Ken Roberts wrote:

Parham wrote

For me, the overall experience and the terrain choose
the skiing technique rather than the other way round...


For a 15 km tour, I can agree. But when it's 120-140 km of skiing, then the
choice of technique matters a lot to me.

Because skating is just more fun, and I enjoy skating all year long. I will
easily do more km (and days?) in road skate tours than snow skating this
year. For ski tour with more than 100 km of classic striding, I'd have to
have a separate training program just to get ready for it. So before I do
that, I need to ask what are the special benefits of CSM.

Also I have to justify 8 hours of driving time and wear-and-tear on my
car -- twice. For that amount of transportation, I have some
alternatives -- since Sharon and I live only 15 minutes from a major
international airport:

(A) fly non-stop to Geneva, arrive 9am on Saturday morning, hire a car,
drive an hour into the Jura mountains, and skate 30 km that afternoon. Next
day the entire Transjurasienne course, like 70 km of _skating_. Next day
drive south to the Alps

(B) fly to Reno and ski some of the big tours in the Lake Tahoe area,
including the Royal Gorge perimeter tour that Mark just told us about. Time
my trip to hit one of the special events (Kirkwood - Echo Summit?). Then
the great Sierra backcountry tours

(C) fly to Oslo. True, that's more than 8 hours transportation time. But
it's Norway -- maybe there's _some_ skating?

The 50 K loop (3 x 16.7) is always in perfect conditions for skating,
except that on alterante years they'll set classic tracks a few days
before the actual race.

_Many_ other trails (including most lighted trails) are wide enough that
you'll have a classic track on each side, plus room enough for skating
in the middle.

Terje

--
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"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"