What Did Santa Bring Me For Christmas?

I have to admit that I love Christmas! As a kid, I was one of those who would do everything humanly possible to find out what I was getting before Christmas morning. I searched high and low to find out where my parents were hiding the presents. Once I found them, I employed just about every technique possible to figure out what was hiding in those packages...everything from the "fine-tuned" shake to the surgical disassembly and subsequent reassembly of packages using the exacto knife. There was no way I was getting any sleep on Christmas Eve...I was way too excited about opening any presents in the morning. It was always a thrill to see if I got what was on my wish list. Now as an adult, I'm still definitely a Christmas person. Despite all of my bitching about buying presents, I love buying presents for people when I get a great idea. (My sister's in a heap of trouble next year since my recent visit to her place in Western New York has given me LOTS of ideas!) Although I don't decorate my house at all, when I do settle down and have a family, I'm sure I'll illuminate my house in the true Clark Griswold style. (Too all of my future neighbors, I'm very sorry!)

Unfortunately, Santa did not bring me any gear this year...but I did get some checks that will be used to reimburse my checking account for some of the great gear that I have already purchased this Summer and Fall. In the coming months, I'll be doing reviews of all the new gear I've bought this year. So, I'll give you quick preview of what to expect throughout the winter.
1) Patagonia R1 Granular Jacket: Light Weight Windproof Fleece Jacket. This is replacing the black LL Bean Fleece PulloverI got for Christmas in 1992. I think this is well overdue. I went with the lighter weight jacket primarily for ski tours where I always seem to be wearing next to nothing by the time I'm done the skin up. I'll have to see how this will be for lift serviced skiing.
2) Patagonia R2 Fleece Vest: Standard Windproof fleece vest that I intend to wear with the jacket for lift serviced skiing to provide added core warmth.
3) Patagonia R1 Flash Pullover: Pullover shirt that I'll be using as a baselayer for lift serviced skiing.
4) Sierra Designs 600 Down Jacket: After getting envious of all of my ski buddies being warm while resting at the top of the mountain or sitting in the hut last year, I decided this was a must have for 2007. I got a great deal on this at Sierra Trading Post this summer...$56.
5) Black Diamond System Gloves: These are a light weight set of gloves with a shell and a removable insulated liner. Although they aren't waterproof, I think they'll be more than adequate. I also got these off of Sierra Trading Post for $19. My only concern with them is the size. I don't have large hands by any means. So I was surprised when a large was tight.
6) Black Diamond Anarchist Pack with Avalung: At the end of last season, I gave up on my REI pack after the chest strap broke. Although I wasn't excited to fork out the dough required for this pack, I figured that even if the avalung only increases your chance of survival in an avalanche by a small percentage, it would be worth it. It would be bad karma to lower your chances of survival for a measly $70. (Of course, I recognize that the true way to increase your chances of survival in the backcountry is to be prudent and avoid putting yourself in a position to get in an avalanche.)

Those are the major things I've gotten this year and I have to admit that I'm psyched to get the chance to try them out. My first trip of the year will be 6 days at Alta with my dad at the beginning of January. Like last year, we'll be staying at the Peruvian...it's expensive...but I really love that place. Hopefully, as long as the snowpack keeps building in the Sierras, I'll be heading up to Sequoia for 3 days of backcountry over MLK weekend.

Ski Porn Review: Warren Miller's "Off The Grid"

Two weeks ago, I met up with a bunch of friends in Laguna Beach to see Warren Miller's latest movie, "Off The Grid." As described in an earlier post, the weekend was a lot of fun. However, "Off the Grid" was a disappointment when compared with his earlier works. I've always considered Warren Miller's movies to be a cut above the rest of the movies in the Ski Porn biz. True to the term ski porn, most movies these days are just a quick fix for not being out on the mountain. They put the focus on loud music, hucking insane cliffs, out-skiing/surviving avalanches and annoying park scenes. Sometimes this is exactly what I am looking for. But while enjoyable, like watching a porn, they generally leave you unfulfilled and empty afterwards.

