This Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was on my office door for years as a partial explanation for why I hadn’t retired yet.
However, the key to enjoying your hobby (for me, definitely cross country skiing from November through April), is adapting to whatever Mother Nature dishes out to us. During the past 19 years, the SCUM have met Sundays (regardless of temperature) once there is sufficient snow on the ground to ski, and last January it was -37 deg F at Birch Hill for one of our Sunday training sessions.That workout was documented on this blog then.
January 2014 was quite the contrast as summarized by the National Weather Service today:
In addition, because of the strong temperature inversions, temperatures remained well above freezing at higher elevations (like Birch Hill) even after airport temperatures had dropped below freezing. This has made for very hard, icy trails that can result in painful bruises, rashes, concussions, and broken bones if one makes a careless mistake
that can sideline skiing for an extended period of time (depending upon severity of injury).
As skiers, we need to be increasing our training volume with the Sonot Kkaazoot just 8 weeks away. So what is a skier to do, when hours of skate skiing on uneven icy trails overload our cerebral neurons and all those secondary stabilizers within our legs?
Relax, and enjoy a classical ski with klister for kick instead of hard wax. I admit, I usually skate when it’s too warm for blue hard wax, but today having rock solid tracks to direct my skis meant that I could concentrate on my knee and ankle bend or that my elbows were positioned out to the side when I doublepoled. Suddenly, the pointers that Pete Leonard had given us during this week’s FXC Masters skate ski sessions were easier to address without the fear of falling. Not only that, I enjoyed looking at the wonderful environment I was out in. Sure, klister is messy to deal with, but a little citrus cleaner (from your bike gear) will remove it from places it isn’t supposed to be. And a garbage bag around the kick zone area of your skis that have been secured at tips and tails will prevent the klister from getting inside your ski bag or the back of your car.
Try it! I’m sure you’ll enjoy your next skate session (or work for that matter) more. A little (or a lot) of change is good for all of us.
Six Fairbanks-based cross country skiers are in Austria competing in the 2014 Cross Country Masters Cup. These skiers include (in alphabetical order): Bad Bob Baker, Sonot Kkaazoot founder and longtime director; Dave Edic; Owen Hanley; Bruce Jamieson, co-President of the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks (http://www.nscfairbanks.org/); Ken Leary, the only guy to finish all 26 of the Sonot Kkaazoot (long course), and the organizer of the Wednesday Night Race Series (http://www.wnrace.com/Home_Page.html); and Chris Puchner. All these skiers, in addition to being amazing local racers, have contributed countless hours toward improving the nordic ski opportunities in Fairbanks.
Here’s the link to World Masters Cup race results with first event scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday, 24 January 2014):
http://mwc2014.com/en/pillerseetal-masters-world-cup/home
Have fun, and ski fast!
Although temperatures in town this morning were well below -30 deg F, the sun was out, skies were bluebird blue, and the temperature in the Birch Hill stadium was -16 to -18 deg F, depending on which thermometer you cared to believe. With days getting longer and the Sonot Kkaazoot just 11 weeks away, it definitely was a day to enjoy the enhanced sunlight of the South Side Classic Loops. However, to warm up, we skied the Relay and Tower Loops before heading down the White Cub and White Bear to SCUM corner where we assembled for a group photo before crossing Beacon Road over to Fort Wainwright.
Descending down the Sonot Connector, we skied past the Blackhawk Loop to the Chinook Loop that has bright southern exposure that warms a clear, chilly day.
Here Robert and Sam stop briefly to help the Sonot blogger demonstrate ski conditions.
We definitely saw more moose prints than skier face plants and had both trails entirely to ourselves. With blood and enthusiasm flowing even in distant appendages, we skied the Blackhawk and then headed back up the Sonot Connector:
The overachieving SCUM went ahead and did the other White Bear Classical Trails, but the group gradually found their way back to the warming hut for coffee and conversation while cars and bodies warmed up again.
Although Christmas is predicted to be somewhat chilly in the Fairbanks area, we hope that you will still find time to enjoy the holidays skiing with family and friends. Remember that the Ski Your Age event is happening this Saturday, 28 December starting at 10 a.m. at the Birch Hill Recreation Area.
