Posts Tagged ‘Iditarod Invitational’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Into the wild….

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

[disclaimer- Cory may be pissed I'm posting, but he can always delete this later]

After yesterday’s snowstorm, today’s clear skies were a relief. I doubt any of the racers were excited to see several inches of soft snow arrive, but maybe the nice weather will bring out the snowmobilers and they’ll pack the trail.

There wasn’t much left for the racers to do at the start, since all the gear choices and prep were complete by the time they arrived. Everyone was ordering burgers and fries for one last warm heavy meal and trying to choke them down. It was outwardly calm, but the racers were generally withdrawn into their own little worlds. It was so strange, even I started to feel that pre-race nauseous feeling.

At about 1:45, Cory pulled his sled together, took a short spin to decide which poles to use at the start (skate poles), and then we said our goodbyes. I thought his sled looked pretty compact compared to a lot of the others, but there were a lot of different sizes and designs. A couple of runners were checking out Cory’s suspension system.  They were using rubber tubing over ropes, so their system looked very lightweight, but runners have very different needs than skiers. The only sled that was intriguing to me was Peter Basinger’s metal frame on skies with a backpack attached. It rides a 3-5 (?) inches off the ground, and supposedly it can be lifted up and carried on his back.  With the inches of new snow, it looked like it was gliding easily.  The other skier had a pretty compact backpack, although supposed his load was about 35 lbs.

Watching 50 racers start doesn’t take too long, and Cory was smiling and waving as he passed us. I took some photos (the race website has better ones), and watched until the racers were all out of view. If I hear any updates, maybe I’ll try to post.

-Linda

Tags: ,
Posted in Ski, Susitna Valley | No Comments »

It’s Go Time

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Okay, its finally time to stop typing and start skiing. Heavy snow yesterday will make for a slow first day (and maybe second day, and ….).

Many people have asked how they can get updates during the race. I followed the race online last year, and I can tell you that updates are sporadic – but they do exist. Here are your best bets:

Iditarod Invitational homepage – there is a ton of info on this site, but it can be hard to find. Dig around a little bit. The Latest News page will get updated during the race. That page is your best bet for accurate information. You can also click the links to some racer’s blogs, which may have updates.

ITI Message Board – The board is a little clunky to use, but it is a great gathering place for family and race fans.

ITI Blog – official blog of the race organizers, Bill and Kathi. Kathi will be in McGrath this year and may post updates on the blog.

MTBCast – a podcast of race reports. Usually this is just an audio summary of information found elsewhere, but sometimes racers call in with updates, especially those going all the way to Nome.

Jill Homer’s blog – Jill has someone who will be posting updates on her site. It won’t say anything about me, but it might include general comments on trail conditions, weather, etc.  Jill is using a Spot, so if you can’t follow me, you can follow her pretty easily. She is a celebrity in ITI circles. She became famous when NPR followed her 2008 race. She has the most popular blog and a book.

Weather and Temperatures on the Course

Here we go!

Tags: ,
Posted in Alaska, Ski | No Comments »

My Gear for the Iditarod Trail Invitational

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

First a quick word on why I’ve shared my thoughts on gear, training and strategy for the Iditarod Invitational…

A lot of the information that I have found valuable in my preparations has come from other people’s websites. So I figure that if I am going to take, I should give as well. As I (futilely) try to explain to my one year old, sharing is good. Plus, writing this all down helps me organize my thoughts and re-evaluate my decisions.

Every item I am taking was analyzed and scrutinized for usefulness, weight, size, and reliability. And almost every item has a long backstory as to why it did or did not make the cut. And I would love to share the story of each piece of gear. But I quickly realized that even if someone actually did want to read 2,000 words on why I chose to bring Rode Multigrade Blue/Green kickwax instead of Swix Special Blue, I would never get it all written down before the start of the race on March 1st.

So instead I’ll give you a few words on some of the most interesting gear. And then give you lots of photos.

Skis: Atomic NX-11

I got these skis for the Susitna 100 four years ago, and I keep them specifically for this type of skiing. The NX-11′s are skate skis, but they are shorter than normal (184 cm vs. my usual 192 cm). I’ll put kick wax on them for classic skiing. For a ski with a skate camber, they kick and glide pretty well.