In contrast, Warren's earlier movies have at least made an effort to get at the soul of the sport, communicating what makes skiing such a wonderful sport. His quirky commentaries have brought us back to Sun Valley circa 1950, taken us on a fox chase (on skis) with the 87 year old Klaus Obermeyer, or introduced us to the Schrab brothers who built a ski jump on their grandfather's farm in Wisconsin. When compared to some of the better surfing movies like "Step into Liquid" or "Riding Giants", even Warren's earlier movies could have worked harder to get at skiing's soul. Unfortunately though, "Off the Grid" was a move in the opposite direction. I want a movie that reminds me of why I love to ski.

The first question that I have to ask is where was Warren? Is he sick? If not, I hope he's going to be back next year. For "Off the Grid", he was replaced as the narrator by Jeremy Bloom, the former Olympic mogul skier and Philadelphia Eagle. I'm sure Jeremy worked really hard on the film and for the most part was just reading a script, but the commentary was lacking. It consisted mostly of brief intros of the skiers and ski areas interspersed with the skiers' themselves making cheesy "off the grid" comments...i.e. "This place was off the grid". Every once in a while there would be a comment by Warren. But it was never more than a sentence and it sounded like it was just a dubbed clip from a previous movie.

My favorite part of the movie was the section covering the expedition to the Indian ski town (if you call it that) of Gulmarg. Gulmarg is a small village in the Himalayas with a few ski lifts. In addition to some great skiing footage, it also introduced us to an area of the world we probably would never think of skiing. This might seem cheesy, but the scenes of them teaching the children in the village to ski really reminded me of the joy of learning to ski. We are so removed from the learning experience we had when we were little that we forget the tremendous rush of excitement we got the first time we slid down a slope with the two sticks on the bottom of our feet. After all, its this rush that kept us coming back and spending thousands of dollars on gear. With all of the great expeditions going on these days, I'd like to see more of this type of footage, which expands our horizons of where we could go skiing.

The Alaskan heli-skiing section at the end had some amazing footage. The terrain was sick and lines they skied left me drooling. But from a cinematographic viewpoint, I'd like to see less zoom and more long range shots. This gives you a better feel for just how crazy the terrain they are skiing is. I just don't think you get a proper feeling for it until you see just small they are compared with the slope/vertical wall that they are skiing down.

The next gripe is with the section on Jamie Pierre's ridonkulous 250 ft cliff jump. I first want to say that its absolutely incredible what he attempted. I say attempted, because it was more like a swan dive than jumping the cliff on skis. He basically did a half flip and landed flat on his back. I hate to chastise them about social responsibility, but do we really want to make people think that you can do something like he did (land flat on your back after falling 250 ft) and walk away. My answer is no. But also, to me, it shouldn't count as any sort of record until he actually lands it. Not that I have the balls to even attempt it (it takes a lot for me to even huck a 5 or 10 footer), but anyone could fall 250 feet off of a cliff and land flat on their back. The trick is landing it. He didn't do it. So why make such a big deal out it.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as a hater...I don't mean to be so negative. I just think they can do better. I would really love to see someone make a great ski movie that really touches at the soul of the sport. Maybe my hopes are just unrealistic. Unfortunately, "Off the Grid" falls short of those expectations. I'm not necessarily looking for the skiing equivalent of a Scorsese flick. I'm just looking for something better. While its enjoyable to watch and will not doubt get you fired up to get some pow this ski season, it's nothing more than a quick fix.

San Onofre Ski Group Get Together

Even though we didn't make it out to do any skiing, I consider last weekend to be the start of my ski season. I got together with the group of friends who I skied with last for the first time since last season. Those who lived between San Diego and LA (Carl, Tyler, and Dianna), I had seen over the summer. But it was awesome to see George, Christina, Nelly, and Chris again. In true SoCal style, we met up last Saturday for an afternoon of surfing at San Onofre. The waves were small and mushy...but its always great to spend an afternoon out in the water. All it takes is one good wave to keep me coming back. After spending the afternoon in the water, we had a surf n' turf beach BBQ. Carl brought down a box of live Maine lobsters that he had ordered, Tyler cooked up some killer steak, there was LOTS of vino and Nellie cooked up an amazing Pinapple cake in the campfire.

By the time the cops kicked us out at 8 (park closing time), we were stuffed and ready to head up to Laguna for a night at Tyler and Diana's favorite dive bar...the "Dirty Bird". The Dirty Bird is an old Marine bar that is a classic dive bar...cheap drinks (by Laguna standards), no frills decor, a rowdy crowd of patrons and mediocre cover band that everyone's rocking out to. If you're heading there on a Saturday night, just beware, its definitely cougar country!

