Vakava Race Team

The big one is tomorrow. It is Birkie time!br /br /I was in at Finn Sisu this morning putting the last touches on my skis (and to help out waxing some of the skis submitted for waxing at the shop). The recommended wax job for the Birkie is: a coat of Rex Blue, a coat of Rex RCF Black, a coat of Rex Olympico Moly, and 3 coats of Rex TK-72. It sounds like things will be pretty abrassive on the course, so that hard wax with the graphite is going to be important. Duribility will be key.br /br /There were a lot of other people in at the shop this morning too. Most of them were from out of town who were picking up some last minute items on there way to the race. There were 2 guys there because the airlines had lost their ski bags! Apparently the airline has no idea where their bags are, and could not even find a record of where they had been checked in. Ouch. One of the guys had a pretty good attitude about it ("a good excuse to buy new skis!"), but the second guy was coming all the way from Sweden (!) and was pretty bummed out.br /br /To make this weekend even more crazy, this Sunday are my dental board exams. I am typing this from the dental school computer lab waiting for a mandatory pre-boards meeting. From here I will be swinging through my parent's house for some pasta, and then heading the rest of the way to Hayward to their cabin. After the race tomorrow I will unfortunately not be heading to the Sawmill Saloon, and will instead be heading back to the Twin Cities to get ready for my 7:45am exam on Sunday. This is the patient-based part of the exam, so it consists of scaling and root planing (a deep cleaning), a class II restoration (a filling on a back tooth), and a class III restoration (a filling on a front tooth). The dentistry should not be too bad, but if one of my patients doesn't show up I might be screwed. At least I have the Birkie to keep my mind off it until the last minute.br /br /I have been going over the race in my mind the last couple of days, and I still havn't decided on my final game plan. The last two years I have been the first or second guy who has not been with the lead pack (28th last year, 30th the year before), but I got there two differnt ways. Two years ago I went out and skied my own race and let the lead pack go early, getting into that second group and skiing easier from the start. Last year my goal was to stay with the leaders for as long as I could. Around the 18k mark I was spent, and Chad Giese and I both kind of fell off the back of the lead pack, and skied together for a few k before the second group caught us and we jumped in with them. Both methods lead to about the same result, and to be honest, skiing my own race hurt a lot less (until the last few kilometers, at least). It will be interesting how having two strong teams in the race (the Italians and CXC) will affect how things go at the front. In the past the Italians could pretty much control how the race was skied, but now CXC might be able to mix it up as well. I am glad it is going to be recorded again :)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-98282134620856942?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

It has been a great day to be a nordic skier:br /img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440567274615268114" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S4DHHGQO4xI/AAAAAAAAAHc/dVOxsDJpyyM/s320/start.jpg" border="0" /br /1. Minnesota Finlandia was this morning. The weather was amazing (I was skiing my cool down in a baseball cap with my sleeves rolled up) and the conditions were almost perfect.br /br /2. The a href="http://www.minnesotafinlandia.com/Earle%20Dickinson%2025%20Km%20Pursuit%202010.pdf"25k pursuit /arace there served as the final race of the 7 part Minnesota Skinnyski Series. Our beloved Vakava Race Team was leading the team competition by 198 points heading into the race. We had 4 skiers in the race (meaning we could only max out at 400 points), so if Peter's Cheaters had sent a full squad of 6 skiers and had a perfect score (every skier winning their age group) they would have beaten us by just 2 points! The Cheaters did perfect score the race last year, so I was more than a bit worried, however they only had 5 skiers in the race and so Vakava has successfully taken down the Cheaters and won the team competition for the first time in 3 years!!!br /br /3. I had a good race today myself, winning the pursuit for the 2nd year in a row. The race was a lot more fun than last year too (last year the field was a bit thinner and I soloed the whole dang race), since they wisely started the classic and pursuit skiers together this year, and this ment that there was a nice group of skiers for the classic portion of the race. This was nice, since I am not as strong of a classic skier, and I was able to hang out in the pack and get pulled around to the transition area and have plenty in my legs for the skate half of the race. The trophys for the Finlandia are the best of any ski race I have ever seen (well, I hear they give out some decent neckwear at those races in Vancouver) in the form of very intricate hand painted double-bladed lumberjack axes. Very cool, and worth the trip to Bemidji just for that. Vakava women took 1st and 2nd in the women's race too (nice job Mary Beth and Kathleen!)br /br /4. There was a great battle at the front of the a href="http://www.minnesotafinlandia.com/Finlandia%2050%20Km%20Freestyle%202010.pdf"50k race/a to watch, with Andy Liebner out sprinting Zack Simons and Andrew Johnson. I was telling somone after the race, "the 50k field was really tough. One guy was in the last Olympics, and one guy has one the Birkie." Of course then I had to say, "but neither of those guys won today". Big props to Liebner.br /br /5. I got home just as the olympic men's 30k pursuit was taking off on TV. What an awesome race. It had the breakaway by Olsson, the team tactics of the other two Swedes (which made the race that much more compeling), and the amazing racing of the 4 Canadians (all in the top 16, including 3 of the top 9). The only thing that could hav possible made that race better would have been seeing some Americans a bit closer to the front. Kris Freeman looked to be havng a good race before his blood sugar and then his body crashed. Southam had a respectible race in 34th. Has anyone else noticed that of the 6 races so far, the top american in 4 of them (including all 3 men's races) has been somone not on the USST? Just saying.br /br /a href="http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=29d75df4-c8a1-4345-b166-8a516732fb85.html#highlight"Best race ever/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-4509855495126333544?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

