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.

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?

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.

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.

Weird Weather

Today was one of those weird weather days. I am here in Beitostolen in central Norway. This is January, and for the last few days even at 1000m we have only been a little under 0C.

Today was colder at -4C but for a while it rained. Now for those of us who wear glasses - I have prescription photo-chromics (which darken with UV exposure) because I can't see more than about 10cm without glasses. It is bad enough with snow on them; sleet is worse, and my breath freezing on them going uphill is also problematic, leaving me not able to see clearly. But freezing rain meant that every time I cleared them, I was almost blind again within a few seconds. Add to this, very flat lighting from being in the clouds, and it was very difficult to see where the track was, or even in what vague direction it went.

But not for one guy - there was a blind skier out on the tracks - skiing with a guide giving him instructions as to how the trail played out.

In the last few days I have completed an equipment upgrade - last was the poles. A long while back, an instructor suggested slightly shorter poles. At the time, they worked in giving me a better style, but a number of people, including an instructor this week, suggested I go back to 150cm (from 145cm). A quick test with my old 150s suggested that this makes sense. As all my poles have taking a beating over the years - I calculated that I do about half a million pole plants each time I do the RR, and this will be my fifth RR, and that doesn't count training. The handles on both pairs are showing signs of wear. So I now have a new pair of the latest Swix poles with interchangeable baskets, so you can have smaller ones for solid trails and larger ones for softer snow.

But I think the most unusual feature I discovered was on my new gloves (endorsed/branded by a top skier) - the thumbs have a special soft patch on for taking care of the drips off your nose. Nice to see something that is widely done (don't pretend you have never done it) actually designed in.

Training on snow

Well two days training now done.  The ankle is holding up OK - just have to be a bit careful on herringbone up and ploughing down until the lateral strength returns.

Each year I look at one component in a bit more detail. Last year it was nutrition. This year, prompted by someone asking me about skis, I decided to look into skis a bit more. Until now, I have basically told people what I am using them for and gone with the recommendation. But it occurred to me that when I say I am not a very good skier, but have skied the "Border to Border Ski", then perhaps they are overestimating how good I am.

I have four pairs of skis - two waxless and two waxed. Generally I use waxless in the Alps and waxed in Scandinavia, although I did buy one pair of these in Sweden. There is no doubt that traditional waxed skis prepared by someone who knows what they are doing, and worn by someone who really knows how to ski, will give the ultimate in performance. Until recently, waxless skis did not perform too well in cold conditions, and do not glide well - just listen to the noise they make as you go downhill in the tracks on waxless skis. In my own tests, I have generally found that the waxless ones take about 15% more effort, although they do gain a bit on the kick at the end of a long day compared to waxed skis when the kick wax is wearing off.

So this year, I am trying to optimise my skis. Waxless skis are a bit of a misnomer - if you are doing any significant skiing, you will still want to wax the glide zones with a glide wax. I took a long hard look at my waxless skis and discovered that they are wider than my waxed skis, and that my waxed skis are racing skis. Leaving aside the difference in type, this extra width results in better lateral stability. I also suspect that they "wander" less in the tracks because they are closer to the size of the track. My waxless skis are also "waisted" i.e. they are slightly wider in the front and rear glide zones than in the kick zone in the middle - the technical term is "sidecut" - so the Fischer racing skis are 41-44-44 and the waxless are 48-44-46 (Salomon are 41-44-43-44 and  51-48-46-49); this "waist" is meant to make them easier to turn.

Armed with a bit more understanding of skis, I found myself a ski technician who understood what I was looking for, and the fact that most of the RR event is on softer snow trails set by a snowmobile. We had more or less settled on a performance touring ski - around 48 at the widest, not quite as stiff as a racing ski, when he showed me the latest in waxless ski technology that he had been trying out himself. Last year, on some days, people had generally done well with the latest "zero skis" - a waxless ski designed for conditions around 0C +- a couple of degrees. Waxless technology has been advancing  - there are removable "skins" that you can fit to waxed skis for some conditions. In the hands of an expert skier they are no doubt very good, but I had doubts whether they would stand the abuse of a non-expert skier like myself.

So enter the Atomic redster skintec skis. These have a removable skin panel in the kick zone, and come with two sets - one for warmer temperatures and one for colder temperatures. A little key and a few seconds is all it takes to change them over. Other than that, their geometry is basically that of the racing skis, but I was told they would have better lateral stability. The only drawback is the glide performance would not be quite as good as waxed skis.