We all spent the night up at Tyler and Diana's place in Laguna. For breakfast, we feasted on a nutritious meal of donuts (I had 4 of them) and coffee...we were truly fueled for the rest of the day. So we decided to go mountain biking. Its hard to believe, but this was my first time mountain biking. We went for a nice ride through the park (10 miles, 1400' vert) that surrounds Laguna. In a surprise move, Carl was the hard charger and led the way up the mountain. I jokingly asked Carl if this meant that he'd be breaking trail this winter. In a true return to form, the previous night's drinking and the lack of any real nutrition from the morning's breakfast of donuts finally caught up with Carl shortly after we reached the top. He keeled over, assumed the fetal position, and started wimpering for food and water. I'm not kidding...it was actually pretty amusing. That firmly answered the question about him breaking trail this winter. Don't worry, he was much better after we gave him some water and power bars.

While the ride up was a challenge (bike fit issues), the ride down was eye opening. In fact, it was actually kind of terrifying. I've done a lot of road riding. But I found the downhill portion of mountain biking to be much more technical in that there's more importance placed on controlling your bike. I also found that I needed to overcome the psychological barrier of telling myself that it was possible for bikes to ride downhill, at speed, over rocks, stumps and other obstacles. Despite telling myself to relax, my hands were gripping the handlebars so tight that it felt like I was crush the handlebars. I did one digger. I think the real key is to get out more and with experience I'll become more comfortable with the downhill sections. But altogether it was a great afternoon.

We finished off the weekend by seeing Warren Miller's new movie "Off The Grid". You can read my review of the movie in a separate post.

The Return of El Nino

From what I've been reading over the last week, it sounds like El Nino is back. It just remains to be seen how strong its going to be. As of now, it looks like a weak El Nino. The weak El Nino brings causes a split flow through California. The good news is that this means more precipitation for Southern California. The bad news is that it usually means a dryer winter for Central and Northern California. I'm no weather expert and I certainly don't wish a dry winter on the northern half of the Sierras. But it would be awesome to for the SoCal ski seaon to start before March this year. Who knows, maybe we'll be skiing Baldy by the beginning of November.

For more information on El Nino check out these links:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/09/13/weather.nino.reut/index.html
http://64.29.226.243/dweeb.htm
http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/

Triathlon at Pacific Grove

This past weekend, the big day finally came and I competed in the Triathlon at Pacific Grove. To give you an answer to the big question from my previous post, I didn't shave. I know that if anyone who wants to be a hard-core triathlon geek shaves. But I'm a lazy triathlon geek and just never got around to it.

I left San Diego for Monterey on Thursday morning. Before going up, I knew that the water would be a lot colder than what I was used to down here in San Diego. But I completely neglected the fact that the air temps and gusty winds were closer to San Diego in January than anything I had been training in. So I got a rude awakening during our first course preview bike ride that we did Thursday afternoon. As I sat freezing on my bike, I was wondering how I'd feel 2 days later during the race after spending 30 minutes in the ocean. (Yes, I know that I've become a completely spoiled San Diego warm weather weakling!) Despite the cold, I was amazed at how beautiful coast was. Both bike and run went along some of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in all of California.

Friday night all of the Team in Training participants got together for a pasta party. All told, there were over 350 of us taking part in the triathlon through Team in Training coming from as far away as Georgia. Altogether, we raised over $1.2 million. Afterwards during our final pre-race team meeting, one of my teammates (Dana) told us that she had just found out two days before that her brother's leukemia had come out of remission and he had just started chemotherapy again. It was a big shock to us all as the whole team had met him at some time throughout the season. It hurt all of us to see Dana in so much pain. She asked all of us to think about her brother's challenges whenever our bodies were hurting us during the race and to use his fight as inspiration to push ourselves to keep going. No matter how much our bodies hurt, it's nothing compared to what he's going through.