How tough are you? a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021905310.html"Probably not this tough/a.br /br /a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI-qbDbdZz0"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI-qbDbdZz0/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-5312297216592340362?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

I have not been feeling quite as fast this year after having a great year last year. Between board exams and moving, this fall did not have the volume that I was hoping for leading into the season. Consequently I have been feeling a bit flat so far in the season, and the last couple of races have shown this (2nd at Nordic Spirit where I didn't have the skis or legs to hang with the leader from the gun, and 19th at COLL where I kept falling backwards in the standings throughout the race). Due to my not feeling quite as strong this year (and also a bit of a desire to help the Vakava team finally beat the Cheaters in the team race) I switched from the 58k to the 35k for the Mora Vasaloppet. The Vasaloppet is the largest ski race in Minnesota, and the 35k skate race served as the 6th race in the MiSSeries. The switch to the shorter race paid off, as I not only felt great in winning the race by a minute and a half, but Vakava as a whole had a great day sweeping the podium in the women's race and finishing 1,2,4 in the men's - helping to give us a sizable, but not quite comfortable lead in the team standings going into the last race of the series.br /br /Vakava results at Mora (with dala horse listed):br /35k skate:br /Men:br /1st- Nate Porath (1st)br /2nd- Andy Schakel (1st)br /4th- Paul Olson (2nd)br /9th- John Keane (3rd)br /25th- Dave Bridges (3rd)br /30th- Mark Ahlers-Moore (2nd)br /40th- Per Nelson (3rd)br /Women:br /1st- Mary Beth Tuttle (1st)br /2nd- Angie Robinson (1st)br /3rd- Kathleen Dewall (1st)br /7th- Mel MacMillian (1st)br /13th- Nichole Porath (3rd)br /br /42k classicbr /Men:br /16th- Dave Christopherson (1st)br /20th- Brent Oja (1st)br /35th- Kevin Ivensbr /37th- Pete Thurmesbr /60th- Ahvo Taipale (1st)br /Women:br /5th- Michelle Oja (1st)br /9th- Allie Rykken (1st)br /br /58k freestlyebr /11th-Derek Wallen (3rd)br /12th- Bjorn Batdorfbr /Women:br /2nd-Johanna Winters (2nd)br /8th- Cheryl Dubois (1st)br /br /Yes, that is 20 out of 23 people (the 3 coaches are included) winning dala horses. That is impressive.br /br /Now I am waxing skis for tomorrow's race, the Finlandia 25k continuous pursuit. (I have an old swix portable 3-piece bench clamped to a board, that is clamped to the coffee table in the dorm, that is suspended on two chairs). The weather looks like it will be perfect, and the snow has been great. Fun times! The Vakava team is not sending a full squad to the race tomorrow, so the team standings will be very close (Peter's Cheaters put up a perfect score of 600 here last year). Hopefully we can hold them off.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-3030872913713306022?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

I've been meaning to post race reports all winter long but just haven't had the time. I'll try to recap them as I find the time since each race has taught me something. My main goals for this year were to feel good and have fun and not worry about how fast I was going. I've been having a great season in stark contrast to last year and have accomplished all those goals. I've felt great, been having a great time, and the less I worry about results they better they are. I think several things have helped me have a better season this year. Last year was a difficult year for me personally and I wasn't sleeping well because I was stressed. I think I just tried to push myself harder than my body could recover properly from with the other stresses and lack of sleep. I just got more and more worn down and felt worse and worse. This year I've managed my stress levels much better and have made sure that I didn't continue to push myself if I was tired or feeling overwhelmed by life. I've really tried to monitor my sleep, which is a good barometer of my stress levels, and take it easy if I needed to. This made my hard workouts more productive and I was able to slowly get stronger and faster. It really drove home that feeling like an easy workout really was easy, too easy even, was a good thing and that allowed hard workouts to feel good too as a result. In essence I relearned to pace my workouts appropriately. I used to be really good at pacing in races and I think I've relearned that as well. I've stopped worrying about how fast my competitors were going and just skied my own race. I can only ski how fast I can ski, so pushing myself too hard to keep up with others is counter-productive. If I can keep up with them I can, and if I can't I can't. It really is that simple. So I've just listened to my body, focused on what I could do that particular day, not worried about what I can't do, and enjoyed being out there. And what a difference it's made.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-653759851621405698?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

