Training with Telemark

There's nothing better for a mountain bike race off season then a robust ski season.  However, as fun as it is to race down slopes with a set of downhill sticks, at times it seems a little easy, and may be too much rest as an off season training regimen.  Especially when I throw back a few beers after a nice day out on the slopes.

I love to ski and I love the winter because of skiing.  I also love starting the spring season with super strong legs and cardio fitness to boost.  Most people will ride a bike trainer in the winter months, or fat bike and those are great (especially the fat bike), but they both pose limitations. 

Riding a trainer, much like a treadmill, only somehow worse

For one, riding my bike on a trainer is a short form of psychological torture for me.  It is an evil way to experience the thrill of riding my bike as it takes away the actual riding part.  Yes, I am technically riding a bike, but I'm not going anywhere and most likely staring at a wall the whole time.  Fat biking is a great way to get off the bike trainer and outside during the winter, but most fat bikes are limited by the amount of snow they can ride in. Cross country skiing is an excellent cardio winter workout, but it lacks the excitement and speed of downhill skiing.

One thing that winter offers is ski mountains and night skiing with many resorts making their own snow.  Alpine skiing at these mountains is a great way to experience the thrill of speed while working out the core and quads, but it can get easy once you're in shape.  However, there is a form of downhill skiing that is never easy.  It is known as free heal downhill skiing, or telemark.  

Somewhere in Norway outside of Telemark

Telemark has a long history and is a style that predates modern alpine downhill skiing.  It is named after a town in Norway where the style originated from.  It combines elements of Nordic skiing with downhill and essentially allows practitioners the luxury (or curse) of turning with a free heal. 

Before I am asked why would anyone want to revert backwards and not take advantage of the years of technological advances in skiing, let me explain what the thrill and feel of the tele turn is like.

Try to remember your first ski lesson, and try to remember how difficult it was to teach your muscles and your body to turn.  Everyone can remember the "pizza, French fries" analogy, and can remember how the pizza part was very uncomfortable.  That initial discomfort is because the modern down hill turn works against the body's natural conformation for a downhill ski turn. 

In telemark skiing the turn is very natural.  It follows the way that your body was designed to tackle a steep slope with skis strapped to one's feet.  In downhill the turn is initiated by the leading ski, with the body and legs leaning in unison into the side of the mountain. 

But in telemark, the turn is actually split between the forward and rear leg and ski and the power comes from lagging the trailing foot and ski behind you.  The turn and your body weight is split between both legs and skis.  

Is this binding broken?

But here's the kicker.  In downhill when one finds their rhythm one will start to feel a burn in the top of the quads.  In telemark when one finds their rhythm the burn is felt throughout both legs, in the feet, calves, quads, hamstrings, and glutes.  The shear number of muscles firing at the same time is mind boggling and the amount of energy that is required to master a run is far, far greater.  To give you an idea of what it's like, imagine doing a serious of jumping squats for several minutes while trying to keep your upper body balanced with your core and that's telemark. 

I have tele skied easy runs that have taken 4 times as long to complete as downhill with an energy expenditure so great that my legs ended up as a quivering mess and most of my layers were shed due to exertion and sweat.  I used to get bored by the chair lift because it was a pause in between my runs, but now I can't wait to get to the chair after a tele run because it means I can take a break and rest!

I have alpine skied entire days without taking a break because of how much fun I was having and because I was conditioned enough from racing to not get tired.  But even after the best race season the longest I can telemark without uncontrollable leg shaking is 3 hours.  It is simply a far more difficult and taxing style, but one that gets very addictive partly due to it's challenge and partly due to how great it makes you feel. 

But by far the greatest benefit of a winter of telemark skiing is destroying that first season race because your legs and cardiovascular system have been put through the ringer on all the slopes you dared to tackle with a style of skiing that is 150 years old!

Delicious powder waiting to be tamed by telemark!

