cross training for cross

As any good sandbagger will tell you, it takes commitment to win races. Commitment to stubbornly avoid facing people who are faster than and commitment to train enough to dominate lower catagories once the season starts. In that spirit, I did not take a long weekend out of town to relax, I took a trip to vermont in order to "cross train"!

It is incredibly important to realize that even thought the afternoon Dorothy and I spent Nordic Skiing at the Trapp Family lodge was fun (yes "those" von trapps, though none of them were singing when we were there) for it to count i have to define it as cross training. And lucky I did or i would have needed to bring a bike up and figure out how to ride for 3 hours in the fresh snow we got that morning.

I have to say it was nice to find something that we can do together without fighting. we have never been able to really bike together. I always want to go faster or longer and she just wants to enjoy it. But nordic skiing seems to be something that since neither of us have any real skill at, we both enjoy without me getting aggravated. And lets face it, its totally my fault that we cant bike together.

Trapp Family lodge is one of the bougie-er places to ski nordic. There is a nice lodge and very fancy hotel with a resturant featuring harpists and such, if you are into that sort of thing. The Nordic lodge has rentals and also "demos" for nicer equipment. Trails are groomed, which may not be in the true spirit of cross country skiing, but made it easy for rookies like us. Best of all its CHEAP! We were able to borrow skis and boots from my family and spent less than 40 dollars on 2 trail passes. When ever I go downhill skiing the last few years ive really felt like its just a waste of money, especially on busy days when you end up waiting on line for lifts half the time. It was refreshing to be at a place where it was un-pretentious, un-crowded and everyone on skiis was friendly and said hello. I imagine downhill skiing must have been similar 20 years ago.

We mounted up on our skis and made a pass of the practice field to get a feel for things, and then set off on "sugar road" which was a nice flat wide trail with groomed in tracks through the woods. We felt pretty confident at the end of the road and kept going on an intermediate trail aiming for "the cabin" where there were rumors of hot cocoa. We pretty quickly realized that nordic trails are judged as much for how much work they are as how technical they can be. There were a number of climbs that left both of us duck-walking uphill. We got a bout an hour and a half out and realized that he cabin was closed and it was getting dark. Then we learned the real challenge of Nordic skiing. All the climbing we had been doing was now a lot of fast descending. Both of us were competent snow-plowers, but pretty quickly we were on hills that overpowered our stopping power. It was clear at several points that short of bailing off the trail, we weren't going to be stopping ourselves, so the goal became to stay on the trail. It was like a snowy, cold version of the mine car ride in temple of doom! But no-one died, or really even fell down that hard. so I guess it was a success.

Im hoping to do some more nordic skiing this winter. Only if its "cross training" though. I cant afford to be wasting my time goofing off!

Coming out...

Parts have been procured to convert my cross bike into single speed. Im hoping that this is the first step towards a shiny new race bike for cross this fall. This first spiritual step, sacrificing the ability to shift. Once I dont "have a cross bike anymore" it will be easier to justify to myself that i need to buy a new one. Igleheart even offered to start me on a payment plan for next fall.

Ive been thinking for a while i needed a better race bike. I've been riding on a Mudhoney that I got while I was working at Seven Cycles. Its a nice bike, and I cant complain about it being Ti. But I agreed to some things in the design that Now that ive been racing a while, I shouln't have. The most annoying one is the sloping top tube. It closes up the front triangle enough that I cant cleanly shoulder the bike. Its something I notice every race and Ive had to learn how to shoulder the bike "wrong" to deal with it. Second is toe overlap. It hasnt happened every race, but it has happened enough that ive gone down several times. Slow speed manuevering + toe strike on tire = me on the ground, annoyed. I really only have myself to blame. No-one at Seven has really designed a proper race bike for cross. Their system is aimed at high end race bikes and almost race bikes. So all of their bikes are pretty close in terms of lengths and angles. If that the bike you want, your in good shape. But I definitely noticed that "track frames" that came though the system were basically crit geometry with track drops. So when the design came back and I had yet to race cross, i didnt think that having toe overlap on a cross bike would be any worse than having it on my track frame. My Track bike is basicly a crit bike and it works for me, so why not just lengthen the chain stays for cross, right?

Well now I know better, and luckily the rack mounts I speced on my seven means i have a very nice touring bike. Although at the moment there is a single-ator and some studed tires in that frames future.

Ive already started the list for the new igleheart, in addition to toe overlap and level top tube. Ive taken a real shine to the Break-away system, after flying with the seven to the west coast and racing out there, I think a foldable bike could be a hot ticket!

"Road to Hell" just boring bike porn.

At least thats what it is when you are doing a long trainer workout.

The crew met on saturday for the inagural "tour d'DVD" at Jill's loft in Southie. There was struting in suprisingly clean spandex as well as some light stretching of excuses, overheard...

"I havnt been on my bike in 3 weeks."

"I dont know how to ride rollers."

"its just a slow leak"

"the software is calibrated for the wrong weight."

despite many of us preparing to fail, as they say. Everyone survived and made it over the "col de first workout". Helping us through was Natalia's collection of bike nerd DVD's. for the first 90 minutes we tried to get into "sunday in hell", the epic tale of Eddy Mercx not winning the Paris-Roubaix. Despite my own bike-nerdery i couldnt get into it. The footage was beautiful and it was great to see so many hard men rocking/running down tube shifters and wool jeresys, but amid all the long slow shots of the caravan behind some spring wheat and Team Peugot turning heavy gears on the cobbles, I kept thinking..."Ive only been on this trainer for 20 minutes?!" I think that I need something more distracting than an art-doc if all im doing is 2 hours at 65%. We tried Kill Bill for the last 30 minutes, but it turns out that Quintin Tarantino makes really talky movies, they just happen to have some violence in between all the clever "tete-a-tete".

In any case 1 brick in the wall, by base has begun. This morning I made it 2 days in a row with the help of a made for sci-fi channel miniseries "tin-man". Steampunk-porn is way better than bike porn if your just sitting on a trainer. Zoey Deschanel doesnt hurt either.

This week I will need to find my way to the used dvd-ateria. I think the work of Sir Bruce Willis will do nicely to get me into the indoor riding season. Otherwise i may have to (GASP!) man up and start riding outside.