From the Back of the Pack
I might always be in the back of the running pack, but I'm addicted to it! When I miss more than a day it affects my energy, attitude, and the rest of life in general! I have had a lot of "character" building runs in the deep snow, extreme nose hair freezing cold, ankle high rain, and gale force winds over the past twenty five years and find some of those days to be the most peaceful rewarding outings of all! I'm one of those runners who is slow and steady, but goes forever and ever without ever getting tired.
March 13, 2010: Tour Da Luth
I had a goal today, to do the Tour Da Luth no matter what the weather, snow conditions, or any other possible excuse I could have....and I did it...all of it except Snowflake because I am banned from there.
Even though this is a skiing post, it it does have a benefit for those of you who only run and miss out on this awesome winter cross training know what condition the trails around town are in for trail running.
Laambeaux and I began our day long skijoring tour of Duluth around 10:00 or so I think. We had shared a Burger King order of hashbrown tatortot thingies and a sausage, egg, and cheese Croissantwich...yes gross I know and it was all we ate the entire day! The weather grew foggier as heck as we skied. It was about 38' and the precipitation held off for the first half of this trail test. I could see about 8 feet out near the end of the ski ...to the end of Laambeaux's lead...the rest was just a fog. We began our adventure today at Magney Snively. Not knowing what to expect, I figured I'd end up hoofing it aways to the snow and skating a "K" or so then leaving. To my surprise, there was a TON of snow on the entire system, no ice, and depth of 6-8" too! Because I am directionally challenged, even with the detailed maps they have provided, I wound up taking a few wrong turns and ended up doing 8k! I did take a couple of falls, one really good one that twisted me up and filled my entire right ear with corn snow, that's gonna hurt tomorrow. I'm light so I stayed on top of the snow most of the time and when I did sink it caught me off guard and I went down a few times.
Towards the conclusion of our Magney journey, I looked over and could barely make out lone man in the fog just leaning against a tree. Ok, I'm in the middle of basically nowhere, and here's this man, just standing there doing nothing but looking at me. Unfortunately it was also at a junction where I had no idea of which way to go so I had to ask him. It reminded me of the Wizard of Oz and the Scarecrow...this guy even pointed like that with one arm too! I said hi, asked him what he was doing out in the middle of nowhere in this weather and he gave me a vague answer that I was not able to understand. At least he pointed me in the right direction to get back to my car! There were no footprints leading to where he was which makes me wonder if I really saw someone or if I just imagined it???? It will be awhile before Magney Snively is fun to run!
The next trail we visited was Spirit Mountain. Ron Weber had so graciously groomed it that very morning and I was the first to try it out! I skated the fresh courderoy of the 1k and campground loop a couple of times and was able to stay on top because of his great efforts! As we skijored, the fog and misting became heavier, my ski boots felt as though they had water sloshing around in them and I was pretty dang chilled from being wet all over!
It will be awhile before Spirit Mountain is fun to run.
Next stop Piedmont, for some classic skiing. This is a familiar trail to run, however, until today I was a virgin to skiing it. The first hundred yards or so were a bit icy, snowy, footprinty and dog poopy, however past that it was really awesome skiing! There was full snow coverage with no ice and minimal debris! We did have one stream to cross and managed to do it and stay dry somehow! It will be awhile before Piedmont is fun to run!
After Piedmont, we made the trek out to Lester and parked near the big boulders that indicate the start of the ski trails. We carefully walked along the trail a bit and decided that it was waaaaaay to treacherous to ski or run! The trails we could see were basically covered in patchy ice with minimal places to put feet down safely. This Lester will probably be ready to run soon and would be runable in Bug shoes now.
From Lester we headed to Hartley, at this point I was almost out of water for the day and wanted to just finish up the last three trails so I toughed it out. The trail from the parking lot was a combination of ice and bare ground. As soon as we turned the corner there was lots of snow and lots of footprints and lots of dog poop...do people realize it will still be there when the snow melts!!?? If ya don't have a bag, just flick it into the woods at least! We turned up the ski trail towards the pine trees and found lots of ice covered in tree debris and it stayed like this until we were out of the pine coverage. Once out of the pines, the loop was in great shape with full coverage, mostly snow, and hardly any footprints or poop! Parts of Hartley will be runable soon, the rest will be awhile.
Next stop, Bagley! We have run there a ton and this was our first skiing journey. We continued our classic skiing regime as this proved less "sinky" in certain conditions. Upon parking, I noticed Bruce Bauer getting ready to put his skiis in the car. He described conditions as "glideable"...yes, parts of it were glideable and he had nothing to really compare it to, it was slightly better than Lester. We did one loop carefully and found a lot of ice and some snow, tons of debris from trees, many footprints and some animal really likes to poop raisenette shapes all over the trail in mass quantity over and over and over! This was the first trail I had to actually take my skiis off on because of the conditions. Bagley should be runable in the near future!
Last stop Chester! Residing less than a mile from this trail and this being the first time ever using it to ski on...I was trying to determine just which trails were for skiing. We went through the deep slush of the soccer field and up the side trail of rocks to some more snow. There was a combination of snow, ice, and dog poop on the trail. We took the lower bypass after the bridge and decided that if we went up that hill alittle ways up, we had to eventually come down one somewhere and it looked dangerous. I figured falling in deep snow is one thing, falling on ice and rocks is gonna hurt a lot more! Portions of Chester should be ready for running soon!
Given the snowy conditions on all the trails, classic skiis or snowshoes would be the way to go for at least the next week or so unless we get that dumping of snow and the snow day we were robbed of this week due to temps forgetting to drop 10'!
Our day was concluded, our goal was reached, our bones are in tact, although my already injured wrist is quite a bit worse off, and we did it all in 40', misting rain, fueled by just a Burger King Croisanttwich and some of those round hash brown tatertot thingies. Laambeaux is napping and I'm off to the pot luck to see who else tried out the trails today! I know I'll be out skiing quite a bit more in the next week or two! Let me know if you want to join me!!
Comments
Way to go. I've been stuck inside with a never ending sinus/lung crappy boogar disease for 2 weeks. Enjoy the snow while it lasts.