Vasaloppet adventure

Wow, what a race. Only one word can describe a race where you go 90km, in
windy conditions, with temps below ten degrees F, involving over 1000
vertical feet of climbing, on a fresh 4 inches of dry, unpackable snow.
BRUTAL

We arrived in Stockholm on Thursday afternoon after a great flight and train
ride. Sightseeing, Gamla Stan (old town), and dinner (Die Ecke) with some
friends in town. Friday we took the train up to Mora, arriving at 2pm.
Unpacked, went skiing immediately. 10km easy out from town up the
Vasaloppet trail. 4 lanes of classic led up to the local system of over
30km of amazing lighted trails. The Mora locals are blessed with amazing
skiing, grooming and terrain. Saturday we went out for another easy ski,
watched the women's world cup and cheered on Marit Bjorgen to a piece of
post olympic revenge. Hilde Pederson (at 40+ years of age) came in a fairly
close second to secure the Norwegian 1-2. An early pasta dinner with
friends from Leksand, then back to our apartment for pre-race prep.

Sunday morning we woke up at 330am to get dressed, eat breakfast, and walk
into town. Catch the bus to Salen (Berga actually) and on the start line by
7am. Race starts at 8am. Weird. No gun to start the race, everyone just
takes off !! Caught me by surprise.

So... things i've learned after vasaloppet #1.

A. Go out fast. Pretend its a 5km. You will get to the hill fast and you
WON"T have to wait in line for 20 minutes going up a a hill. I went out
slow, got passed by 2000 people in 2km and ended up taking an hour to ski
the first 10km !! Ouch. Big mistake.

B. Line up on the far RIGHT, not left like me. Its faster and shorter
distance to the hill.

C. Get there early. Its the only way to get a spot on the right of the
start. Sure, you'll be out in the cold longer but just dress warm and
huddle up somewhere.

D. Old Swedish men (AND WOMEN) can kick your ass easily. It doesnt matter
how good you think you are or how hard you train, accept the fact that as
you confidently stride up a hill someone looking 70+ will pass you.

E. 90km is a long ways. EAT EAT EAT. I ate only one GU before 50km and
felt like SH**. At 50km i had two glasses of blueberry soup, a caffeinated
Gu, a glass of "broth" (good and salty), a cookie, and a glass of gatorade.
Then, i promptly passed 200 people. Too bad there were 3000 more in front
of me.

F. 90km is a long ways. The last 20km is all mental. You have nothing
left in the tank. Eat and eat cuz thats the only fuel that will get you
through the race.

G. Swedes dont talk during the race. Weird. It was DEAD silent out there
much of the race. In US races I talk and hear a lot of talking.

H. Everyone in Sweden has done the Vasaloppet like 5 times. We were in a
Stockholm bar on Monday after the race. Some guy heard us speaking English
and asked what we were doing in town. We told him our Vasaloppet story....
He said "Oh yeah, I heard it was the toughest race conditions in 20 years.
Glad I didnt do it this year." We asked... you've done it before? "Oh
sure, 7 times. Wow. We heard this from many people.

I. The Mora area is the UP of Michigan. Its like identical. Exactly the
same. Only difference is the language.

J. People lined all 55.8 miles of the course. We didnt go more than 400
yards without seeing a spectator. And, they were all listening to their
radios so they could hear what was going on at the front of the pack with
Tynell, Ahrlin, Svard, Aukland, etc.

Overall - 3260 in 6 hours 53 min.
Many people said in normal conditions skiers would have been 1 to 1:30
faster !!


JK

Pictures from our trip at ...
http://pasty.com/pcam/jeffkal

Good tough ski! Thanks for the report. --JP

32 degrees kirjoitti:


A. Go out fast. Pretend its a 5km. You will get to the hill fast and y=
ou
WON"T have to wait in line for 20 minutes going up a a hill. I went out
slow, got passed by 2000 people in 2km and ended up taking an hour to ski
the first 10km !! Ouch. Big mistake.

Now that was really slow-going! The average time from the *3rd* wave
was apparently just under 50 minutes this year and someone who took the
far left like you found himself seeing numbers like "5xxx" in front of
him and taking 59min+ to reach Sm=E5gan.

OTOH it's true that Vasaloppet is "a sprint followed by 2km of uphill
diagonal followed by 88km of doublepoling":-)


B. Line up on the far RIGHT, not left like me. Its faster and shorter
distance to the hill.

That depends:-) Since everyone knows that taking the right is supposed
to be the fastest, it often results in nothing but a lot of frustrated
skiers and angry looks there and the left side being faster, which is
why many shrewd skiers deliberately line up on the left - and the
general consensus is that it really doesn't matter (just as long as you
don't get unlucky and stuck behind real slow starters or a big
entaglement of skis and poles).

However, this year it was apparently so that the tracks on the right
side were more (recently) prepared and the tracks especially on the far
left side were much slower due to the two inches of new snow.


C. Get there early. Its the only way to get a spot on the right of the
start. Sure, you'll be out in the cold longer but just dress warm and
huddle up somewhere.

There really isn't much difference between being in the 2nd last row of
the 2nd wave or the 2nd first row of the 3rd wave - and which row one
gets is indeed decided by how early one gets there (and some people
*will* be there at 6AM).


E. 90km is a long ways. EAT EAT EAT. I ate only one GU before 50km and
felt like SH**. At 50km i had two glasses of blueberry soup, a caffeinat=
ed
Gu, a glass of "broth" (good and salty), a cookie, and a glass of gatorad=
e=2E
Then, i promptly passed 200 people. Too bad there were 3000 more in front
of me.

