XC Ski Season 2017 - And Goals for 2018!

Here we are again! Another short season, helped out a little with a dump in late november which gave us some fun for a week or so back then.

Summary of the Winter 2016-17 then:

Conditions:

 Variable, with shallow bases making the whole set up a little firmer than last winter's dump. Ideal test for using skintec 'furry' skis which performed well on almost every day, from new snow, wet easter snow to hard snow.

Fitness: 

I found that I respond much better to going out several days in a row rather than every other day. I could literally feel the tone and condition in my muscles coming on over the course of the first three days I got out at the beginning of February.

For me personally this is a bit of a break through in training philosophy, because before I used to do a hard hour sweat sess', rest day, long easy session day, rest day and avoid going every day.

Double poling and double pole with single kick have been techniques I have worked a little upon, especially the latter, and had pretty good response.

Due to the shallow snow I found that I was getting much better efficiency for all the techniques, with some days when the skin was giving ideal kick-glide pay off, being as if my skis were electrically assisted.

I have varied my training with up to three hour, steady sessions but always with some pushing of my envelope. No sessions have been less than an hour, and I have tried to peak in the shorter sessions after a careful warm up, and attempt a warm down.

My back as usual has been crampy the first few times out, especially with a bum-bag, so I will need to do more pilates and find a new, specific exercise for the classic langrenn stance.

Technique: 

This winter (in the spell in November too) I have been concentrating solely on classic style. This is because I wanted to really test out my new Atomic Skintecs to see if they were the allround training ski I was looking for ( I got them for a bargain 600 kr in VGC!!). They have proven to be as good as the conditions!

The hard 'spenn' ie stiff pre-tension, of the Skintec I have with carbon section in the walls, is challenging for me but I have concentrated a lot on getting the style of pressing with the whole sole of the foot as the hip swings under the body weight. In soft conditions I have had to use a more 'bull pawing' technique with the ball of the foot so as to get the ski in and down to attain grip and this is quite tiring.

Also I have been trying to get the swing forward to work such that the ski lands more parallel and does not clap down. I have exagerrated this a bit and also tried to find glide and fit tempo to glide, with great success. Before I was trying to stick to a tempo and perhaps miss glide opportunities.

This year I failed to concentrate more on balance and manoevrability which lead to me losing my bottle on what may be the last day of the season. As mentioned, skate skiing should be part of my first few hours out of a season to get back that sense of balance and confidence to power off and step turn on one ski.

Double pole with kick has beena  technique I found difficult and I felt outright clumsy using it. Now though I have been able to improve my timing/coordination and sneak the ski forward before kicking and it all seemed a lot more natural this year, with very surprising improvments in speed over 'slack' sections where poling alone is slow and diagonal a little too 'glidey'. This year the shallower snow has no doubt helped my improvement in this technique because I found last year that it was sucking me of energy for little actual propulsion on my newly aquired, stiffer skis. I was either not getting kick or having to dig and brake a little in finding it last season.

If anything this year I am most pleased then, with my improvement in Double Pole with single kick, because it should be an efficient technique in 'keeping the wheel turning'. I found I had really amazing return on investment so to speak when using this, with the profit in speed and maintaining momentum vastly outweighing the input of energy and concentration.

Having said all this I do now see that the racing brigade in the club and especially the sixty somethings, have much better efficiency than me. They are at least 40kg light than me though, and forty years more experienced than me, so I win on moral handicap. I see that my fitness only needs to come on about say 20% to enjoy training runs with the better folk in club, while my technique for the day's conditions needs a bit more work perhaps. If I am serious about trying to keep up with the better guys in their easy to medium sessions, then I had better get a softer pair of skis for softer conditions.

Skis: 

I have been soley using my Atomic Skintec, and found them to be excellent if conditions are not fully 'polished' hard, concrete like, or on the other end of the scale very soft. New snow with a lot of air (kramsnø) presents a problem which may mean I revert to my broader tour skis on such days which float my weight much better.

I havent used my skate skis at all this year for various reasons, having only combi boots and classic poles holding me back a little, but more that there has been gravel or soft conditions in the mid sections of the runs, and the best place for beginners like me in this art, was only opened last week and will be closed later today when the rain sets in unfortunately.

This is a real shame because I am moving job to Østfold where they often have very little snow in winter, and I would like to get into roller skiing in skate style as a form of out of season training. Also as I noted yesterday on what may be my last outing, my balance on hard, rilled suurfaces was really poor so a few sessions out plodding around on skate skis would have helped once again!

