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 ....