p align="left"So they finally posted the a href="http://www.minnesotaskinnyskiseries.com/images/stories/2010/team3.pdf"team standings/a for the MN skinnyski series. After 3 races the Vakava Race Team is sitting in an all too familiar position - a close second to the dreaded Peter's Cheaters. We had put some good distance on the cheaters in the first 2 races of the 7 race series, but we lost 86 points in race 3 when we only had one guy in the skinnyski series race at Pepsi (others were skiing in the longer race). In a curious development, there are now 3 teams of cheaters (the other 2 teams are in the bottom two spots), and one can't help but think that Peter created these extra teams so that he himself could actually ski on one this year ;)br //pp align="left"This weekend is a new race on the skinnyski series calendar - the Nordic Spirit race held at Spirit Mountain, Duluth. Should be interesting. I am not sure how deep Vakava's roster will be at this new race. I know some people are taking the weekend off. We can only hope the same is true for the cheaters./pdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divp align="left"Speaking of the Pepsi Challange: major kudos go to Angie Robinson for winning the race in front of Mary Beth Tuttle and Mel MacMillan (a Vakava podium sweep!). Vakava also took both men's and women's age-adjusted overall races (Mary Beth for the women, and of course Dave for the men). For the year the Vakava women have 4 of the top 5 spots in the a href="http://www.minnesotaskinnyskiseries.com/images/stories/2010/overall3.pdf"overall competition/a, with Cheryl Dubois, Angie, and Mel in the top 3 spots (and Dave is winning the men's overall too). As if we didn't need further proof that Angie is having a great year so far, she is currently 3rd in the a href="http://www.minnesotaskinnyskiseries.com/images/stories/2010/skieryear3.pdf"skier of the year /a(most improved skier) category. /pdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="left"/divdiv align="center"/divdiv align="center"/divdiv align="center"The skinnyski.com photo galleries provide nice documentation of Angie's winning race:/divimg style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432423430380004370" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S2PYU-VPJBI/AAAAAAAAAG8/ZYZh4Lbiul4/s320/20100123-029-2010-Pepsi-Challenge.jpg" / p align="center""Tuck for speed"/pimg style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432423640009153698" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S2PYhLQuHKI/AAAAAAAAAHM/KT2FhDBNGdk/s320/IMG_9335pepsi.jpg" /br /div align="center""Get this extra water out of my way"/divbr /br /img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 214px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432423937579431778" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S2PYyfzAN2I/AAAAAAAAAHU/K9rNJbKtgus/s320/20100123-205-2010-Pepsi-Challenge.jpg" / p align="center""Fist pump for the win!"/pdiv align="center"/divdiv align="center"/divdiv align="center"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432423537971433250" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S2PYbPJCDyI/AAAAAAAAAHE/0O5DgwAxEUs/s320/20100123-215-2010-Pepsi-Challenge.jpg" /"Yeah, I skied pretty awesome" /divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-3112580566882057580?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

I thought it was kind of interesting that the New York Times had an article on cross country skiing and Olympian Andy Newell. a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/fashion/28fitness.html"ARTICLE/abr /br /That led me to a href="http://andrewnewell.squarespace.com/"Newell's website/a, which has some pretty entertaining videos, a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rdz7sSnjWY"like this/abr /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8rdz7sSnjWYhl=en_USfs=1rel=0color1=0x006699color2=0x54abd6"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8rdz7sSnjWYhl=en_USfs=1rel=0color1=0x006699color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-4554254160060284207?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

So tomorrow is the start of a month of living out of a suitcase again. I am spending the entire month of February working in a clinic in Hibbing, MN - spending the weeks drilling, filling, and pulling, and every weekend driving to a different ski race. I hope to still be able to spend one night a weekend in my own bed in Red Wing, but really I am trying to pack as if I will be gone for a month. This also means that tomorrow will be my last Wednesday night Vakava practice of the racing season. That will probably be the hardest part of being gone for the month - the training on my own. It is so nice to know that I will be getting at least one good hard workout with other skiers a week. At least I will see most of the team at the races!br /br /Well, off to pack. Wish me luck.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-8082872415711120290?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