Enough for the sad talk, the next morning we set off from the hotel at 5:30 AM to make our way to the race. Luckily, it felt a few degrees warmer than the previous few days. The first wave started at 7:15. My wave, the Team in Training Men's wave, started at 8:30. When the gun went off, we all charged into the frigid waters (58F, cold by SD standards) and started the swim. There are a couple of things to know about the swim at Pac Grove. First, its a 2 loop course where you actually have to get out of the water and do a small (25 yd) run up the beach between laps. Second, its cold. Third and most important, there's lots of kelp. In fact, there's so much kelp that you need to be as concerned about steering away from the kelp as swimming towards the next buoy on the course. The problem with kelp is that its so thick that both your legs and your arms get tangled in it and you're stuck until you rip yourself free. Consequently you waste a lot of energy. At first when I got in the water, I was freezing. But once my face and feet went numb, the pain stopped and it was all good. On the first lap I did a great job navigating away from the kelp and found myself in second place at the end of the first lap. On the second lap, I pulled into the lead and no longer had anyone to follow through the kelp. Consequently shortly before the first buoy, I basically came to a complete stop. I freed myself after 15s. But it was exhausting. By the second buoy, the wave of 20-29 year old girls coming up behind us caught up to all of us and I felt like I got ran over by a freight train. Because of the kelp, everyone swims in a very narrow path (a couple of swimmers wide). Luckily, that gave us a carrot to chase and we no longer had to concentrate on finding our way through kelp. By the end of the lap, we had passed most of them again and I came out of the water in second place in my heat with a time of 28:36 for the 1 mile swim. As a team, we represented San Diego well. We ended up with 9 of the first 11 male TNT swimmers out of the water.

The first transition did not go as well as planned. I wasted too much time trying to get socks and a vest on (cold hands don't work quick) before my coach told me just to get out on the bike. Once on the bike, I felt fine. The bike went real well. The course itself consisted of 25 miles over 4 laps. I felt like I was riding pretty fast. For most of the ride, I was consistently passing people and moved into first place among all of the team in training participants. At this point, I started wishing that I had started with the rest of the people in my age group as opposed to those in team in training. I was pushing myself hard. But I was missing the competition that would push me to do better. I ended up finishing the bike in a time of 1:11:56 averaging just over 20 mph. The bike to run transiition went much smoother. Unfortunately, as soon as I started running my lower back just started killing me. It was more intense back pain than anything I had every experienced. If I could have paused the race and gotten a cortisone shot for my back, I would have. But as I didn't have the option, I kept going. I thought of Dana's brother and his fight against cancer. But I also though about my grandfather and the fight that he is currently going through against lung cancer. If they could keep on fighting, I could keep on running. A sore back, even though every step hurt, wasn't an excuse to stop or event to take it easy. The run was 6 miles over 3 loops. I ended up finishing that in a time of 39:16. Altogether, I ended up with a time of 2:24:09 which was good for 12th place in my age group and 51st overall. Although satisfied, I definitely feel that I still have a lot of room for improvement and hope to be down to a 2:15 by next season.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents for flying in to watch the race. Seeing and hearing them cheer for me on each lap was really energizing. They were awesome! Yes, I think I have caught the triathlon bug and hope to continue with them in the future. My next race will probably be the Mission Bay Sprint Tri on October 1st. But due to the soon approaching ski season, that will most likely be my last one until next year.

Triathlon Update: The Shaving Dilemna

So I've now got less than 5 days until the big race and I'm feeling pretty good. Our triathlon team had a practice triathlon last Saturday. It was half of the distance (750m swim, 12.5 mile bike, 3 mile run) we'll be doing next weekend (1 mile swim, 25mile bike, and 6 mile run). The swim, although I was still breathing pretty heavy when I got out of the water, went better than at the Camp Pendleton Sprint Tri the previous weekend. I came out of the water in 4th place. By the halfway point on the bike, I had moved into first place and extended my lead on the run. I ended up with a time of 1:08:40. This puts me squarely on track to meet my goal of a 2:25 in the actual race.

Again, I learned a few valuable lessons from this practice race. First, I learned not to put my wetsuit on the bike rack after the swim. Although I saw lots of people doing it at Camp Pendleton, its apparently against the USA triathlon rules. To teach us a lesson, our coach grabbed all the wetsuits belonging to us "low life bottom dwelling scum" who left our wetsuits on the rack. All he did was throw the wetsuits in a pile. However, all of our wetsuits looked exactly alike and I had neither labled my wetsuit nor ever bothered to look at the size. So after 40 minutes of trying on wetsuits, I ended up with a wetsuit that fits fairly well...although I'm still not convinced that it was the one I wearing earlier in the morning. (It just feels a bit looser in the arms.)

