretty much priceless, as you can't reverse the aging process.

Two days to go and then I will know if my efforts have paid off in my attempt to not be right at the back. Last time I was close to being the slowest (it is not a race), but as the snowmobile bringing up the rear with the stretcher and medical supplies normally follows behind the slowest, I don't want to be the one that is keeping it away from everyone else.

Training on snow

As anyone knows, you can't just go into a sporting event without training. Unfortunately, with no snow to train on, this handicaps UK cross country skiers, like me.

So I come out for a few days training on snow before the event starts - three and a half days, to be precise. Today was my first full day of training on snow. Well it was a beautiful sunny day. The trail down to the convoluted training track - one of the illuminated tracks for when the days are short in the depths of winter - has been altered. It used to run across the lake, but this suffered from the snow blowing into the trails. And I suspect with warmer winters, it was getting later and later before the ice was thick enough to support the machinery. Another pointer to this is the fact that this year, as well as 2 years ago, the ice road across the lake is not open. Finland normally has something like an extra few hundred kilometers of road in good winters, where "ice roads" run across frozen lakes as a short cut. The one at Kuusamo cuts a few km off some journeys.

After a bit of rewaxing, I got the wax in tune with the snow conditions, changing to a softer wax for the afternoon. But I did hit one snag. I went out in the new boots in the morning, but for the afternoon, I was going to wear a well broken in, two year old pair. Out I went, but they would not lock into the bindings. Eventually, I took a closer look and realised these were not my boots. The problem is that there are two types of bindings - my skis are all one type, and the others in my family are the other type. I have a variety of boot makes, but the two year old pair are the same make as everyone elses. So I probably have my daughter's boots (yes, she is about the same boot size as me). Fortunately I also brought another older pair, which are a bit softer, and these are the right ones. I don't know how I managed it, as my Fischer boots were with the skis I took to Helsinki and they were definitely the right ones then.

Today started out at -8C and rose to a balmy -2C before dropping back to -4C at sunset. The next two days should be -13 to -14C in the morning rising to -8C in the afternoons, but by the weekend, we are expecting 0C for the afternoons. This is not good news, because cross country skis do not grip on the thin film of water that then appears in the tracks. Waxes are then abandoned at about +1C and klister used - this is squeezed out of a tube like glue, and believe me, it sticks to everything. Those days I might switch to my waxless skis for the afternoon.

I managed a respectable 36.5km today - not trying to push it - just get my balance again on skis and start tuning up the right muscles.

Thanks to a tiny Polar GPS unit strapped to my arm, linked in to my watch, here is where I skied this afternoon:

The bit where I paused was one of the many road crossings - for these I take my skis off unless it is just a very minor road well covered with snow. I am pretty sure crossing a road is how I broke a ski in Austria once - it was only when I fell at a corner and found my ski had totally delaminated that I understood why my skiing had suddenly become bad.

And talking of falls, I got the first fall out of the way nice and early on - the first downhill corner where the track went very sharp right and I went straight on, headfirst into a snowdrift. Not hurt - not even pride because there was no-one around to see me! That is the nice thing about the snow here in northern Finland - it is deep and soft.

Tomorrow I have a lesson for a couple of hours with Woki, to try to go faster on less effort. Only time will tell ....

STOP Press - my skis arrived when I did

Last time, Finnair lost my skis on the way out and on the way back, one on my previous Finnair trip, my bags also arrived a day after I did.

The German teacher sat next to me who was going snowshoeing and camping was not so lucky - his sledge failed to arrive; last year it was damaged and the previous year it also failed to arrive.

So it is not just me with a problem. What is bizarre is that Finnair should be one of the best at dealing with winter sports gear.

I am obviously a terrorist!

Normally I have no trouble going through airports. Occasionally I get stopped for random checks. However, today it started when two automatic check in machines refused to recognise my passport. This should have warned me that today would be one of those days.

Next, at the x-ray machines, I had to empty my entire bag. Or rather someone did it for me, dropping cables and bits all over the place. It will be a miracle if I still have everything.

Two things, so I still believe in coincidences. That is for another 30 seconds. As I left security I was pulled over to empty my pockets, stand in a circle and do the body scanner dance. Raise arms slowly to over head, and then down again and rotate on the spot. Like "Dancing on Ice" in slow motion.

Since on the last trip, Finnair lost my skis both outbound and on the return trip, I took the precaution of photographing my bags in the airport before handing them over.

Leaving on a jet plane ...

...don't know when I'll be back again.

Actually I hope I do, but the lyrics from a well known 60s song somehow seemed like a good title.

This is being written as I head home for just long enough to pick up my bags and skis after a business trip. Eurostar and London Underground as usual do not appreciate that the extra 2-3 minutes they spend being late on their schedule means that I miss a train and have to hang around for another hour (and in this case, pushed me into the peak period so I could either change my ticket or buy a single for £30 less than changing the ticket). In a few hours I will be headed back to London for the flight to Kuusamo via Helsinki.

So the next post will be from Finland when I have started my last minute training.