So I bought them and took them out for a spin. What a revelation! Kick performance is as good as well waxed skis with the right kick wax on. The kick performance did not alter significantly as I moved from a well machine groomed track into tracks with snow blown into them or onto softer snow in places. Only once in the first few hundred metres did I feel a "snatch" - just as though a ski had suddenly stuck. This happens (at least to me) with waxed skis, but I know that it caught a very experienced friend of mine out on a "zero" ski last year resulting in a broken collar bone. Subsequently I had no more "snatches" - it may just have been as they were acclimatising to the temperature. Skiing a trail I had skied only a few hours earlier, I could not detect much loss of glide performance. In any case, because of my weight, if I am following someone in a track, I often have to shed speed in order to stop running into them.

So on first testing, I may have found the closest I can to the universal perfect ski for me and what I do. There will always be conditions where my other skis will be better, and I will certainly be taking waxed skis to the RR. But there are quite a few sections and conditions where I will be giving these new skis a thorough test.

Both pairs of boots I have with me have the stitching going in the same place on the left foot. So I have some nice new boots - Alfa - a Norwegian specialist company that makes hiking, skiing and expedition boots. Of particular note to anyone who skied the RR in 2014 they remain dry whilst skiing on ice with water on top of it.

One of the good things about a training week is that you can test things out, find out the capabilities and limitations of equipment, break new boots in etc. I also have to remind myself that most of the places I train (usually Norway) the average speed I do is typically less than I will manage on the RR, and that I should not look at the times too critically. 

I now have had another day on these skis in variable snow conditions - wind blown snow into the tracks and then later a warm wet snow falling such that it was hard to see where you are going. I have also had chance to read up on the technology a bit more - the narrower module is for better glide and the wider module for better kick. Testing yesterday on a variety of trails in Beitostolen showed me that compared to waxed skis, with the narrower kick module, there was little loss in glide. But the kick uphill was superb. I have a simple, but crude test - when going uphill in prepared trails, if I can stay in the tracks until they end, then the grip is good. My technique is not so great, so that I would frequently step out earlier, and with non-optimal waxing, on occasions much earlier. Looking at everyone else's tracks I am frequently not alone. Yesterday, there were not even many occasions when I had to resort to herringbone.

I can see why some top skiers are starting to use them for training. They take out a lot of the variability in performance due to waxing, enabling you to see how your own performance compares.

I have also found a suitable backpack for skiing - nice and light and narrow, designed to keep airflow across your back. The downside is that because it is slightly bigger than my belt pack, one is tempted to carry more, so self-discipline is more important - do I really need to carry this 60-90km each day in my pack "just in case"!

No backing out

Today the official confirmation arrived. I have already paid, booked the flights and everything else, so there is no backing out.

This set me thinking why I do it. It is simple - every year I ski the RR, it is another year I can avoid thinking of myself as "old". They say that age is a state of mind. It is also a "state of body" and so anyone who can ski 450km in 7 days is not old, regardless of the age on their papers!

Next week I am training in Norway and I will be looking at skis. This was prompted by someone asking my advice. When I was skiing the RR for the first time, I went into the ski shop in Kuusamo and told them what I was doing, that I was not very good, and they sold me skis. A couple of years later I bought a similar pair in Helsinki. But prompted by the question, I began to wonder a bit more about skis. Am I really skiing on the best skis? So I looked them up and found that both are racing skis for up to intermediate skiers. Thus, they are narrow and parallel. This means they glide well. But also they are probably intended for well (heavy machine) groomed tracks.

This set me thinking. At times, because I am heavy, I feel the tracks sinking below me. Much of the RR is prepared by snowmobile rather than the heavy machines, and is prepare for the first time, compared to being groomed on a regular basis over the winter and thus well compacted. Also, not having much opportunity to train, I do have a bit of a problem with lateral stability with the ankles, especially on the sections with soft snow and, as Jon described it last year, "skiing over a ploughed field".

So when I am in Norway, I am going to look into whether I might do better with a slightly wider ski, with a modest waist - thus spreading my weight better, better lateral stability and a slight amount of flex for turning more easily. The downside may be that they are slightly slower, but I guess there is only one way to find out.

There is always the option of renting a pair as an experiment, to at least confirm the principles of what I am looking for.