Everyone has previous “work” experiences that fail to show up in professional resumes or curriculum vitae. In the spirit of the holiday, the Sonot organizers (aka the SCUM) share memories of their brief tenure as “tiny reindeer” for the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks (NSCF) Candy Cane event. After several young skiers were heard telling their parents that we “weren’t real reindeer,” the SCUM were forced back into reindeer retirement. Here’s why (photos by Dermot Cole and Mom):
However, here’s hoping that Santa with real reindeer visits your homes tonight, and that you have an opportunity to enjoy this really special time of the year outdoors.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20131220/winter-daylight-lights-landscape-setting-sun
Merry Christmas (and happy birthday to NSCF co-President Pat Reinhard)!
In the Fairbanks area, equinox is a time of rapid transition from light to dark and back again. It is also the time for our two marathon events, the Equinox Marathon (Ultramarathon, and Relay) held on the Saturday nearest the autumnal equinox, and the Sonot Kkaazoot held during the vernal equinox period. With the 51th Equinox Marathon successfully contested a little over a week ago, it’s time to start preparing for the 27th Sonot Kkaazoot.
For the first post for the 2014 Sonot Kkaazoot season, I wanted to focus not on the skiers who participate in the Sonot, but on the various race volunteers that make the event possible.
Because the Sonot Kkaazoot starts on the Chena River and then traverses on trails groomed just for this event, there are road crossings that needed to be staffed with volunteers who shovel snow over the road as cars pass by:
and direct cars and skiers at three different locations:
Not only do cars present risks to Sonot skiers, at the Fort Wainwright ski hill, the racers need to be directed away from alpine skiers, snowboarders, and those on tubes:
And someone has to organize all these people (and supply them with nifty visible vests) and Sam Lamont did that task (and took all the photographs in this post):
Feed stations were staffed by local high school ski teams and their parents except for the finish line that Bob Wilkinson staffed in addition to his efforts organizing the feed stations and the cleaning up the jugs after the event:
Organizing the start/finish area and providing commentary throughout the day was Kent Karns:
Dan Baker took on setting up the course and sweeping it after the race:
In between he took a lot of race photographs that should soon be available on his photography website:
http://www.retrospectionimage.com/
Timers for the Sonot Kkaazoot are on the Chena River from the first start to the last finish. Here are the two intrepid members of the timing crew still at work when the last racer finished:
And then finally, there’s Bad Bob Baker, who worked with the 2013 Sonot organizers way more than he planned to make sure that the Sonot Kkaazoot continued beyond his tenure as race organizer:
I hope that you’ll consider joining these volunteers for the 27th Sonot Kkaazoot on Saturday, 29 March 2014. Leave a comment and we’ll contact you.
With 208 days of groomed trails at Birch Hill this season, we had a Mother’s Day farewell to this year’s extended Nordic skiing season. Some of us selected the snowy sections, while others sought a real transition to summer adventures. However, we all concluded that the Sunday ski was a fun way to end a record-setting winter in Fairbanks, AK.
Groomer Bill Husby on the N40 trail on Mother’s Day, 2013
Dermot Cole at Sonot cutoff on Mother’s Day, 2013
Your ski bottoms will not be scratched during the Sonot Kkaazoot while gliding over a barren stretch of ice and rocks under the Steese bridge thanks to Bill (Poles) Husby and his work party tonight. His report (with a couple of editorial comments):
“Seven SCUM with an average age of 63 and one red-headed Irishman shoveled snow under the Steese bridge this evening. It looked like someone had already dumped a few loads before our arrival. When you ski gracefully under the bridge thank Carl, Bob M, Eric, Terry, Frank, Andy, Donovan,myself and Dave B(the anonymous person(s)). Volunteer trail work this week totaled 16 person hours of snow hauling and 2 1/2 hours of brush cutting.
We’re scheduled to groom the river in the morning. I’ll send a message ASAP if more trail work is necessary.” (Update Wednesday: no further shoveling or brushing needed).
