Susitna 100 Miler

Cool article on FasterSkier.com by Cory Smith who surprised only
himself by winning it.

A couple pictures included Tim Kelley, occassionl RSN guy, and multiple
winner of this race. 2nd place finisher this year.

Cory says he took Tim 's advice, going with short, overbuilt skis,
ending up on some 184cm Nordix skate skis from Atomic. Short to deal
with the snomobile trails they skied.

There is a shot of Tim at the finish line on what appear to be a long
tip classic ski. Wondering about that - why not skate ? I suppose it
might be a conditional thing - if it were really soft, the skating
could be tougher, and the striding should be faster, I suppose. But
Cory says it was soft. Maybe Tim really well actually, and classic skis
were the reason why he was pretty close to Cory most of the time.

Tim, I hope to hear a few words from you on this race if you like. It
sounds like a really great adventure.

Hi Dell,

You might take a look at the link to the 2004 (last year's) Su 100
article that Cory wrote. Here it is:
http://www.fasterskier.com/training917.html

Scroll down to the pictures at the bottom and you will find the answer.
Here I show how to make your own carbon fiber tips that you can attach
to skate skis (185 cm Fischer SCS's in my case). The Su 100 is a skate
race. And you want ot use skate skis. But the trails are often quite
narrow and bumpy. And with the low profile tips on skate skis these
days - they have a tendency to auger into the banks on the side of
snowmobile trails. And then stay augered in as you ski by and have
your groin ripped in two!

By adding the tip extensions the skis bounce off the sides of the
trails and don't penetrate. Also, when you get into the whoop-de-do
snowmobile bumps - especially when you are travelling fast and the
bumps are soft, the skis float over the bumps better.

The bottom line is - modern advances for skis that may be good for 20
foot wide skate trails are actually backward steps for skis if you want
to use them on primitive trails. In these cases, because ski companies
have recently taken the tips off of performance skis ... you have to
put them back on.

By the way - in the picture on the above web page the tips were made
purely of graphite fiber. But they proved to be too brittle. I'm on
the third generation of tip extensions now, and they are a
kevlar-graphite-kevlar sandwich. The kevlar is less brittle and it
makes the tips a lot tougher.

As far as words on this kind of racing (and in my case - long distance
ski treks in Alaska) - it's addictive! If you get into this game you
may want to do this stuff all of the time and your track racing will
suffer! But you will have a lot of fun and a lot of great new
adventures.

Tim

PS - I wasn't surprised by Cory winning either. I'm a big Cory fan.
He's a tough guy, a nice guy, a very cool guy and a fun guy to do
adventures with. And I've got the feeling he's getting the "Ultra Ski
Additiction"! So you will probably see more Ultra Ski stuff on
fasterskier.com in the future. Go long !!

Cool fixes and neat sled! And super skiing, too! ---Bothayouse.

--JP

On 17 Mar 2005 13:02:57 -0800, "Tim Kelley"
wrote:

Hi Dell,

You might take a look at the link to the 2004 (last year's) Su 100
article that Cory wrote. Here it is:
http://www.fasterskier.com/training917.html


Wow, you ate a lot less than I would have expected.

JFT

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John,
It seems that for 12-14 hour endurance races ... you can get by eating
less than your caloric burn rate per hour and burn body fat reserves.
Of course - the next day you are pretty much dry-toast. It's the
multi-day ski races where you have to start gobbling down the 7000-9000
calories and drinking a gallon or two of fluids a day.
TK

Tim,

Great article. I'll be darned on the tip mods. Very cool.

I have the narrow trail problem too. I havent even played with
snomobile trails, but I ski at a friends home-groomed trails, and also
at a legit ski center, but they never groom twice to get the width, so
it's very narrow, and I often jam my tips into the deep side of the
trails. This is an interesting idea.

It really messes up the V1 when you gotta short stroke it. Then I get
to the birkie, and there's miles of V1'ing to be done. I might do this.

In article .com,
delltodd wrote:
I have the narrow trail problem too. I havent even played with
snomobile trails, but I ski at a friends home-groomed trails, and also
at a legit ski center, but they never groom twice to get the width, so
it's very narrow, and I often jam my tips into the deep side of the
trails. This is an interesting idea.

I ski a bit on low-use snowmobile trails and have an ongoing
problem with burying my tips (being a crappy skier doesn't
help). Has anybody tried the Fischer Pacers or other very
short skate skis? I thought about picking up a pair last
year and now they seem to be generally unavailable.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

2/3 of the Social Security Trustees are political appointees

Anyone ever think of trying to somewhat closely replicate the Voyageurs
dayjob?

I've heard of pretty-close imitations, but never in terms of the
long-haul.

They paddled, what, 2000 miles in 2 months, carrying 90-lb packs over
sometimes multi-mile portages, and got a very standard daily ration of,
like, 2 quarts of dry corn. They supplemented with berries, etc.

Or maybe our month-long nonstoppers are basically doing justice already
to this reality?

Like Grandma Gatewood, the 67-yr-old lady who thru-hiked the AT in one
season carrying a 20-lb sack over her shoulder, wearing Keds, in 1954.

I suspect the Voyageurs would be proud of all you nuts out there
already! So fergit it: you're already there.

But just in case...a trip going past the Montreal is always waiting...

--JP

In article . com,
wrote:
Anyone ever think of trying to somewhat closely replicate the Voyageurs
dayjob?

There was a Canadian reality TV program in which a crew
rowed a York boat from Winnipeg to the Great Slave Lake.
You can't really do the voyageur thing anymore because you
can't live off the land. If you enjoy this sort of thing
you might enjoy Ken McGoogan's "Fatal Passage," a biography
of John Rae. Among other things Rae was known for being
able to cover 40 miles/day in the Arctic on snowshoes
carrying nothing but a rifle, ammunition, and sleeping gear.
He mapped a bunch of unknown territory and discovered what
happened to the Franklin expedition.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

2/3 of the Social Security Trustees are political appointees