Only 1 class left. Then the Pizza Party!!

Clothing: I will have clothing with me this Saturday at the video session and each of the next two Tuesdays. Please make arrangements to pick up what you ordered. I will send an e-mail to all who ordered. I have lots of extra hats, a good selection of LS and SS jerseys and a few vests and jackets. Let me know if you want anything.

Video: Video taping this Saturday 10am at Como. Meet inside to warm-up and we'll go out in small groups in order to keep warm. It's going to be very cold and maybe windy, but it's the only time slot we have left. Conditions are at least pretty good. RSVP. Watch e-mails and the web site. We may have to cancel due to cold and wind.

Races: Last weekend's COL events went off great. The Club Champions for skate are Cliffton Hull and Melissa Krumholtz. For classic they are Mary Luoma and Tom Melcher. They will get awards at the Pizza Party. In total 35 people from the club either volunteered of participated. Good work everyone.
The Mora Vasaloppet is this weekend. We're forming carpools to drive to Mora on Sunday morning. If you're interested drop me an e-mail. A little over 2 weeks to The Birke. If you have ever considered coming up to watch check with Jyneen for how best to see your friends and the race in general. You could even do race support for your friends. It's a lot of fun. If anyone needs a place to stay I have room at my cabin 30 miles south of Hayward. Drop me a line

Pizza: The Pizza Party will be Tuesday Feb 19. The pizza is from Davanni's. We'll have a selection of veggie and chicken based pizza's and several of the old standbys. Soft drinks and water will be provided. If you'd like to bring a dessert, salad or any type of dish that would be great, let me know and we'll coordinate. We try to provide a variety of food groups and accommodate the peculiar diets that many athletes have (especially during pre-race weeks), so let me know if you have special requests. Prospective new members, Significant Others and well behaved kids welcome. Pizza will be served at 6:45. Lots of door prizes and awards. Be sure to come even if you haven't attended that many sessions. Get your money's worth in pizza. Please RSVP so we know how much pizza to order.

From Jodi Stammer

I did the 25k Noque (freestyle) last weekend (Jan 26th and 27th) … my first race ever. The snow was excellent and the trail was awesome. My time wasn’t, however! Falling twice in the first 100 or so yards didn’t help. At about the half-way mark, I had to stop to tend to a blister, then another 2k down the trail there was someone who hurt his arm pretty bad on a nasty hill. I stayed with him for awhile … may as well have been patrolling!

Since the course is supposed to be mostly downhill I was a bit worried since I’m not used to going down hills with a lot of other people around. It wasn’t too bad, the course wasn’t very crowded like the Birkie would be (about 1,000 racers total, including both the 51k & 25k). Plus since I was at the back of the pack, the others had snowplowed a nice groove to help me steer.

After the Forestville trailhead there was some pretty soft stuff. That part of the trail hardly gets used, if at all, except for race day. Someone had warned me the night before of the hill that the guy got hurt on and there was another one shortly after that where people were going down like bowling pins. Overall, it was a good mix of some uphills along with the downs and I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of flats as well.

I’d definitely recommend the 8-hour drive to do the Noque (having in-laws that live there helps too).

2008 City of Lakes Loppet Race Report

By Harold Buck

As an athlete, there are few things that feel better than when a year-long, periodized training plan, careful equipment preparation, and a flawlessly executed race-day plan allow one to decimate the competition and earn an age-group win.

This is not that story.

After battling knee tendinitis for much of the late summer and fall, I had lofty training goals for skiing that didn’t come close to being met: most weeks I only got to ski once or twice, and I had two trips to Philadelphia totaling about 3 weeks with no skiing at all. I did, however, get to a lot of Ride and Glide classes, and my technique improved immeasurably. Despite that, in my second season of skating I headed into the City of Lakes Loppet 35k race having never skated more than 10k at once (and that in last year’s COLL tour, with a dismal 1:17 finishing time).

I guessed that blue wax would be about right—it turned out to be fine—and managed to gauge my clothing about right as well: I ended up being a little cold when the wind was in my face and a little warm when it was behind me.

