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.