I recommend that anyone interested in taking up the sport or doing back country tours, learns first to skate on skis because it will improve you balance and general manoevrability enormously over just sticking to the tram lines and sliding your skis as most new beginners do.

Goals for 2018

Well I suspect I need a big goal, and that would be today's run in fact, the Telemark Helten (Hero of Telemark) in Rauland. This is a 42km race with varied height but is not as extreme as Birk'en and for me a lot more manageable logistics from home.

This will mean training sessions of up to 4 hours, or two three hour sessions in a day, which will mean using winter holiday to get the miles in to the legs while enjpoying varied scenery and good conditions up in the mountains rather than purely relying on the now variable and poor lowland conditions we seem to be getting in south Norway now.

I aim to start the season on skate skis, or perhaps try Skikes or roller skis in the summer even. THis summer I will concentrate on cycling with a comnbination of steady sessions, hill climbing and sprinty interval sessions. I also intend to do some elg hoofing in the autumn up in woodlands, once the salt gets put on the roads. I find my brisk walking helped this year because I pushed it to over 10km once or twice a week, and kept up a good series spurned on by borrowing a neighbours dog. But it isn't quite intense enough. I should be able to join a gymn and work on treadmills and weights, plus pilates.

Over the summer I have to loose some weight !

Equipment next year

I have stretched my combi boots out this year too, despite them being a little worn in places. Jens Stoltenberg has a pair! They help a bit with ankle control on longer down hills and if you of course want to skate a bit, which you can usually do very well on skin skis btw. The boots have a mediocre lining which has given way around my spurred heels, and are patched over with spinnaker tape for now. Next year I need two sets of boots and a set of longer skate poles! So I am in for quite a big hit in terms of cash.

I would like to have a softer pair of skis for softer conditions next year, but there is a company which will machine out sections of the sole and stick in what looks like velcro (and probably is). Otherwise grip tape does a good job until it gets hard in the tracks.

Given my boots survive and I get used equipment then I would be better spending the cash saved on some Cabin tours with pals, to enjoy 'blue wax' conditions and do some longer days slow, steady training.

I will also have to look at cleaning my skins and maybe using a spray on them. I used a roll on glider over them which has seemed to give benefit, if a little loss of grip perhaps, difficult to say in this year's variable conditions.

Given wads of cash, I would like to have another, softer pair of skin skis which would be the alternative for those times i have been slogging away.

Th Joy of Ski...part IV

This has been a really, really long and fantastic season for XC skiing.

Hard to Fair Going...

I remember a lot of it as frustrating too, because of often very hard conditions caused by the post Juletide thaw back. This happened two or three times this winter, but now the spring weather creates almost ideal conditions for daytime skiing to 6pm.

Each night the darkest woods are down to minus 6 and in the day the strong sun just softens the top without melting too much of the 75 cm base there is on many trails even just above sea level!

Season's Wrongs, Season's Rights...

This season, which started in December, I tried to concentrate on having a kicking style with a nice high rise on the kick. However this seems wrong for many reasons: it had messed up my weight transfer and basically I was unloading too early to exaggerate my kick and therefore not getting enough forward propulsion AND breaking the glide ski onto the snow.

I survived this in the hard stuff, and maybe the load transfer is a little different.

Right at the end of the season I am back at digging my toes in a little: an effort to hold more weight on the kick leg to get more traction. With the fitness from the earlier season, about 40km on good weeks, this paid off on both hard and then slushy conditions.

Next season my aim is then to talk to an expert like our local acquaintance and former youth coach at a top Oslo area club. Weight transfer clearly alters over conditions as does the legnth of stride and height of kick, but I want to have basically a couple of gears and a long distance tempo in my bag for doing a trip of 40km once a week, with the total being up at about 60-80 km per week.

Waxes and Wanes....

This year I have learnt more about waxing: how the recommended kick zone is not necessarily what should be waxed : leaving more un-waxed or even with glider an inch or so under the heel can be better for glide with no real expense to the kick in soft conditions or when you need to use soft wax or clister in harder conditions.

I have concentrated on using the pyramid!": or having "more in the pocket" ie laying layers in over to the mid sole. This has meant that on good conditions I can get two trips or more out of a single application of say, Lilac V50. In the very hard conditions which have been prevailing, then I at least have a little reserve until I get a view to stop at and re-wax or I am able to get home on the downhill or with a gentle warm down which is okay for the reduced kick adhesion!

