I may have gone for the most treacherous roller ski of my life on Saturday. I needed to do a 3 hour skate ski. I hadn’t checked the weather, but I knew it was supposed to rain all day. I waited around the house all morning for a window so I could at least warm up before getting wet. It didn’t happen, and at about noon I decided to get out the door so that I could shower and relax for an hour before I had to be at work. The first 15 minutes were not too bad, but as soon as I got out into the wind, I was getting pelted with rain underneath my rain visor. The wind was blowing my poles so hard that they were nearly useless in some places. I got a branch the size of a small tree stuck on my roller ski and tripped at around 2 hours when my head was down for too long. The whole thing was pretty much miserable until I was on my way home. I was 2.5 hours into the ski and soaking wet when I turned down Lakeshore Blvd. and skied past a road closed sign. Lakeshore Blvd. goes a few miles along the lake and it is lined with a huge wall of boulders separating the road from the lake. The lake was this deep, mood ring green and it was kicking up the biggest waves I have ever seen in Marquette. Waves were crashing over the rocks and spewing water the size of semi-trucks onto the road. There was debris all over the bike path. Since the road was closed to cars, there were people walking all over the road with flip flops and cameras. Everyone outdoors was as excited to be there as a little kid playing in the rain. I skied along the road and went through several places where the standing water was well over my ski boots. I wish I had my camera but it was way too wet to bring it. As usual, Lake Superior sent me home happy.
Last week was a hard week of training for me and it pretty much rained every day. Now the sun is back out in Marquette and I’m taking it easy before heading to our next CXC Team Vertical Limit camp in Hayward on Thursday.
Some family friends, Mike and Jane Mandli, were up visiting Marquette last weekend and I’m glad they got a chance to see the sun. Mike and I went for a 2+ hour roller ski in Skandia on Sunday before they went home to Germantown, WI.