We had a big group at practice tonight. Seems to always be the case when span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error"Ahvo/span is going to be there. He really is span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"something/span to see. He is so good with picking out minor (or major) changes in people's technique, and he is so quick for a 63 year old guy. We were working on V1 turnover on short uphills, and he can still "dance" up those hills with the best of them.br /br /At the end of practice we had a group call with Caitlin Compton. All of us huddled around the phone and got to span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"congratulate/span her for making the span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"Olympic/span team. Caitlin seemed really excited to have everything work out. She said that when she got the call yesterday that she almost didn't want to answer it in case it was bad news. It has certainly not been an easy (or typical) road for her, but she has span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"definatly/span put in the work and deserves her spot on the team. She told us that she is looking forward to putting in a good block of training at altitude before heading to the races in span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error"Canmore/span. She was also looking forward to catching up with fellow Twin Cities skier Garrott span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error"Kuzzy/span, and was quite span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"optimistic/span that he would be on the team too within the next two weeks.br /br /Last weekend was the second span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error"skinnyski/span series race at Boulder Lake. span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error"Vakava/span had a strong showing, although we will have to wait until the after Jan 22span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span to hear which cheaters that Peter Hanson will cherry pick for his team. We are hoping to have a strong team for this year to at least give him a run for his money. The hardest part is picking a roster of only 12 (our team is 20+ skiers strong this year).br /br /Personally my race was tough but fun. The conditions were not at all what I expected. I had visions of a fast, firm trail after the warmer weather earlier in the week, but the trail was mashed span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"potatoes/span, and my poles punched in 6" or more every time I polled. In my opinion the conditions favored a skier with stronger legs and a bigger engine. I am more of an arms skiers and I tend to exploit my glide - span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"neither/span of which was easy to do. That and I am not in quite as good of shape as I was hoping to be in this year. From the gun the pace was fast (the 10k skiers start at the same time and do one lap instead of three). There were only 3 guys who were able to go with the fastest 10k guy, and I was in the first chase group (which was probably 12 guys big). I spent most of the race in the first 3 of that group, spending what I considered to be a fair amount of time at the front doing some leading. At about the 20k point of the race I was in second or third in the group when my ski hit one of the large span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"divots/span of mushy snow and in my state of off balance I polled between my legs. I went down hard, crotch first onto the trail. The other skiers in the group were able to avoid me, but I was left to pick myself up, try to convince my stomach move out of my span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error"throat/span, and make my way back to the group. That took me a couple of kilometers, but I was soon able to hang at the back and recover. By the last few kilometers as the pace was picking up I was able to move through the group to the top 3, and in the sprint across the lake I was only beaten by Nikolai span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error"Anikin/span to the line. It was a pretty good showing and a lot of fun.br /br /span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error"Vakava/span results this weekend:br /strongspan id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error"Seeley/span Hills/strong:br /22k classic:br /5) Dave Bridgesbr /22) Pete span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error"Thurmes/spanbr /br /11) Michele span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error"Oja/spanbr /br /42k classic:br /18) Derek span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error"Wallen/spanbr /37)Brent span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error"Oja/spanbr /47) Kevin span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error"Ivens/spanbr /br /1) Jojo Winters (winner... by almost 5 minutes)br /11) Allie span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-error"Rykken/spanbr /br /strongBoulder Lake/strong 31k freestyle:br /5) Nathan span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error"Porath/spanbr /11) Andy span id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" class="blsp-spelling-error"Schakel/spanbr /15) Dave span id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" class="blsp-spelling-error"Christopherson/span (once again with the top age-adjusted time for MN skier of the year standings).br /36) Mark span id="SPELLING_ERROR_27" class="blsp-spelling-error"Ahlers/span-Moorebr /74) Kevin span id="SPELLING_ERROR_28" class="blsp-spelling-error"Ivens/span (pulling the big 2-day double)br /br /1) Mary Beth span id="SPELLING_ERROR_29" class="blsp-spelling-error"Tuttle/span (continuing her winning ways, both overall and age-adjusted)br /3) Angie Robinsonbr /6) Cheryl span id="SPELLING_ERROR_30" class="blsp-spelling-error"Dubois/spanbr /8) Kathleen span id="SPELLING_ERROR_31" class="blsp-spelling-error"Dewahl/spanbr /10) Mel span id="SPELLING_ERROR_32" class="blsp-spelling-error"MacMillian/spanbr /11) Katie span id="SPELLING_ERROR_33" class="blsp-spelling-error"Splan/spanbr /12) Nichole span id="SPELLING_ERROR_34" class="blsp-spelling-error"Porath/spanbr /(span id="SPELLING_ERROR_35" class="blsp-spelling-error"Vakava/span ladies pretty much dominating the top of the standings with 7 of the top 12!)br /br /Sorry if I missed anyone. That is a lot of people racing!div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-5022428381798006063?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

divdivHere are some random thoughts:/divbr /div/divdiv1. One of my classmates that I spent Dec. in span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error"Hibbing/span with sent me a pic that he took while we were up there. One of the last nights that we were there we went out to the lake (there was no snow on the trails) and skied around. Two of them had never skied before, but one of my classmates in dental school is Renee Kinney (skied for span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error"Stillwater/span HS, U of Vermont and Team span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error"Birkie/span), and so between her and I there was equipment to use. It was fun to all get out on skis together. img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 370px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 278px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423748495299014402" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S0UGhS1bbwI/AAAAAAAAAGs/Mvk1NqWOvsA/s320/IMAGE_048.jpg" //div/divp2. I was very sad to hear that Cindy span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error"Brochman/span had passed away after her long battle with cancer. She ran with Nichole on the run n fun team, and I only ever heard good things about her. /pp3. I did the TC Championships this past weekend, and it was a ton of fun. I am looking forward to skiing it next year, and span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"hopefully/span I will get out on classic skis a bit more before that race. This year I got out great at the start (and avoided the large pile-up), but I did not have the fitness to stick with the leaders. This kind of worries me, since I signed up for the long race at all of the big races this year (COLL, Mora, span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error"Birkie/span). It also could be because I am not as good of a classic skier. The skate race on span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"Sunday/span went well. Even though I still lost more time to Bjorn and Matt than I would have liked, I was able to post the 5span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span fastest skate time of the day and catch a number of guys who beat me in the classic race. /ppspan id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error"Vakava/span skiers (and others we claim as our own) at TC Champs: /ppMen: 2span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span overall-Bjorn span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error"Batdorf/span (1st in classic, 2span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span in skate), 8span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Nathan span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error"Porath/span, 19span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Derek span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error"Wallen/span, 27span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Andy span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error"Schakel/span, 32span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span-Dave span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error"Christopherson/span (1st in age group), 33rd-Ryan span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error"Atwell/span, 38span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Per Nelson, 50span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Kevin span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-error"Ivens/span, /ppWomen: 1st overall-Jojo Winters (2span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span in classic, 4span id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span in skate), 3rd-Kathleen span id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" class="blsp-spelling-error"Dewall/span (1st in skate), 5span id="SPELLING_ERROR_27" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Angie Robinson (3rd in skate), 8span id="SPELLING_ERROR_28" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Cheryl span id="SPELLING_ERROR_29" class="blsp-spelling-error"Dubois/span, 10span id="SPELLING_ERROR_30" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Margie Nelson, 13span id="SPELLING_ERROR_31" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Mel span id="SPELLING_ERROR_32" class="blsp-spelling-error"McMillian/span, 18span id="SPELLING_ERROR_33" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Sara Conrad, 22span id="SPELLING_ERROR_34" class="blsp-spelling-error"nd/span-Katie Anderson, 24span id="SPELLING_ERROR_35" class="blsp-spelling-error"th/span-Allie span id="SPELLING_ERROR_36" class="blsp-spelling-error"Rykken/span/pimg style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 355px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 244px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423755971913996114" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/S0UNUfZWV1I/AAAAAAAAAG0/K2gyH50mOhA/s320/IMG_1544.jpg" /4. Bert span id="SPELLING_ERROR_37" class="blsp-spelling-error"Blyleven/span misses the baseball span id="SPELLING_ERROR_38" class="blsp-spelling-error"HOF/span by 5 votes. Seriously? Go Twins.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-3283735432442092510?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

