Iowa Games

On Saturday morning Robin and I drove up to Dubuque for the Iowa Winter Games cross country ski race. They were at the Mines of Spain State Park. The classic race was in the morning, and it was about 9.5k. The skate race was held in the afternoon, and it was about 12k. The extremely cheap entry fee of fifteen dollars signed you up for both races, so I more or less felt obligated to do both.

For the classic race my only goal was to not start too fast and to ski fairly hard and consistently. When the gun went off, which was really a loud "go," I found myself in about 11th or 12th place out of maybe 30 or so skiers. A lead group of four or so got off the front rather quickly, and the rest of us were strung out behind them. I followed a guy for half of the first lap before I felt that I wanted to go a little bit faster and came around him on one of the many short steep climbs. From there I just kept skiing as smooth as I could and slowly passed a few other skiers and ended up in 6th place. My time was 44 minutes and change, and each of my laps were right around 11 minutes.

Here are a few pictures that my photographer and support crew snapped of me.

Here I am getting ready to pass a guy who apparently thinks that Robin is taking his picture.

And here I am all by myself.

The race was tiring but very worth it. After it was over I got changed and we went into town to eat at a tasty little coffee shop called Jitterz. I really like the city of Dubuque and look forward to going back. But on Saturday we really didn't have much time to sight see and had to get right back to the Mines of Spain for the day's second race.

The skate race was much more intimidating. For one, I was exhausted. My arms felt like jelly and my body had no pep in it. And for another thing, there were a lot of fresh skiers that did not race that morning and also looked like they had been doing the skate ski thing for many more years than I have. My goals for this race became to not crash and to not get last.

At the start I lined up in the back third of the pack. In hindsight, this was not a great move. It turns out that I am a little bit better on skate skis than I thought. But in the end it worked out. Despite crashing twice on the first lap, I was able to pass a bunch of people in the first two laps and then ski the final two laps with someone in front of me that was close enough to keep chasing after but just far enough away that I could not actually catch him. I ended up in 12th place and it took me 53 minutes. Again my lap times were very consistent, so I was happy with that. I suppose it made up for the crashes a little bit.

Here is a picture of me skating.

And here is a picture that suggests skating is easy. It is not, and there was actually a big headwind on this section.

Sunday I went out to Ashton for some easy recovery skiing. It was a beautifully sunny morning and I was worried about Monday's meltdown temperatures, so I felt I could not pass up the opportunity. I met Steve out at the course. He had ridden his bike out there earlier and was having a good old time. We skied around for awhile. Then I skied with Bart, creator of the new IowaSki site. And after that I just skied by myself. It was a very enjoyable ski. Today though, my body is really tired; so I will just be relaxing for a day or two and hoping for more snow.

Skiing and Resting, and Skiing Again

The snowfall that I was recently oh so excited about was on the disappointing side. I think we only ended up with an inch and a half or so. Nonetheless, Robin and I zoomed over to the Finkbine golf course on Thursday morning. It was very windy, and that made the snow coverage very inconsistent. Still, we picked a fairly nice route and followed that around for awhile. The wind was dying down right as we were leaving. Figures.

The next two days, Friday and Saturday, were bitter cold. My body was a little wrecked from the consistent exercise of the previous week, so I had no problem staying in for awhile. I did some reading, wasted time on the computer, watched a movie, and we made a white chili that turned to have a really nice flavor.

But today was much warmer. I think it got up to 8 or so. The really nice thing about today's weather though, was the lack of wind. That makes all the difference on a winter day. Robin and I took advantage of this "warming" and went skiing at the McBride Nature Trails. There were quite a few people out and about on skis and even just hiking around. The trails up there might have gotten just a teeny bit more snow than we did in Iowa City, plus the groomer did a really nice job of smoothing things out. But the snow was a little on the slow side. It had an energy sapping quality to it that wore us out. Perhaps this was due to the extreme colds, but I'm not snow expert, so I will cease to speculate. We are supposed to get some more snow tonight and tomorrow; either way I am going to go back to the trails to celebrate MLK day.

January Training Camp

For the past 5 days I've had a nice steady block of bike riding with Steve. It's been really great. Each ride seemed to get better than the previous one. We also managed to add more dirt, snow, and gravel to each ride.

I think today's ride was my favorite. We had been riding our cyclocross bikes all week, but today we went with the single speed mountain bikes. We rode up north, mixing roads and gravel roads, and then took the five mile footpath that begins in Solon and goes west along the shores of Lake McBride. It was pretty snow covered and the visible and invisible ruts and sections of ice kept us on our toes. The going was a little slow, but it kept us really warm.

After kicking around the trail for awhile we jumped on some more gravel and rode over to one of the snowmobile trails. I had only been on this section two or three times before, but this time the trail was in the best condition that I had seen. Our freezing temps kept the ground solid and the small pockets of snow, both packed and drifted, kept things clean and very fun. I made it through all the partially frozen trickling streams, over all the potentially treacherous bridges, and up all but one of the short but super steep climbs. Near the top, just when I thought my rear wheel had regained some traction, I tipped over on my left side. Don't worry, I'm ok. And that was the only mishap of the ride.

On the ride back to town the temps started getting a little bit colder and we were riding into a headwind. We were getting rather hungry, as the gels, bars, and cookies we ate were not quite enough for this ride. But we made it home safe and sound. Not having any fenders on my singlespeed, I had some pretty wet feet and a mud speckled jersey, but Steve looked pretty clean.

Tomorrow we'll take a break from our rides. Steve is heading over to Des Moines for the Iowa Bicycle Coalition's fundraiser Bike Night. The brilliant bike blogger Tarik Saleh will be giving a presentation. Should be a great time.

I will be staying in I.C. though. After a pleasantly mild afternoon the temps are getting colder again and the skies should be dumping 4 to 6 inches of fluffy and skiable snow. So the rest of my mid-January training camp will be spent gliding instead of rolling.