Everyone knows that and everyone ends up speeding past the two or even
three control points in an effort to pass as many skiers as possible in
order to win back the position they feel they lost in the start and
everyone learns the hard way that it really isn't the right way...


G. Swedes dont talk during the race. Weird. It was DEAD silent out the=
re
much of the race. In US races I talk and hear a lot of talking.

Apparenlty it's more of a gab festival at the back of the field, but,
you know, one man's wierd is another man's perfectly normal! I thought
you flew all the way from the U.S. to ski, not to talk:-)


H. Everyone in Sweden has done the Vasaloppet like 5 times. We were in a
Stockholm bar on Monday after the race. Some guy heard us speaking Engli=
sh
and asked what we were doing in town. We told him our Vasaloppet story..=
..=2E
He said "Oh yeah, I heard it was the toughest race conditions in 20 years.
Glad I didnt do it this year." We asked... you've done it before? "Oh
sure, 7 times. Wow. We heard this from many people.

II'm not saying it isn't so, but it's also that in a sense doing the
Vasaloppet is in a sense a kind of passing rite for every Swedish male
past thirty or so and even if you haven't actually done it (or only
done it once in 11 hours), "in their bar talk* they may have done it
multiple times (or in a little over 5 hours). ..


Overall - 3260 in 6 hours 53 min.
Many people said in normal conditions skiers would have been 1 to 1:30
faster !!

30min+ for the elites would IMHO mean about 45-60min for the active
skiers and 1:30-2:00 for the large masses.

It would appear that for the 2nd-3rd wave skiers who ended up with
poorly gliding skis, the most common sin was putting on too many layers
of kick wax.

FWIW a 61-year old Swedish professor did the =D6ppen Sp=E5r in 5:29 on
Sunday and 5:50 on Monday - using skis prepared by Leonid Kuzmin! OTOH
though the temperatures were similar, there wasn't quite the same "Cold
New Snow Blues" (for which there really is no perfect cure) as for the
Vasaloppet proper skiers.




Anders

Fly in Thurs., then race Sunday means you must have had
at least some bad effect from jet lag, unless you adopted
some time-acclimatization back in the U.S. Any idea of how
much effect that might have been? I was a bit worse a few
years ago in Norway: in Thurs., race Sat.
From comparing to a couple
of faster Norwegians who come over for the Keskinada,
I like to think (kid myself??)
that it maybe cost me 15 minutes on a 4.5 hour race.

Best, Peter

Peter H. wrote:
Fly in Thurs., then race Sunday means you must have had
at least some bad effect from jet lag, unless you adopted
some time-acclimatization back in the U.S. Any idea of how
much effect that might have been? I was a bit worse a few
years ago in Norway: in Thurs., race Sat.
From comparing to a couple
of faster Norwegians who come over for the Keskinada,
I like to think (kid myself??)
that it maybe cost me 15 minutes on a 4.5 hour race.

Best, Peter

It has been my experience with travelling back and forth between Norway
and the US, that it is much easier to adjust going westward. It can be
rough eastward!

Joseph

correction -- just read that the Swedish Vasaloppet has 4000 feet of
climbing. Double pole fest? Not this year.

JK

"32 degrees" wrote:

correction -- just read that the Swedish Vasaloppet has 4000 feet of
climbing. Double pole fest? Not this year.

JK

That's ~50'/k average of climbing (1380m/~4600' total).

GG

32 degrees wrote:
correction -- just read that the Swedish Vasaloppet has 4000 feet of
climbing. Double pole fest? Not this year.

Vasaloppet is basically flat, at least for a Scandinavian ski race.

It was almost won some years ago by a guy who DP'ed all the way (due to
a hip injury he couldn't ski normally), winning all the intermediate
sprint prices before finally being overtaken within the last 10-20 k.

Terje

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

Unfortunately tv coverage started only about 2hours into it, so I missed the
hilly part of the race. As most of it was downhill thereafter, the pro's
made it look like a fieldtrip.
No way for me to tell it was one of the hardest editions in modern time,
especially with all the front runner's heartrate being shown in graphics,
like they were cruising through most of time, nothing to break a sweat over.
But a day of doublepoling...I get tired within a minute now, and getting
no-where!
I'm not interested in classical much, but when I someday get into XC, the
Vasaloppet does look like something I want to take part in. The same start
as all the superstars, same course, just a couple hours more of it.

"Terje Mathisen" schreef in bericht
...
32 degrees wrote:
correction -- just read that the Swedish Vasaloppet has 4000 feet of
climbing. Double pole fest? Not this year.

Vasaloppet is basically flat, at least for a Scandinavian ski race.

It was almost won some years ago by a guy who DP'ed all the way (due to
a hip injury he couldn't ski normally), winning all the intermediate
sprint prices before finally being overtaken within the last 10-20 k.

Terje

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

That 1380m of climbing just kind of bothered me, so I took
a look at the course profile and tried to remember from about
20 years ago when I skied it. I do realize the profile won't show
climbs of 10 or 15 meters.
The horizontal lines are 100, 200, etc. meters.
It sure looks a lot closer to 380 m. total than 1380.

The Eurosport website is the only place I've seen the figure,
and I suppose web sites rank below newspapers
(and those somewhat below some
sports scientists) for credibility.
So it would be interesting to know whether that 1380
figure is given somewhere more believable.
If it's anywhere close to that much climb,
then I was a lot better skier in those days than I recall.

As my friend John B. has said:
"The older I get, the better I used to be!"

Best, Peter