In high school I heard a saying that stuck with me: "Excuses are like backsides*. Everyone has one and they all stink." (*You can imagine what the backsides word usually is.) However, I have a couple weird excuses I'm dealing with now.br /br /As I whined to several of you about, I had a catheter ablation performed on my heart in mid-November in order to hopefully cure my atrial fibrillation. This problem started becoming noticeable soon after I ran the Twin Cities Marathon in 2006. My heart would skip around randomly at a high rate, and for no good reason. Within about a year, this was happening to me about every 7-10 days, and the episodes lasted for up to 24 hours or longer. When it happened, I couldn't even walk up stairs without getting winded. Then I could go out the next day after it was over and pound a 20 mile run...it was weird. br /br /After my collegiate track/CC teammate from Notre Dame, Ryan Shay, died of a heart attack in the Olympic marathon trials in November of '07, I decided I had to get checked out right away. (Incidentally, the last time I saw him was when we went out to dinner after that Twin Cities marathon the year before.) The doctors told me I had "A. Fib" and sent me on my way. I didn't try drugs until the summer of '08, and then added another drug in October of that year after I had to walk away from the start line of the TC 10 miler because an episode started minutes before the gun.br /br /The drugs didn't work well, so I went to Mayo to have the surgery done. I was out for about 8 hours, during which time the burned the portions of my heart containing bad electrical pathways in order to "open" those circuits. That's my extremely dumbed-down explanation, but the hope is that this stops the conduction of the erratic electrical signals that caused my Afib. Now, about 6.5 weeks after the surgery, I'm still Afib-free. br /br /However, two things are holding me back on the athletic front. First, my phrenic nerve was damaged, so my right diaphragm is partially paralyzed. It pushes up against my lung rather than going down when I breathe. Second, I started noticing lately that my heart rate is weird. My resting rate now is 90 (which is not so surprising since my resting rate when I'm healthy is usually way up in the 70s), but the absolute max I've been able to hit so far is 165, which I confirmed by wearing a monitor during a skate interval session on Monday. That is over 20-30 bpm lower than what I'm pretty sure it should be. I know it was generally not too difficult for me to stay in the 170s or 180s for sustained efforts before the surgery.br /br /The doc thinks that it's possible my sympathetic nervous system was affected during the ablation, and along with the phrenic nerve, it should heal over several months. But for now I'm left with a couple barriers to any success this season. I'm going to keep training hard and hoping things come around by late February for the big races. In the mean time, if I miss some Wednesday workouts (like tonight), it is likely because I'm still trying to do my own stuff where I experiment and watch what happens with my max rate. Hopefully things will get better soon, and I'm left with a strong Afib-free heart.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-7121153133413060488?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

I was planning on racing the span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error"Pre/span-Season Physical today. I wanted to get a few shorter, easier races in before the bigger, longer races start in January and thought I may as well start with that one. The problem was that I'd had a very disorganized week and ended up doing very little training early in the week due to weather and whatnot and tried to cram in a bunch on Friday and Saturday. By Saturday afternoon by body was very tired and I was feeling my legs quite a bit when trying to sled with my son. I figured I'd do the race anyway even though I was tired and hadn't prepared my skis just so I could get on a starting line and get used to the whole race thing again. So I got all my clothes ready for morning and went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke from a dream about the race. I was in the middle of the race skiing nice and easy and feeling good. I figured it was time to pick up the pace and took off. I quickly started getting more and more tired. Soon I was dragging myself along on my belly through the snow until I finally ran completely out of steam and just lay there in the snow, exhausted, unable to crawl any further. When I woke up, I figured by body was trying to tell me something and that it was best to listen. I reached over and turned off the alarm. As hard as it is to back off sometimes, I've learned that it just doesn't pay to ignore your body. It knows best. I'm a little disappointed that I missed it, but feel it was the right span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"decision/span. I still have a few opportunities to get some races in this month and hopefully I'll be able to plan ahead and be better prepared.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-2784954311080785594?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

