Training at Breckenridge – Winter Training for Grand Traverse Ski Race

March 1, 2009

I started skinning up 4 o'clock Run at 4:20 a.m. I started so early because I need to be back in Superior for the boys to play tennis at 1 p.m. I skinned up to the restaurant at the top of Peak 8 (not the tippy top :-)) like we always do. I stripped the skins and skied to the bottom of Peak 7, put the skins back on and went to the top of the chairlift on Peak 7. Then stripped them and skied to the base of Peak 8. I skinned again, up to the Snowflake Lift and then skied to the base of Peak 9. Here I cut across and got on the Burro Trail and skinned up that to the Frances Hut trail and took that clear to the hut. Here, to my surprise, I knew one of the guys staying there. He used to work at Tendril. I thought about skinning up the south side of Peak 10 to return, but figured that could really take some time and it looked windy up there. I returned the same way to the base of Peak 9 and then skinned up to 4 o'clock Run by the maintenance shack. I then skied back to the condo. In all, it was 19 miles and 5500 vertical feet. It took me 5.5 hours and took it easy the entire time. I'm doing a 40-mile ski race the end of March and basically went at what I hope is race pace: slow! If I don't go slowly, no way I'll make 40 miles. I know for a real Nordic racer, like my brother-in-law Kraig, this would be trivial, but it will be a big adventure for me. It's a backcountry "mountaineering" race, in that you have to carry a sleeping bag, stove, pot, extra clothes, etc. Homie and I (you have to do this race as a 2-person team) hope to finish in 12 hours or so. The winners are usually 8-9 hours and it has been done under 8 with skate gear, but that normally isn't the fastest gear. Last year it was won on lightweight randonee gear. We'll be using backcountry NNN gear.

Attached are some maps and profiles of the morning. You can even see the turns I was making on the descent! I was trying to go back and forth a bit more than I would normally, in an effort to boost my mileage a bit! The splits marked are as follows:

1 – Peak 8 restaurant

2 – top of Peak 7 chairlift

3 – Intersection of the Burro Trail and the snowmobile track up to Frances Hut

4 – Frances Hut

You can see that I came down the ski track and not down the steeper snowmobile track that I took on the way up. On my way down I passed a couple of huge groups headed up to Frances. They cleared the path when they saw me coming, apparently recognizing my limited control. I crashed right in front of one group. Good fun.