Sunday Morning Rollerski Blues

We know how dangerous the “church rush” can be. Last year we were abruptly cut off one Sunday morning by a (nice) elderly woman in a small town called Woodland. She didn’t only cut us off, but drove in to and took down the entire Stop sign and put roughly $1500 worth of damage to her door and driver’s side bumper. She was late (for church) and didn’t have time to stop and access the damage, but walked straight into the church.
Her son, who arrived in the next car and had seen the incident, was yelling: “Maaaa, didn’t you see the Stop sign?” Ma didn’t hear. Ma was late for church.
I have always slowed down for “late for church goers” after that.

So Gordon and I were ready to roll from a small town called Wanship at 10AM.
Two gas stations, an old diner called Spring Chicken Inn, numerous pig and horse farms. That’s it for Wanship. You blink when passing by and you’ll miss it. A sleepy town, but great for rollerskiing.
The plan was to ski down on the country road on the East side of the freeway to Coalville, the next town. There we planned to cross the freeway and ski back up again on the West side, for a loop of about 25-30 kilometer.

So off we went.
Nice and easy level 1 pace. Sunny and 53F already, on October 12, 2003!
Gordon’s first comment came after 10 minutes:
“I can’t think about anything that I want to do less than classic rollerskiing. I love doing classic on skis but this is so monotonous”.

I tried to be positive and reminded Gordon about how well he was doing in last year’s Colorado Pursuit Championship (10K skate and 15K classic), but lost two places the last 4 kilometer of the final classic leg to younger skiers that were “killing him” in the classic double poling.
Gordon agreed and commented that we are probably not doing enough double poling on rollerskis in the winter either. Utah ski courses are mostly up and down with few flat sections.

At that point I could feel Gordon’s attitude change. His skis were rolling a little faster than mine. He was using fast rolling “skied in” PRO-SKI C2 and I was on a new “slower rolling” PRO-SKI Tech model. The pace was starting to pick up and we were discussing the start of the hunting season, women’s soccer World Cup, the upcoming ski season, the war in Iraq and the upcoming week’s training. The pace was now intensity 2(+).

Gordon was now really “into it” and was commenting several times how much he needs to do double poling workouts like this. I agreed that we both need the stomach, arm and back training this workout is providing even for upcoming skating races. We decided that one of next week’s interval sessions should be classic rollerski intervals in a gradual uphill.
Double pole and double pole with kick only.

The pace was now harder — intensity 3 for Gordon and 3-4 for me
With 5K to go we hit the longest uphill — an 8 minute long and hard section.
Gordon was sticking with double poling with kick up the whole hill and I was doing the same. The intensity was now hard — intensity 4-5. We were not racing each other but simply trying to ski the hill strong without switching to diagonal.

It’s was (now) harder to talk but we were both “way into it” and making comments about how much fun this was!
Finally at the top of the hill we stopped to drink, laughed about the pace we just skied at before tucking down the upcoming 1K downhill. The last two kilometer was flat and at intensity 1 with easy double poling.
Total time was 1.40.