Considering my lack of serious endurance training, I knew I’d need a plan for conserving energy if I was going to make it through in decent shape. The key thought was that slow was better than stopped, so I tried to make sure I didn’t need to stop to rest, except briefly at the aid stations to refuel. This meant avoiding going anaerobic as much as possible.

So, even though my V1 has come a long way, I decided to go with diagonal skate on all but the gentlest hills. That, combined with a lot of field skate on the flats, seemed like my best bet.

I started out at the back of the pack in wave 6 and went right into my diagonal skate. I did a good job conserving energy and not wiping out on the downhills. Eventually, I even started to pass some people, and I stayed true to the goal of only stopping at the aid stations for a long time.

Staying on my feet proved to be too lofty a goal; I hit an icy bump on a downhill and almost held it together before falling, straining my neck, and letting loose an expletive-laced tirade of which I am not proud. Another downhill was shaved off and icy, and when my snowplow failed to keep me at a reasonable speed I intentionally laid myself down in the interest of safety.

Just before the last big downhill (near 394), I saw Jyneen and stopped briefly to chat and chug some of the Gatorade from my bottle carrier. That was my only stop other than at the aid stations. Shortly after, I was on the lakes, where I could get into a consistent aerobic groove as I settled into field skate. There weren’t a lot of people in range at that point, but I passed a lot of people over those last 10k or so.

For some reason, there weren’t a lot of distance signs on the course from about 15k until the 1k mark. I kept a consistent pace to the finish, got my medal, chatted a bit, and looked at my watch, which said 1:40. Since my wave started at 11:55 and I’d killed about 5 minutes, I figured I’d done the race in 2:40, but the website says 2:45. In any case, I beat my pace from last year’s tour (which would have projected out to 4.5 hours!), and I felt like I could have kept going.

As soon as I finished, I ran and picked up my dry clothes bag, got on the bus, drove home, got a quick shower, and went to work finishing my Super Bowl party preparations. The 4 gallons of chili were already done, so I just had to make the 7 pounds of fried chicken wings. I would guess that most of the time when people ski 35k they end up with a net calorie loss for the day, but not this time!

Don't forget to stay well hydrated when you race.

Steve during the City of Lakes Loppet.

mara going downhill during the City of Lakes Loppet.

Kathy Pals, Donna Ernster, and Arvid.
Is this a social club or a race?

We switched the skate instructors around this week. The Intermediate instructors got the beginners and the Advanced instructors got the Intermediates. Most of the advanced skaters did race simulation. It seemed to work well. We'll switch again next week.

The Intermediate Crew got to put the Beginner Group through their paces. We split into 4 groups of only 2 students each. So everyone pretty much got a private lesson. That happens a lot on these last few sessions of the year. The turnout is usually pretty small.

Report from Steve: I took my two students through a basic review. Every instructor stresses different things so I started at the beginning to see how they were doing relative to my approach. I concentrate a lot on V1, especially for beginners so we spent a lot of time going over the basic moves of V1. You can read the V1 article on the web site. It describes what we worked on and has pictures of the positions. I stress proper positions while in V1. If you can get to those positions the technique takes care of itself. We then moved on to the V2 progression drill. Erica and Judy said they couldn't V2 and I assured them they could if they did the drill and sure enough. It's magic. They were, however, better than they admitted to begin with, so I can't take all the credit. Come out next week for another chance to get a different point of view on your technique.

Report from John: Our group was the last group off the snow. We skied without poles doing some timing and balance drills. One of which made the instructor look very stupid. We worked to try and develop V1 on both sides with mixed success and also a variation on the herringbone (birkie shuffle). It was great to have a small group and good conditions.

Report from Tom:We went over quite a few things, many of which have been detailed in previous newsletters.

They included:

-Skating without poles using a fall-skate rhythm.

-Teeter-totter skating with a relatively straight leg to emphasize weight tranfer.

-Marathon skating w/o poles to get proper ski pressuring during the skate push.