Poles: Exel Avanti QLS

I originally planned to go with a standard strap system on my ski poles, but then I found out that Exel brought back the QLS (Quick Lock System) for this year, after about eight years off the market! I bought every pair of QLS straps that AMH had in stock (three pairs), and matched them up with my old QLS poles that had been gathering dust. I love the QLS because I get the support of a fancy strap system, but I can get my hands in and out of the poles in no time flat. I can get these poles on and off with one hand, and do it faster than a standard strap. I am bringing two pairs of poles, one for skate and one for classic. The extra pair will easily attach to my sled pole and will give me back-up if I break one. Or two.

Boots: Salomon Carbon Pro Skiathlon

Figuring out a boot system has been very complicated. My feet always get cold when I ski. Overboots help, but only to a certain degree (in my case, -5 F) because the cold creeps in through the sole of the boot, which the overboots don’t cover. So I’ve tried all sorts of options to figure out a warmer boot set-up. The other day I calculated that I’ve considered 630 different sock/insole/boot/overboot combinations! (I’ll admit that I’ve only tried on about a hundred of those combinations.)

The boots I have chosen are a pair of Salomon pursuit (combi) racing boots that are a full size bigger than I normally wear. I bought them online for $100 last month (what a deal!), then put an thick Insolator insole in them, with the boot’s original insole on top of that. In most conditions, I will wear wool liner socks, with RBH vapor barrier socks over them. I will also have two pairs of overboots (one neoprene by Salomon, one fleece/nylon by Apocalypse Designs) that I can use either individually or together in extreme cold. I am still worried about cold feet, but this boot system is the warmest I have ever tried. If I get nothing else out of this race, I will have finally come up with a boot system that will keep my feet warm well below zero. It only took thirty years of skiing to accomplish that.

Sled:

In the Susitna 100, I carried all my gear in a backpack and was very happy with that decision. But for this race, there is just too much stuff. More food, more clothes, more fuel. So I’m going with a sled. Building this sled has been a five year project. It took 4.75 years to find the right sled to start with, and then it was a frantic two months to customize it for ski hauling. Most of the sled modifications I made were based on advice from Tim Kelley. I also borrowed a suspension pole design from Susitna 100 racer Mike Beiergrohslein. Since these designs aren’t mine, I wouldn’t feel right explaining them in every last detail. Instead, you’ll just have to look at the pictures.

The sled itself is orange, and for some reason I decided that the cover should be orange too. Safety first!

If you ask anyone who has built a ski sled, they’ll tell you that it is never finished. It’s a tinkerer’s dream. There is always some additional modification that would make it even better. But having said that, I am really excited about the sled. I think it turned out well and it will make hauling much more pleasant.

Food: Lots and lots of junk
I got a good reminder of my rookie insecurities when I dropped off my food drop bags to be flown out to Finger Lake and Rohn. We are allowed 10 lbs, and my bags tipped the scales at about 9.75 lbs. I dropped off my bags at the same time as Jacques Boutet, who has done this race many times. I swear his bags couldn’t have weighed more than a pound. Clearly, he knows something I don’t.

I’ll be shocked if I eat all my food. Each bag contained about 15,000 calories, which should last at least two days – probably even longer assuming I get good meals at the checkpoints. But then again, on my Susitna Shakedown I ate 10,000 calories in 24 hours, so I felt it prudent to use my 10lbs as efficiently as possible. Sausage, cheese, Buckeyes (peanut butter balls), buttery goodness (apparently it’s really popular), Snickers, Pop Tarts. Its all in there. I know this sounds like junk food, and it is, but in terms of calories per gram, it’s the densest stuff around. And I love junk food. One of my life’s greatest accomplishments is eating a dozen of the nastiest Dunkin Donuts in five minutes flat, immediately after finishing a Big Mac Extra Value meal. Trust me – it’s a big deal in certain circles.