The title could be taken a couple of ways.br /1. It has been a long time since my last post here.br /2. Unfortunately it was even longer since my last time on snow.br /br /I am currently up in span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Hibbing/span, MN doing required outreach as a part of my last year in dental school. The dentistry is great - I have been seeing more patients than I usually would at the school clinic, and the clinic itself is quite nice. When I learned that I would be heading to span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Hibbing/span in December I thought "well at least they will probably have more snow than the metro". span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"Unfortunately/span I was wrong. So while my wife is shoveling out our house in Red Wing, and the span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"Vakava/span team is doing intervals on snow in St. Paul, yesterday I was double poling back and forth on a little used road not far from the clinic. At least I was on snow (span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"Hibbing/span got less than an inch from the storm that span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"buried/span parts of the span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"Midwest/span = lots of new "speed grooves" in the rock skis). It had been 5 weeks between time skiing on snow!br /br /Today I tried to drive to Giant's Ridge today to ski under the lights. But as I tried to coast to a stop at a stop light my car started to accelerate on its own! I grabbed the floor mat to make sure it was not caught on the gas pedal, but that was not the problem. I put the car in span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"neutral/span to see if that solved things, but that just made my car jump to 7000 span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"RPMs/span (but at least I wasn't accelerating anymore). All I could do was shut the car off and steer to the side of the road. When I tried to start the car it immediately jumped to 4500 span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"RPMs/span. After getting the number for the towing company from my wife I tried to start the car one last time. After some clanking and grinding the car seemed to be running normally. I had a span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"dilemma/span. I wanted to ski, but I was 20 miles into a 40 mile trip, and it was probably a lot better to be stranded in span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"Hibbing/span (where I at least have classmates with cars) than at the Ridge (even if the do have lit trails with some snow). So I aborted my ski for the night and drove back to span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"Hibbing/span. span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"Fortunately/span the dental clinic here is one building over from the auto mechanic school at the community college, and they will be able to look at my car tomorrow. Hopefully they can figure out what is going on with my car, because I have 5 pairspan class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"s of/span skis in the back, and I am craving getting on some more snow!div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-3001900491770630774?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

Nichole and I have now completed our move to Red Wing, and the first benifit of said move was that while the twin cities got no accumulating snow last friday afternoon, Red Wing (40 miles to the south) got 4 inches of snow. This allowed me to get my first day of on snow skiing in on Saturday morning. I drove over to the middle school and skied around the soccer fields and dirt track. The snow was melting fast so I only got an hour in, but it was a fantastic ski (40 degrees and sunny at the start, and 50 degrees by the end), and harries were kicking great. I could tell that my arms are used to the nice easy gliding of rollerskis - they were sore after double poling through the mush for only that hour.br /br /This week has been rainy. Last night's rollerski with Vakava was a classic workout on the big river trail with 30 minutes of "on" interval time. It was also our last week on rollerskis (it gets dark too early, especially with daylight savings ending this weekend). Fortunately we were able to avoid most of the heavy rain, but it was still very wet. Some how I managed to lose a rear fender off the back of my marwes during a ski last week, and I sure missed it yesterday. Without the fender on the wheels seemed to take the water on the road and just dump it down the back of the cuff of my classic boots. I was sloshing in standing water in my boot after just a few minutes. It did motivate me to double pole more and DP kick less - double poleing kept my feet in place and the water was able to warm up around them better.br /br /Here's hoping for snow soon so that we will have fewer weeks of dryland at como park... :)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-5791842755987518220?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

We had our last roller ski time trial of the season today. I had not been looking forward to it. I'd been a bit worn out with all sorts of things since coming back from our camp in Hayward a couple weeks earlier. So I hadn't been training very hard or sleeping nearly enough and was not feeling at all chipper. But I hadn't done the previous time trial and wanted to get the last one in, so I decided to go and not worry about the outcome. I needed a good workout at any rate since I hadn't been doing much. So after a fairly stressful and busy day I fought the traffic down to Afton and got there a bit late. I ended up starting the skate time trial by myself and it felt about how I had expected, dreary, like the weather. But I was able to get myself into my classic gear in short order and caught up with the others for the warm up for the next round. We started the classic time trial as a pack and I wasn't sure I was up to being pushed that hard and demoralized and that perhaps a private pity party would be better, but I jumped in anyway. What the heck, I was there, may as well, whatever. I felt surprisingly good and skied in a nice pack with Kevin, Dave, and Kathleen. We skied the whole thing together and it was so much fun!!! I felt good and the pack dynamics were great. We all finished strong together and it was so invigorating! All my cares melted away. I felt like a new woman. Since starting up racing again after my long hiatus, I've been trying to figure out why I'm doing this. I don't have the high goals and purpose that I had before, so why am I working so hard and putting in the tremendous effort it takes to ski at this level with all of my other responsibilities? I know that the regular exercise and friendships are really important to me, but I can still have that and just ski recreationally, so why push myself so hard? Tonight really reminded me why I do it, because I love it so much. So thanks guys for the pick me up! I needed it.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-4423052746353916931?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