Addicted to Mt biking

Waiting for the race to start

At the end of my 2015 race season I decided to cater to my penchant for all mountain riding and entered an enduro race at Highland Mt bike park in NH.  The night before the race it poured and dumped several inches of rain on everything including the mountain and race stages which made for ridiculously slippery conditions as every root and rock was covered in slimy mud.  I almost came out of the race unscathed, having only suffered minor scrapes from a few falls, until the last stage.  

This stage was the steepest, most difficult, and rockiest stage of them all, and I managed to complete 90% of it with out breathing from sheer terror at its difficulty.  It was literally the toughest mt biking trail I have ever ridden in my life. 

Helmet hit the ground first, thankfully it was full face protection.

The terror factor resulted in my death gripping the handle bars and as far as I can tell the reason why I got bit in the last 200 feet of the race, when I lost control on a turn; fell over the bike, failed to clip out, hit head first into the ground, landed my left thigh on a broken sapling tree stump, and rolled over the bike while it was still attached to me.  I felt a very weird sensation in my left hand and immediately thought that I had torn a tendon.  I got up, checked that I was ok, got back on the bike and finished only to realize that something was very wrong.  

Spiral fracture on 4th metacarpel bone

After a trip to the ER tent and 30 minutes of waiting to make sure I didn't have a concussion, I made the 2 hour drive home in severe discomfort from my thigh and hand, only to come to find out several hours later that my 4th metacarpal suffered from a spiral fracture from the fall.  I was placed in a cast and told that it would stay on for 6 weeks, followed by 2 weeks in a brace, and that I could resume full activity after 12 weeks. 

The first week I was good.  I didn't do anything but rest.  By the second week I was getting ancy, so I started to do some light cardio and hiking.  But, I had reached my limit on the third week.  I had been away from my bike for three solid weeks, something I haven't done in over 15 years.  So I decided that I would grab the most stable bike I own and go ride the easiest place I could find, and headed to a local rail trial with my fat bike. 

Yes, this was a stupid thing to do, but I literally couldn't stay away from biking for that long, I just missed it too much.  I was having nightly mt biking dreams and was waking up very upset that I couldn't bike.  So I decided that enough was enough and took matters into my own hands.

We can all agree that there are far worse addictions,  but I won't deny that I am fully addicted to mt biking, and I'm not sorry about that.  As for Enduro racing, I'm probably over it, but then again I know better then to never say never.  

"Falling down is how we grow. Staying down is how we die." -Brian Vaszily

Berkshire East Bike Park

Some videos from a recent trip to Berkshire East Bike Park to enjoy the fall foliage and gravity.

Putting the "Wild" into wild rides

Looking back on this I realize this could have ended very badly for all involved.  Thankfully everything worked out for me and the other guy.  Nothing worse then super man endo-ing over a table top jump, and I'm very glad it didn't come to that!

Fat bike racing isn't just for the winter anymore

I was torn.  A beloved race of mine was refined to a loop course and reserved for one of the hottest weekend's we've had all year.  As much as I love the outdoors, I can't handle it when it's too hot or too humid which is why I'm rooting for global warming to trigger a mini-ice age in my lifetime. All joking aside I do have a tendency to run hot as compared to others and get heat exhaustion very easily; the flip side being that I never, ever get cold.

Hampshire 100 was to return this year as a lap course, with the 100k consisting of 2 30 mile-ish loops with 3,750 feet of climbing for each one.  I eagerly signed up and started training until I saw the forecast a week before the race which was calling for a high of 85-90 with humidity as high as 80-90%.

I don't mind a good suffer fest every now and then and the 100k is certainly that.  But I wasn't particularly feeling like suffering while melting at the same time, so I reluctantly emailed the race director a few days before asking if I could drop to the 50k, which would allow me to ride the new course, but not die.