Well, that’s the most interesting gear. Here’s photos of the rest of it…
 

Iditarod Trail Invitational Gear

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Alaska, Ski | No Comments »

Iditarod Invitational Goals

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

Four days until race day.  In all my posts about Alaska Ultrasport’s Iditarod Trail Invitational, I’ve referred to it as a race.  And technically it is a race.  There is a start line, a finish line, and who ever gets from the start to the finish fastest wins.  But I’m not approaching it as a race.  I’m approaching it as an adventure, an experience.  I’m hoping to see some amazing places, take lots of photos, and make it to the finish line.   For anyone who might be expecting to see me out in front, I want to point out that in all the results I’ve seen, a biker has won every time. 

With that in mind, here are my goals.

  1. Come back alive 
  2. Come back with all body parts intact
  3. Finish the race
  4. Finish the race in less than six days
  5. Have fun

Recently, I was starting to feel optimistic about the race.  After my post about the mental battle of a race like this, I got an email from a friend who is an expert on this type of adventure.  He said,  ”the hardest part of long ski trips is getting to the point where you take the first stride.  From there on it’s usually just plain fun.”  That helped a lot.  My fear was giving way to excitement and anticipation.  But then Craig Medred had to go and write this article: The loneliness of the long-distance winter race.

The hardest race to run is the one waged in your mind, and it is for this reason the Iditarod Trail Invitational is the hardest race in the world.

Sweet.  Just what I wanted to hear.  

But I am still excited and optimistic.  I believe Tim.  He’s usually right.  It has been much harder than I expected to get to this point. For months, every minute of my time that hasn’t been spent with work or family has been spent on this race.  I am ready to move on to the actual adventure.  I am looking forward to taking my first stride.

Tags: ,
Posted in Interior, Ski, Susitna Valley | 1 Comment »

Is It Too Late To Buy A Fatbike?

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Let’s say that for some god-forsaken reason you absolutely had to cross hundreds of miles of remote Alaskan wilderness, in the middle of winter, under your own power.  What mode of travel would you choose?  I am incredibly biased, but to me the logical answer is “I’d ski.”  After all, skis were invented specifically for this kind of thing.

But now look at these statistics for the Iditarod Invitational over the past four years..

88 people have finished:

51 on bikes
33 on foot
4 on skis

Umm, what?  Huh?  These numbers boggle my mind every time I look at them.   The main factor in these numbers is that a lot more bikers and runners enter the race than skiers.  And while that also confuses me, I’ve come up with some reasons why.

  1. Biking and running are WAY more popular than skiing.  Almost everyone knows how to bike and how to run.  These sports can be done in any season, anywhere in the world.  Thus, the racing communities are large.  Cross country skiing, because of weather and technique requirements, is tiny by comparison.
  2. Ultra-races are popular within a certain segment of the biking and running race communities.  There are a ton of biking and running ultra races all over the world.  There are very few ski ultras, and most of those only exist because they are combined with biking and running races.
  3. Fat bikes have become pretty amazing tools for soft terrain.  I mean, look at this beast.  Watching the Susitna 100 on Saturday, I was amazed at the number of people who own fat bikes.  
  4. The trail to McGrath is not all that good for skiing.

The first three reasons don’t worry me.  They have no effect on me as a skier in this race.  The fourth reason, however, is a major concern.  There are a lot of sections that could be tough to cover on skis.  The trail will be narrow, and in some places it might not exist because of new snow, windblown snow, or no snow.  Deep snow presents a problem to all the racers.  No snow is a problem only for the skiers.    I honestly don’t know what I am going to do when I encounter long stretches without snow.   Walk in my ski boots?  Bring a pair of shoes or winter boots just for walking?  I’m not sure.  An extra pair of boots adds a lot of weight to the sled.

I should also say that despite the grim numbers on skiers finishing,  it appears that the success rate for skiers isn’t much lower than for other competitors.  Its just that far fewer skiers enter the race.  Here are the overall numbers for each year:

  • 2008 – 45 starters - 28 finishers - 62 %
  • 2007 - 31 starters - 16 finishers - 51%
  • 2006 - 36 starters - 18 finishers - 50 %
  • 2005 - 41 starters - 29 finishers - 70%
  • 2004 - 27 starters - 18 finishers - 66%
  • 2003 - 33 starters - 16 finishers - 48%
  • 2002 - 25 starters - 18 finishers - 72%

(These numbers don’t completely jibe with the first set of numbers I posted, but they are close.  I am not sure where the discrepancy is.)