This past Sunday was the Des Moines Marathon. My wife Nichole was running, and I was looking for a good way to see as much of the course as I could (and my bike has a flat tire that I have not fixed in months), so I threw the rollerskis into the trunk and away we went to Iowa. The morning of the race I did all the helpful husband things to get her ready for the start. We jogged a warm up together and I took her warmups just before the gun went off. After watching the start I sprinted to the car parked a few blocks away and got my boots, skis and poles on. Then I sprinted to the mile and a half mark to spectate.br /br /Watching a running race on rollerskis actually works quite well - assuming there are parallel streets to ski on. I would watch the race go by (taking Nichole's long sleeve, or handing her a gel as needed), then I would head over to the parallel street, hammer for a mile or two, and head back to the course to cheer again. She got the feeds that she needed, and I got to see her at many different points of the race while getting a decent workout in the process (I'd call it natural intervals).br /br /The most entertaining part of rollerskiing along the race course was the looks I got from the spectators (and a number of calls of "hey, thats cheating"). I guess there are not a lot of rollerskiers in Des Moines. Even funnier were the looks I got from runners - especially the Kenyans in the elite pack. They looked at me like I was crazy. I definately don't think there are many rollerskiers in Kenya.br /br /Near the end of the race I got back to the car, back into running shoes, and back out to watch the last half mile. Nichole was hurting pretty good at that point (i.e having a hard time running in a straight line), and it was nice to have the mobility to be able to jump the finish barrier to help her hobble to a cot in the medical tent (she was fine after some rest). Her race went well. She finished in 2:55:53, which was not quite as fast as she was hoping, but still a new personal best, and it puts her less than 10 minutes off the Olympic Trials standard.br /br /Check out a href="http://nicholerunning.blogspot.com/2009/10/25552-not-great-day-but-ill-take-new-pr.html"her blog/a for the first hand accountdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-4652919774907168976?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPxrrikbkI/AAAAAAAAAAw/DMEi7L1yi4M/s1600-h/IMG_1219.JPG"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391918911617003074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPxrrikbkI/AAAAAAAAAAw/DMEi7L1yi4M/s200/IMG_1219.JPG" border="0" //aI got out for a ski today! I grabbed my oldest classic skis and a bag of kick wax out of the basement on my way out the door this morning. I don't think those skis have been waxed in at least 15 years, but no matter, I didn't expect it to be fast anyway. When I got to Gross Golf course, which is right by where I work, I discovered that the bag of wax didn't include a cork. No matter again, I just applied some purple powergrip and used nature's first cork, the heel of my palm. I apparently took too long messing with my skis because a guy came and told me I couldn't ski on the course yet. No matter! I just went to the cemetary across the street. I occassionally run and roller ski there in the summer. There is great asphalt, no traffic, and rolling terrain. Plus I've never been asked to leave. I also saw another woman running the road in there today so I wasn't alone, and the other occupants didn't seem to mind my presence. It was a bit strange to ski among the barely turned leaves and stones, but also very peaceful and beautiful. All in all it was a very nice ski. Hopefully it won't be long before I can get out again.br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPz1OYoQRI/AAAAAAAAABQ/P9kQL45ScGI/s1600-h/IMG_1221.JPG"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391921274612629778" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPz1OYoQRI/AAAAAAAAABQ/P9kQL45ScGI/s320/IMG_1221.JPG" border="0" //aa href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPz0oAklBI/AAAAAAAAABI/ZdNGvbevmYY/s1600-h/IMG_1222.JPG"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391921264311178258" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0mcuVMtIy44/StPz0oAklBI/AAAAAAAAABI/ZdNGvbevmYY/s320/IMG_1222.JPG" border="0" //adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-594565783784822532?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

OK this is my test since I've never written a blog before. My prior posts were actually emailed to Nate and he published them for me so here goes:br /Training is going pretty well. I think I'm a little behind last summer at this time due to a strained ab muscle and a few other things but I'm feeling good now and hoping I can have a good fall. I did intervals yesterday with my new heart rate monitor - yes, I guess I am a technology resistor - and was surprised that I could not get my HR above 170. I'm either a wimp or I have a low max HR. Regardless, I figured that today should be a recovery day. I lifted weights in the AM and this afternoon went out for a relaxing skate in North Oaks, throwing in a couple of pick ups. During one fast pickup on the flats I flushed an owl. A big one. As I watched it take flight right in front of me I noticed a snake dangling from it's beak. Most of my memorable wildlife sightings are great all around experiences but this one left me with a puzzling combination of awe and eww.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-6710574507690981878?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