-1-2-3 V1 rhythm, pretending to skooch a refrigerator at the 1 count.

-Double poling with a snappy rhythm so that poles don't linger behind us (for V2 preparation).

-Double poling with most of the weight on one ski and then the other (for V2 preparation).

-Using the pole-skate, pole-skate rhythm in V2, getting the body high over the ski in the glide phase.

-Using opposite hand, opposite ski timing in the gliding herringbone (V1-alternate). The ski pole and the opposite ski hit the snow at the same time in this rhythm, rather abruptly. Keeping a gunslinger position is important. Some rotation may occur since we're getting fairly little glide when using this (steep hill and/or slow snow) and basically stepping up the hill. This is also useful when climbing icy hills where edge grip is a problem.

-Using the launch...pole-skate, launch...pole-skate rhythm in field skate (V2-alternate).

I found that the people in my group were eager to learn and asked good questions....a good evening.

Report from Ken: Jyneen, Arvid and I had a small group of classical skiers this week, so people got a lot of individual attention. We started the evening in one group, going over basics and fine-tuning skills. The group was all skiing well, and we soon took off for a tour of the Como course.

The tracks were shallow, and washed out in many places, but the icy grooves under the new snow remained, and you could generally get your skis to follow the tracks. We worked on uphill technique - faster cadence to accommodate the loss of glide and aggressive kick, to avoid slipping. As the hill gets steeper, the technique evolves into what is almost bounding, and as it gets steeper still and kick is no longer possible, you modify that to herringbone. As you crest a hill, you can aggressively begin to milk some glide out of your stride again, and pick up momentum as the terrain begins to flatten.

On shallow uphills, we worked on kick-double pole technique. For this technique, you kick up onto one ski as your poles come forward, and bring the skis together as you pole through. I've yet to find a good way to describe this without visual aids, but it's similar to skating in some ways, only with no push off the edge of the ski.

I noticed that our students last night were striding well. However, as a reminder, it's important to get your hip over the ski you're gliding on. This keeps the ski flat, keeps you in balance, and sets you up for your kick. There are a few ways to think about how this works. One way to think about it is that you're rotating your hips around to the side you're gliding on.

Things were better than I expected for the classical group at Como last night, but I look forward to getting everyone into the great tracks at Elm Creek next week.

Report from Jyneen: The 4 or 5 classic skiers went out with the 3 instructors (Ken, Arvid and Jyneen), so there was ample opportunity for personal coaching. And I think it was beneficial, with several folks experiencing "ah ha!" moments - that sudden awareness of what we meant when we've said "arm-follow-through" or "forward lean". Conditions weren't all that bad, either. I mean, we've skied in worse conditions earlier this season. Shallow tracks had been set in the loose snow on top of the ice, but the grip was quite good in the new snow on top of the ungroomed crust. So after some basic review and nit-picking, we headed out to ski the Lexington Ave hills area. I got worn out chasing the group, which is why I always look for short-cuts. By 8pm, the group was down to half size, due to weariness from Sunday's race or other workouts.

It was a fun night for the race simulation group. We started off simulating mass starts which are generally a 50+ meter double pole before you can start to skate. We discussed strategy on where to line up as well. If you are a hot-shot and think you can actually win, go ahead and line up in the front, but if you know there are many faster skiers in your wave, line up in the middle or back. This is especially true in marathon distance races where lining up towards the front could force you to go faster than your body wants to early in the race resulting in a bonk later on. A few seconds saved at the beginning of a race can cost minutes later on.

After working on starts we practiced drafting/pace lining drills. If you can catch a draft from another skier it can make a huge difference in your overall performance, however, if you are in a group, you eventually need to take your turn pace lining. Not much different than the same thing in bike racing so we won't go into a lot of detail here.

We also worked on skiing fast in a pack into a hill and moderating speed so you don't slam into the skiers ahead of you that are already climbing and going around downhill corners in a pack. All of these are good skills to have in the more crowded races.

We closed out the night with a relay race won when the unnamed (protecting the guilty) anchor leg of one team face planted on his return route.