Avoiding waxing under the heel or the last 3 cm, is also good for various conditions: it wears off here often anyway on the hard, and in soft , as a heavy guy I find I get better glide and can get an instant speed boost by rocking onto my heels when I am in fast gliding mode or at the start of a downhill.

I also combined the use of just using softer waxes on the inner 30cm or so, with the 3 cm under the heel and 12cm on the front of the kick zone being only an extra layer of green on top of the two base layers of green. This was less claddy, and a bit better glide. However : how long this area is, or what condition to use this is something to sort out next year: suggestion is for new snow or very good quality  soft tracks with fine corned old snow.

Scale Creatures....

I looked at my daughter's waxless, scale-patterned skis and I think the pattern extends too  long on the ski.  I had thought about this and the "pocket" a lot recently, and I was using this weekend a 10 year old pair of "waxless" which are so worn they need waxing , but retain a bit of pattern which helps KEEP THE WAX on the ski behind the scale and gave very good kick compared to clister. I have been over some very hard conditions with this, using first lilac v50 ( my do-it all in old snow faithful for the lower level skiing we do here, under 500m altitude ) then using red. In yesterdays typical easter conditions, it was a slushy porridge in the best sun traps, old transformed, coarse grained someplaces and ice in others. Nasty. I did reapply but only used one layer in the first place, and this lasted anyway as long as clister of my companion on normal skis!  Good kick and good enough glide.

Which gave me an Idea.....

Given the trend to "rubbed" or specially textured, skis for end of season I think there is a case for a much shorter patterned "pocket" : the idea being that it works well on its own in some conditions, probably slush and very cold new snow, while you use it with a bit of wax for hard stuff and you then wax with a hard wax forward of the "pocket" (ie the most raised part of the kick zone under the sole of the shoe which is in least contact with the snow under gliding). Hard wax always gives some adhesion, and usually resists clumping in new snow conditions, but applied along the whole ski, I find that "blue" gives up for me on hard stuff at -6'c and in soft or new at -4'c : I get poorer kick.

Waxless Revisited: Combining Various Existing Technologies on the One Ski!

Ideally then a wax free ski could be developed such: a pocket with a traditional fish-scale texture and then forward and back end kick zone which is in a nanotech particle based composite, suitable for some texturing on the work bench and which either lasts "life time" comparable to today's waxless skis or is renewable at service point. In addition, some form of nanotech or conposite-random-microfibre "zero" like tech could be incorporated into the scale textured area. This should be something which is "adiabatic" in that it both enhances ice crystal adhesion while also being liquid water repellent. Strange stuff, but water has very unique qualities : expanding rather than contracting as it freezes, melting under pressure, existing in three phases under negative pressure etc.

I imagine a future where you maybe have an old pair of old fashioned training skis for waxing for very special conditions or for a longer tour : you then have a pair of low temperature light textured, nanotech skis, and a "zero plus" set which cover both wet, hard and new snow at various temperatures. For touring you would have a single set of skis to which you vary the glider area by waxing and cleaning, and you then use different grades of simple one spray and wipe hydrophobic treatments for varying conditions on to the above type of nano-.and textured kick zone.

Fischer have for many years offered a top carbon racing ski in a (once patented) scale pattern for use around zero or know difficult like mild snow onto very cold surfaces or the converse. The pattern is pretty much the whole kick zone if I remember, but it is quite a light pattern with the ski having a lot of pre-tension. Other manufacturers don't seem to bother,  at least actively marketing, a quality racing / training ski with waxless surface. Waxless is like "sailing on a jib, when a genoa is of course a faster sail" according to a ski-boat compatriot of mine. This need not be the case because for the amateur, time spent with good kick and a slight compromise on glide is better than time out due to wrong wax or as in this winter, very high abrasion on waxes which have enough adhesion for hard spore.

Experimenting 2014

Next season I will try to get hold of a lightly used set of training waxless or light-tour waxless and sand off the pattern as much as I dare, (hopefully there is enough base to get them smooth: ) on the front 10cm and back 3cm of the kick zone. Then I apply a good two layers of green over these rubbed areas and see how it goes , for harder and softer conditions I would then add a soft wax or clister "in the pocket". The aim of this:

1) reduce time in waxing. Wax on the fly when you get out in the spore. It is just a fine tune in the pocket area!
2) make up for incorrect waxing or very hard conditions as the tour progresses
3) make re-waxing easier! less to area to apply to and if you were too soft, less to then take off from a and re-apply!
4) avoid waxing (after "green" or "blue" base wax is on the ends of the kick zone) , in good conditions for many weeks.