div align="left"One of the nicest parts of being a professional student is the breaks. This August I got what will probably be the last month long break until I retire (wow... sad). I am making pretty good use of my time. I'm working on finding a job for when I graduate next spring (anyone want to hire a dentist?), studying a bit for board exams, and getting in some good training. Nichole actually has a job, but she took last week off and we went up north for some "relaxation". Most of our vacations consist of some form of beating our bodies, and this year we decided to have a go at backpacking. I have a bit of experience backpacking, having been on a number of such trips during my boy scout days, but Nichole had never experienced the joys of carrying everything you need to survive on your back while hiking from place to place. Although our plan had been to camp for 3 days, by day two we had decided that backpacking was too slow, and that cars had been invented for a reason. So we got ourselves out to a road, ditched our packs in the woods, and did what we are more comfortable doing on vacation -run (all the way to our car). We picked up our packs, drove to the next state park, took some pics at the waterfalls, and then drove to my parent's cabin near Hayward, WI. It was a great decision. We spent the rest of the week running, kayaking, and span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error"rollerskiing/span around Hayward (I had a black bear cross the road in front of me when I was out span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error"rollerskiing/span. That was a first!). It was my first 15+ hour week of training since last year's summer vacation with Nichole :) /divdiv align="center"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376974291291872882" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/Sp7ZoSbcHnI/AAAAAAAAAGU/kwa7RhTrQBI/s320/P1030142.JPG" /Nichole saying "what am I doing out here?"/divdiv align="center" img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376974820541927746" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/Sp7aHGCfEUI/AAAAAAAAAGc/_zerC4hIFdU/s320/P1030153.JPG" /Feeling much better after the run back to the car (and the pack off)./divdiv align="center" img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376975066593285186" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hvZteNu0E40/Sp7aVaps1EI/AAAAAAAAAGk/wQgS-1ceSB4/s320/P1030162.JPG" /Lesson of trip: exploring without backpacks exploring with backpacks./divdiv align="left"br /br /Overall my training has been going very well. This has been my best summer ever - even better than my summers during college. My goal at the beginning of the year was to train one hour a week more that what I had done the year before, and so far 26 weeks into the training year I am already 42 hours ahead of last year. A lot of that has been on span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error"rollerskis/span (I have nearly doubled my hours on span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error"rollerskis/span this year compared to last year), but I have also increased my running (100 miles more this year than this point last year).br /br /Hopefully the training will show up in the ski races this winter, but it already has been showing in running races this summer (my PR in the half marathon has come down 2 minutes), and our span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error"rollerski/span time trials this summer. Yesterday was our second Afton 2 x 5k time trail. It is 5k skate followed by ~20 minutes of recovery followed by a 5k classic time trial. We do this 2 or 3 times a summer, and it allows for pretty good comparison from year to year and at different points in the season. Yesterday I did not feel really great in either the skate or the classic, but I did feel strong. My times were really fast. I set new personal bests in both skate and classic by almost 30 seconds (and I have done this course a number of times over the last couple of years). Conditions were ideal yesterday, so that was probably worth a couple of seconds, but it is a good indication that I am in much better shape than I have been at any point in the last 2 years. Bring on the snow!br /br /I should have full results from the TT later today./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-6603883664432352279?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

span style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-family:arial;"Hi all,/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /I'm new to the group, and since I have to be out of state this summer (unfortunately), I thought I should post something so I'm not totally forgotten so soon after I met most of you.../span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /Summer has been hectic...here's a summary: I was married on May 23rd in Minneapolis, and then left for 10 days in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Less than a week after I returned to Minneapolis, I left for 10 days in Japan. I presented a paper at a circuit design conference, but figured as long as I'd be half way around the world, I really had to spend some time touring. Less than a week after I got back from Japan, I moved to Austin, TX for a few months to do another internship with IBM Research. I'm about ready to finish my PhD in CMOS circuit design at the U of MN, but it's not a great time to be looking for jobs, so I'm kind of waiting out the worst part of the recession before finishing up. Therefore, coming back to Austin (for my 3rd stint here) provided me with a chance to get some more experience and earn a decent paycheck for awhile./span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /The summer in Austin is always a killer, but this summer has been one of their worst ever. The high temp has been over 100 almost every day since I arrived at the end of June. And, no, it's NOT a dry heat. So although the temps "cool down" to a little under 80F in the early morning, the humidity is usually ~80%. There is no choice but to deal with this if you want to run or rollerski outdoors, so we just get used to it and accept that paces won't be quite as fast./span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /Although some weekend traveling has interrupted my training schedule a couple times, here is a normal week for me now:/spanbr /br /span style="font-family:arial;"M: 11-12 mile run, lift/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /Tu: 11-12 mile run with 30 min tempo (~5:30 pace), lift/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /W: 1:10-1:20 rollerski/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /Th: 10 mile run with speed work (track or fartlek), lift/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /F: 11-13 mile run, lift/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /Sa: 15+ mile run/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /Su: long-ish rollerski (hope to be getting this to 2.5+ hours soon)/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /Hope you are all enjoying the cool weather up north!/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /John/span span style="font-family:arial;"br /br /ps. here are some pics from my travels:br /br //span /spandiv style="text-align: center;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:85%;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BHb-Q9fL1qI/Sn2lpNtnxRI/AAAAAAAABvU/P5tKnKxK514/s1600-h/DSCN0217.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BHb-Q9fL1qI/Sn2lpNtnxRI/AAAAAAAABvU/P5tKnKxK514/s320/DSCN0217.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367628458369729810" border="0" //a/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" The new wife (Sarah) and I in Mexico./spanspan style="font-size:85%;"br /br //span/divspan style="font-size:85%;" /spandiv style="text-align: center;font-family:arial;"span style="font-size:85%;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BHb-Q9fL1qI/Sn2lo1gyzmI/AAAAAAAABvM/UXKOJQaUNOI/s1600-h/John_KaminarimonGate_SensojiTemple.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BHb-Q9fL1qI/Sn2lo1gyzmI/AAAAAAAABvM/UXKOJQaUNOI/s320/John_KaminarimonGate_SensojiTemple.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367628451873476194" border="0" //a/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" class="gphoto-photocaption-caption" Sensōji Temple in Asakusa. It's a Buddhist temple, and Tokyo's oldest. In this picture you actually see the Kaminarimowbrn, or “Thunder Gate". The temple is behind that./span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-4340859546926807729?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div