I didn't feel right riding the 50k on my race bike when I had been training and racing other long distances so I signed up for the fat tire option.  I figured that this would most certainly be a challenge as I have never ridden the fat bike that far.  I rode the fat bike a lot in the winter and it was certainly fun.  I had been missing the fun factor with my constant training for races this summer and so I designated Friday's solely for fat biking as it was a way to goof off before my long Saturday rides, or races, but those rides were no longer then 1 hour and were less then 10 miles. This was going to be 33 miles on a very tough course.

The fat bike ready to ride

4" tires and a fully rigid steel frame

My fat bike is not a fast bike.  It is built like a tank, and rides like one.  Basically rolling over anything that gets in its way, however a race bike it is not.  The frame is built from tanged chromoly steel which makes it very strong, but very heavy.  The tires are 4 inches wide and there is no suspension; it is a fully rigid bike.  That makes it an excellent climber, but a terrible XC race bike.  Still, you race the bike you have, not the bike you want, so I made my way to the race eager to test my mettle and my bike against the course.

And I was not let down.  Riding the new course on a fully rigid, steel fat bike weighing around 40 pounds was no small task.  However, I met this challenge head on and grinning for most of it, with the exception of the last dozen miles of single track that managed to literally destroy me.  The fat bike excelled at the climbs, even allowing me to clear the "Crotched Mt" climb when everyone else was walking.  And, it still managed to speed me down the hills with the characteristic monster truck tire whirling sound that is so fat bike, and even managed to float me over the muddy and sandy sections (and there were a lot thanks to the previous night's thunderstorms).

But the rooty, rocky single track was to be my downfall.  It was not the bike itself that made this bad, but my spoiled arms, back, and core that has grown used to the comfort of full suspension bikes. My arms were actually more tired then my legs (which were wiped out from pushing a 40 lb bike).

I was actually able to feel the knots forming in my back as I was crushed over every rock and root.  After awhile I learned to grin and bear it as I tried to go as fast as I could over the rough stuff, hoping that speed would minimize the pain: it didn't.

I finished in 4 hours and 37 minutes with 2 fist pumps in the air, ecstatic that the tenderizing treatment my muscles were undergoing was over.  Despite the difficulties in the single track I was very glad I raced the fat bike.  It was hard, but sometimes doing hard things that are out of our comfort zones is how we become better.

I feel this race has made me a better rider by taking away the technological advantages I have grown accustomed to and going more old school.  Despite the fat tires I was forced into picking the tightest lines I could and I was made very uncomfortable during this race, which was a good thing.  Most important of all the fat bike made me smile and laugh even when I felt horrible and that's why I race: to have fun.

Racing the Hampshire 100 on a fat bike

Would I bring my fat bike to every summer race?  No.  But I'll certainly bring it to at least one so that I will never forget why I ride.   

Going Tubeless

In early May of this year I decided to sign up for a season opener by doing the Battle at Burlingame 6 hour solo.  I had been fat biking and cross country skiing all winter and I wanted to see where my fitness stood at the end of a busy, but fun winter, and to gauge the effectiveness of training this way for future seasons. 



Road rash from blowing out on a sandy corner

So I showed up ready to give it my all on a course I knew nothing about, and  I was destined to have a literal blast at this race.  The Battle features a 14 mile lap that includes the last 2 or 3 miles of the XC course and a whole other beast of single track that laps around the lake at Burlingame.  There were a few sandy road sections in the very beginning that I managed to completed wipe out on, but other then that the single track was really nice: certainly challenging and sweet. 

I remember 2 sections in particular, one was the rocky outcrop that actually turned into a trials ride for a few sections and the other was the winding bridge section that raced us over a swamp and at one point through a gazebo! 

It was on my 3rd and final lap, however that I was to have the biggest blast, which occurred when I cleared a log obstacle, only to proceed to experience a completely flat front tire.  So I did what any racer would do, which was to pull over, quickly unscrew my front wheel, take it off, remove the tire, and the tube, and feel for thorns in the tire tread.  But, in my race-haste I did not search diligently enough (which would be the cause for my demise).  After installing the new tube, I proceeded to pump it up, only to terrifyingly witness my only spare tube deflate!  "Oh crap!" was my immediate thought, followed by, "how the hell am I going to finish this thing without a DNF with 5 miles to go on a fully flat front tire?"