“Start slow and go, go, go; start fast, and you won’t last”—advice from a wilderness adventure friend of Mike Ruckhaus
With the Sonot Kkaazoot just 40 days away, today’s unseasonably warm temperatures combined with having all the Birch Hill trails groomed within the past 48 hours made for absolutely awesome conditions for doing the “grand tour” of all the Birch Hill Recreation Area trails. This workout is a great pacing exercise as well as a dry run for nutrition and clothing needs for an extended ski effort. Completing the “grand tour” of 26 km or the “mini-tour” of 16 km for skiers training for the 40 km Sonot is a fantastic confidence builder as well as an important element of one’s pre-Sonot training plan.
The black loops are the most demanding trails at Birch Hill and for good reason. They are technically the most difficult loops with short steep climbs, long continuous climbs, and technically challenging downhills. They are north facing and drop to the lowest regions of the park so are generally the coldest trails and are less frequently groomed than the more utilized lighted loops and White Bear trails. Also, unlike the Tour of Anchorage, where the challenging Spencer Loops are encountered at the very beginning of that 50 km race, in the Sonot Kkaazoot, a skier is in the midst of the Black Hole when the 25 km mark is passed.
To most effectively train for the Sonot, the “grand tour” should be skied in the order that trails are encountered in the Sonot. So today we skied the White Bear Access, White Bear, Moilanen Meadows, and Warm-up Loops that all 40 and 50 km Sonot participants ski, before skiing the Competition, North 40, Black Hole, Blue, and Outhouse loops that the 40 km skiers will by-pass (these loops according to my GPS total 9.91 km). Finishing off the tour involved skiing the Tower and Roller Coaster loops and around the main building to where we had started 3 hours and 23 minutes previously. The others had finished over an hour before the slowest of us, but two pieces of Eric Buetow’s birthday cake were awaiting our finish.
Thanks to my gizmo (as one SCUM called it), I had more than just a good feeling after this workout but also data to download. With an overall average heart rate of only 129 (79% of my max), I know that I can ski faster without “blowing up.” The 9.91 km that the 40 km skiers will not ski took us 1:25:47, which works out to a pace of 8:40 min/km. By comparison, we skied the 11.05 km from the Sonot cutoff on the White Bear to Moilanen Meadows, the rest of White Bear and White Bear Access, and the Warm-up at a 7:42 pace, and we finished the Tower and Roller Coasters at a 6:39 pace when we could see the finish line. Heading for the warm-up hut for dry clothes and birthday cake, we started replacing the 1882 kcal that we’d burned while skiing the “grand tour.”
With just two months until the start of the Sonot Kkaazoot, it is definitely time to start increasing both the intensity and duration of your ski workouts. This can be a challenging time of the year because the Birch Hill venue will be busy with Besh Cups, high school regional races, Town Races, and Junior Nationals between now and the start gun of the Sonot Kkaazoot. It may take a little more creativity and flexibility to squeeze in those longer and more intense workouts when the weather doesn’t cooperate. However, just because it is -37 deg F at Birch Hill on Sunday when you normally do your long overdistance workout doesn’t mean you have to resort to the couch like one of our AWOL SCUM:
Layers of clothing may render a skier less fashionable than lycra speedsuits, but who is going to recognize you on the trail under these conditions?
We have ample snow so get out and enjoy it. No excuses. On Sunday, these skiers had the Birch Hill trails virtually to themselves (only Bad Bob Baker lapped them twice). One of the skiers above has had 11 orthopedic surgeries and was still out there. Another of the frosty guys above had major back surgery last winter. Another skier owns a bar where late weekend nights are the norm–hardly, the occupation that would be conducive to getting up on Sunday mornings to ski several hours–yet he does. Why? Because all these skiers feel so much better skiing than not. Besides, the Sonot is only 8 weeks away. These aren’t young pups as all but one of the skiers in the bottom photograph is over 60 years old.
See you on the trails.
Photo from lower 48 courtesy of Carl (aka Thumper) Hemming, Birch Hill photos by Bill (Poles) Husby.
Sonot Kkaazoot 