So the overall success rate is just above 50%.  With so many unknown factors in this race, I think a rookie like myself starts with about a 50/50 shot.    Any mistakes I’ve made with training, gear, or food will drag down that percentage even further.  But who knows.  I am trying not to think about this race in terms of my chances of finishing.  

If my objective was to win this race, maybe I would have chosen to use a bike.  But I am a skier.  And my objective is to explore some beautiful country the best way I know how – on skis. 

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Alaska | No Comments »

And now a word from our sponsors

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

I’d like to thank our sponsors.  There were no f@%*ing sponsors.  

That’s an Eddie Vedder quote from an old concert tape.  I’ve always wanted to use that line.

Several people have asked if I have sponsors for this race, or if they can donate to my race fund, so I thought a quick post was in order.  The short answer is no and no.  I am very content not to have sponsors for this race.  

In my past life I was a ski racer who dreamed of making the Olympic team.  I set up a website to document my journey and I used the website to raise funds for my dream.  Many generous people supported me, and I am forever grateful to all of them.  I felt like we were all part of a team.  My donors enjoyed a vicarious experience in return for their money, and I was motivated by their support.  But at the same time,  I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were more worthy uses for that money.  I made mental notes that when I moved on from skiing to a career and a better paycheck, I would pay those donations forward.

I am now at that point.  Skiing is now something I do simply for fun.  Like millions of other Americans every winter, I am taking a week off from work so I can go skiing.  Most people go to Vail or Tahoe, I am going to McGrath.  I certainly don’t expect someone else to pay for my vacation.

[ As a side note, please don't read this to be a criticism of athletes who accept donations.  Most of them are at a different point in their lives.  For them, racing isn't a vacation, its the culmination of a lot of sacrifice and hard work.  If they've found people who want to support their dream, then good for them. ]

While I don’t have any sponsors per se, there are people without whose help, this race would not be possible for me.  I’m going to hold off on listing them until later, because the list is still growing.  

For now  I will simply thank sponsor #1, my wife Linda.  When I first proposed the idea of this race, she was understandably luke-warm about the idea of me skiing off into the middle of freezing nowhere for a week or so.  But since then, her support has been phenomenal.  None of this would have been possible without her.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Alaska, Ski | No Comments »

The Mental Game

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Last week’s training was decent.  I did two long skis (6 hours and 4.5 hours) pulling the sled.  I also did a night ski, then campout, then ski again in the morning at Hillside on Tuesday.  But I have to admit that I haven’t logged nearly as many hours of training as I had hoped.  This is mainly because I severely underestimated how much time it would take to get my gear together.  I have a garage full of ski gear and camping gear.  So how hard could it be to pull together the equipment for a week-long ski trip?  Pretty hard, apparently.  

My weekdays are scheduled down to the minute in order to get in a full day of work and a few hours of quality time with my son. This schedule includes one “free” hour that I typically use for exercise.  But recently, when I should have been ramping up my training, that free time was being increasingly monopolized by other race preparations: building a sled, experimenting with boots and socks, and shopping for long underwear, food, boot liners, dry bags, etc.

As I slowly cobbled my equipment together, I was amazed at how much gear I didn’t already have.  I think that’s when it dawned on me that this race is a completely different beast from anything else I’ve ever done.  It’s nothing like the Susitna 100, which was a one-day, one-shot deal.  For that race, I left home in the morning and was back in my own bed that night.  Skiing was the only skill required.  It’s nothing like the three-day adventure race I did.  That race was in the summer with a full support crew.   All I had to do was keep moving.  In the Iditarod Invitational, the ability to keep skiing/moving is only one of the many mandatory skills.

“Iditarod Trail racing is … strictly about self reliance, adaptability, sense of humor, and oh yeah, physical strength, to some degree.”

