Back to my roots

With the recent snows I hung up the cycling shoes and dusted off the skiing boots.  I brought my cross country skis out east about four years ago, but had yet put them to use until last week. It a shame too, they're beauties of skis - 1996 Atomic Arc skate skis with foam core, dual composite base, and hot pink - a relic of my high school racing days.  I've since then parted with the purple tights, though perhaps picked up some other anachronisms.  It is a beautiful sport, something like a cross of running in its simplicity, fly-fishing in its grace of motion, and cycling in its nerd-satisfying tech.  Dual composite bases.

We've been skiing out at Great Brook Farm, a Massachusetts State Park just north of Concord.  It's hard to turn down a $60 season pass, even if they only have something like 15k of trails,but  they're good trails with a mix of hills and flats, woods and fields.  Every Tuesday and Thursday they have night skiing on their "Lantern Loop" until 9pm, and lanterns it is.  Their light does't shine far, but perhaps that's not the point, and the sky-glow from Boston is an effective full moon.

Six days of skiing in about two weeks.  Not bad. With all of the snow and slush, I figure this is about as good as my training is going to get, at least if I want to stay dry, clean and sane - it's 

either roll around on the road with slush being jammed up my shorts, or unholy hours on the trainer.  After a few years of intentional atrophy of my arms, the skiing should be a good start to developing the physique of the mountain biker, and a bit of upper body strength should serve well on 7 days of endurance racing.

Keith should be back soon, and it'll be time to start thinking of a proper training plan, all the more now that Keith and I closing our deal for the summer adventure....  Time to get focused.