I began to run my bike, but that was a disaster as I couldn't get out of the way in time for other racers to pass me and my bike shoes were giving me horrible blisters, plus my fitness wasn't there for me to run a bike out of the woods for 5 miles.  So I decided to carry my bike on my back like a wounded soldier, but that was even worse and the frame was digging into my back and starting to hurt and I couldn't maneuver through the tight turns of the single track. 

I allowed myself to get very upset and curse profusely for about 5 minutes (enough to make any sailor proud), and then I told myself that I would not DNF; and that the only way I would get out of the woods was to do the unthinkable and ride my bike on a flat tire. 

This was a lot tougher then I initially thought but actually hysterical.  I was to navigate some fairly hardcore single track on a bike rim cushioned by a mere few millimeters of rubber, but surprisingly I was able to ride.  Down hills and turns were a disaster though, but somehow the tire stayed on the rim.  I did finish the race within the 6 hour time frame, and I also finished laughing at myself for the less then ideal predicament. 

I proceeded straight to the local bike shop tent that was supporting the race, explained what happened and asked them to inspect what I believed would be my destroyed bike rim (I had hit some rocks pretty hard while on my way out of the woods).  To my astonishment there was nothing wrong with the rim, and it didn't even need to be trued!  On my way home I drove straight to my bike shop and asked for a conversion to tubeless so that a thorn would never have the chance to ruin my race ever again! 

It took me awhile to convert to tubeless, but now that I have I haven't suffered any pinch or thorn flats and that's alright in my book!

See Race Results

Earnin' the turnin'

Earnin' the turnin'

If you're like me, when the flakes start to fly you get a certain feeling in the pit of your gut.  When I hear of a big snowstorm, or watch as those first flakes begin to fall, I get giddy.  Down right, ashamedly hyperactive.  My speech quickens, my pace hurries, and I can't stop smiling.  As each flake begins to amplify, accumulate, and pile up, my excitement grows in as fast and as furious as the snowfall itself.

I am waiting for the snow to build to such an extent that allows for excursions into the back country.  Now, if you're from out West or Vermont, then I envy you: because you know exactly what I'm talking about, and you're spoiled :) 

This year in New England we have been blessed (or cursed depending on who you talk to) with 2 storms that dumped 33 inches and then 18 inches respectively of the sweet stuff.  And I took it upon myself to go and enjoy this powder the best way I know how.

Most people will dress in layers, grab a group of friends, pile into a car and drive many hours to a ski resort where they will spend a small fortune and a lot of time waiting in lines and on chair lifts to get to the groomed corduroy.  That used to be my scene, and once in awhile I'll still do that, as there's always a place for that.

However, lately, and perhaps not by coincidence, I have found myself longing for simpler methodology and perhaps harsher conditions. And an experience that is more satisfying (although admittedly riskier).  But where there is great risk, there is greater reward.

When I first started to telemark, my goal had always been to leave the ski resort behind.  I longed for virgin snow, where no man, ski, or groomer had spoiled that smooth, creamy blanket.  

I wanted to get away from the heated spa-lodges with all the crowds, pub fare, and booze and return to an experience more spiritual and perhaps even, religious.

The back country is where I find this.  No chair lifts anywhere, the simplest of runs must be earned by hikes that take several hours to complete.  No crowds.  Sometimes you'll stumble upon a few kindred spirits, and sometimes not.  Natural scenes that are drinkable, to the soul at least.  After many labored steps, there is the pause, the rituals of gearing up for the run down, and the exhilaration of carving down that trail as you could be the first and only person to do so.

What better way to carpe diem then by earnin' the turnin'?