- Rocky Reifenstuhl, a veteran of many, many human-powered Iditarod races

The physical ability to ski 350 miles is only one small part of actually skiing 350 miles.   This might be the only ski race I’ve ever entered where my years of ski racing experience mean absolutely nothing.  The mental game is much more important.  And having the right gear goes a long way towards improving self reliance and adaptability, and thus improving your odds in the mental game.

Because my training has been less than ideal, it is reassuring to read a quote like Rocky’s (which I have heard many other Iditarod racers echo).  Maybe the training is not that important.  But then again, how strong are my self reliance skills?  My adaptability?  Or even my questionable-at-best sense of humor?  I don’t know the answers to these questions yet.  But I’ve tried to invest my time into both training and gear preparations, so that when the mental game starts, I’ll have the tools I need to play at my best.

 

Tags: ,
Posted in Camp, Interior, Ski, Susitna Valley | No Comments »

This just in…the Iditarod Invitational is going to be really hard

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Om Saturday, Scott and I headed out to Knik to do a long ski on the Susitna 100 course. A snowstorm on Friday had dumped almost a foot of new snow on the trail, which wasn’t ideal for skate skiing. But we headed out anyway, hoping that plenty of snowmobiles would hit it before we did. Besides, I’m going to encounter a lot of challenging trail conditions in my race, so a day of slogging through soft snow would be excellent, if difficult, training.

The trail from the Point Mackenzie General Store was as good as we could have hoped for, given the new snow. We skated down the road (FYI: travel on the road is not allowed in the Su100) for the first few miles until we hit the trail. The road was slightly icy, and super-fast. The trail was not. It was packed by many a snowmobile, but it was soft and uneven. About what we expected.

We had planned to take the Su100 oubound trail to Flathorn Lake via the Nome Sign, then maybe ski out a little farther before returning via the Su100 inbound trail. We never saw the turn-off for the outbound trail towards the Nome Sign and ended up going out and back on the straight section line that is the inbound Su100 trail.

It was slow going. I was towing my loaded gear sled, and Scott was wearing a heavy pack. In soft snow, there is no way to skate at an easy pace while towing a sled. You need to maintain a certain amount of momentum to keep the sled moving, and that requires churning the legs at a quick pace, even as they sink into the collapsing snow with each stride. It took us about 3 hours to travel the fifteen miles to Flathorn Lake. And even though that’s a pathetic 5 mph average, I was spent by the time we got there.

We took a short break to eat when we reached the lake, and I got cold really fast. The temperature was zero degrees F, not too cold, but a slight wind on the lake chilled us to the bone in minutes.

As we skied across the lake for a look at the Su100 checkpoint, I started to get really nervous. No, not nervous. Scared. I began to think about how tired I was after only three hours and fifteen miles. And I began to think about how cold I was, even though the current weather would be considered mild for the Iditarod Invitational. I knew I would survive this day. I knew my fingers and toes would warm up and I knew I would make it back to the car after a long slog. But what would happen when it is much colder and windier? When I’ve already skied 150 miles, not fifteen? When I don’t have a warm car and a bowl of soup at the end of the day, but only a sleeping bag and frozen chunks of peanut butter? And I have to get up and do it all again in a few hours? These are all concerns that I’ve had for a long time, but they all hit me at once as I looked across the barren expanse of Flathorn Lake.

Just before the four hour mark, we turned around and headed back. I skated as much as possible and resorted to classic ski shuffling when needed. Surprisingly, the shuffling was only marginally slower than skate skiing. My worries haunted me for the entire return trip.

It was almost 8 PM when we finished. It had been a 7.5 hour ski. Scott and I had a bowl of bean soup and a Coke at the General Store before heading home. It was a great day of training, and yet I went to bed that night feeling much less optimistic about my race than I had the day before.  I told my wife I thought I had a 20% percent chance of finishing the race.

On Sunday, I loaded up my sled again, but I didn’t have time for a long ski. I skied the trails at Kincaid Park instead. It was amazing how much easier it was to ski the firm corduroy of Kincaid. Even the steepest hills of the Lekisch Loop were easier than the flat section line from Saturday. I skied for two hours and felt like I could have kept going forever.

Sunday’s workout lifted my spirits quite a bit. I’m now pretty confident that I could make it to McGrath if the whole trail was groomed like Kincaid Park. Which is to say, I’ve still got a lot of work to do.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Ski, Susitna Valley | 3 Comments »

Umm, I think I’m doing it wrong…

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

My original idea was to post multiple blog updates about my training for the Iditarod Invitational.  Lots of the other racers do this, but few of them have both a full-time job and a full-time family.  My angle was to be: how to prepare for a week-long race on only ten hours a week.  It’s kind of the masochist’s version of 3 Minute Abs

Well, it turns out that there is a reason no one else has my angle.  Its not very successful.

When I signed up for the Iditarod Invitational in early December, I was optimistic.  My training had been on track for about two months, and I had already seen significant improvement in my fitness.  I had almost three months left before the race, plenty of time to ramp up the training even further.

So much for that.  Now, with only a month left until the race, I’ll be lucky just to get back to the shape I was in when I signed up.  This is not how I envisioned my training.  

Its been a series of unfortunate events over the past six weeks.  First, we got stuck enroute from Alaska to New Hampshire for the holidays.  A one-day flight turned into a week-long debacle, including five days holed up in a Portland, OR airport hotel.  Ugh. Then we had two great weeks with family  in NH and Vermont, but the training was less than ideal. Then  I got sick soon after we returned to Anchorage and only started feeling better this week.

I managed to squeeze in a few decent workouts during that time, but for the most part I have been unable to log the long workouts (6 hours +) necessary for a 350 mile race.  So I’ma  little scared.  My assumption has been that I have a decent base of fitness, so even without training I should be able to survive.  But I’d rather not test that theory.

So now I’ve got one month to go, which basically means two big weeks of training then starting to rest up. Not a lot of time.  Better make the most of it.

Tags: ,
Posted in Ski | No Comments »

Iditarod Invitational Sleep System

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Hypothetical situation:

It’s 2 AM. You just spent 18 hours skiing a remote snowmobile trail into the middle of nowhere. You haven’t seen another person for fourteen hours. You are exhausted. You can’t fathom one more stride, and even if you could, the dangers lurking on the trail combined with your current state of semi-conscious tunnel vision could be a potentially lethal situation. It’s time to bivy down, get some rest, and attack the trail in a few hours with a clearer mind. And, oh yeah, its 30 degrees below zero, and your sleeping bag is rated to -20 F. Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?

This is the question that has haunted me more than any other as I look forward to the Iditarod Invitational. My sleeping bag is rated to -20 F, but I’d never used it at temperatures below zero. I needed to find out if I was going to trust my life to this bag at temperatures that could easily drop below -20.

I took advantage of the early January cold snap (brief tangent: it is still called a ‘snap’ if it lasts two weeks? I guess ‘cold fortnight’ doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily) to do some testing. I slept outside using my current gear on a night when the mercury bottomed out at -21 F. My assessment was that the bag kept me juuuuust warm enough to get some sleep, but my sleeping pad (a Thermarest Z-lite) was too thin. I lost a lot of heat through that pad. In the middle of the night, I added another, much thicker, pad and was significantly warmer.

So the bag performed well, but I need more padding between me and the snow. Did the bag give me confidence that it would work at -30? Or lower? Not really. So the next day, I ponied up for the bag I have been longing after for months: A Feathered Friends Snow Goose. Rated to -40. And its lighter and compresses smaller than my Puma. Double bonus.

I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to shell out for a new bag. But is it worth risking a few toes or much worse, just to save several hundred bucks? Not to me.

So my sleep system for the Iditarod Invitational will include the following:

  • Feathered Friends Snow Goose -40F sleeping bag
  • Thermarest Z-Lite foam pad
  • A smaller blue foam pad, primarily used as a bed-liner for my gear sled, but can be put under the Z-Lite for extra warmth.
  • REI Minimalist Bivy Sack
  • Space Blanket emergency bivy sack, as a vapor barrier liner in case I need to bivy while really wet or sweaty.

Tags: ,
Posted in Camp, Ski | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Highslide for Wordpress Plugin