Secondly, I decided that I needed a GU flask for my bike. Once again, I lost my gels. This time they fell out from under my tri shorts. I also learned that if I were to lose a Gu pack in the race, it's a potentially disqualifying penalty if you don't go back and pick it up. I don't want that to happen in the race.

I started tapering last week on the bike and the run. We had our last ocean swim on Saturday morning. I ended up doing ~3 miles. Surprisingly my arms weren't hurting too bad at the end. I ended up making an appointment for a massage on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited. This is going to be my first massage in over a year and I've heard they're just great to loosen you up before the race.

So now I get to the big question: to shave or not to shave? Being the big race, I do want every advantage I can get. But how big a difference will shaving actually make? In high school, we always shaved for the big sectional swim meet at the end of the season. However, we're wearing wetsuits in the water and I have a hard time believing that it will make that big a difference on the bike and the run...at least at my level of competition. I was surprised with the number of guys on the team who I heard were going to be shaving. Its not even all of the most competitive guys on the team. But maybe shaving is just part of being a triathlete. So if I do consider myself a triathlete (and I do now), maybe I should just do it.

Only 3 Months to Ski Season!!!!!!!

I just checked out Telemark Tips this afternoon and saw this beautiful pic on the front page. It made me giddy just looking at the beautiful pow pow! I'm so psyched for this ski season. With all the triathlon training I've been doing, I think I'll be in even better shape than last year and am really hoping for El Nino to come back and give SoCal a winter more like 2005. Well maybe hoping for a bit much, but I would like to be able to ski Baldy or San Gorgornio before March this year.

Here are some of my initial ski season resolutions:
1) Continue training to be in good shape for the start of the season.
2) Do an overnight (freezing your ass off in a tent style) backcountry trip by March.
3) Do the Sierra High Route or Mount Whitney in April or May.
4) Take a couple of lessons at Alta in January.
5) Ski Silverton.
6) Make a trip up to Roger's Pass, Canada to check out all the beautiful terrain my buddy John's been talking about.

What are your resolutions for this year? I'd love to hear what some of your goals are for this year?

Triathlon Update: Knowing When to Say When

One of the ideas our triathlon coaches have been repeating throughout our training is that its better to be undertrained than even a bit overtrained. I fully understand their point. If you're overtrained, you're either going to end up injured or burned out. In both of those cases you won't perform well come race day. That being said, I have a hard time making myself stop training.

For tonight's practice, we had a swim at La Jolla Shores. Going into the practice, I had already swam ~5000 yards this week. After swimming ~1800 yards, I wanted to go back out and swim a bit more. Our coach Dave told me that since we've got a practice tri in the morning, I should just call it good for the evening and head home. I did end up following his advice. However, it took evey bit of will power to do that. After thinking it over, I've identified several reasons for this:
1) I felt great after swimming the 1800 yards. Going back to the swim practices we used to do in high school, a practice doesn't feel complete until your body is begging for you to stop.
2) On a purely quantitative level, 1800 yards just doesn't feel like a full workout. Granted most of my swim workouts these days are between 2000 and 3000 yards. But again my mental standard for swim workouts is based of the 6,000-8,000 yd workouts we used to do back in high school.
3) Even though it goes against the mantra of training smarter not harder, my gut instinct is that it takes more training volume to get better. Yes, I know that is wrong. But this is what my gut tells me and it takes a lot of work to ignore it.

Because of all of these, the feeling that came over me to night when I left (with my body feeling great no less) was one of guilt. Part of me felt like a quitter. But hopefully as I learn to take a more targeted and scientific approach to training, I will find it easier to ignore this voice.

Have any of you had common experiences?

Triathlon: Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon and AFC Half Marathon

After months of training, I finally got some real race experience this weekend. I did the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon on Saturday morning and the AFC half marathon on Sunday morning. I know that some of you are probably going to say that I was crazy or plain stupid for doing 2 races in the same weekend. Initially I was just going to do the sprint tri. However, when I heard that a number of my teammates were doing the half marathon, the competitive juices started flowing and I told myself that it was just about the same distance as my planned base building run that I'd be doing anyways. Before I knew it, I was signed up for the race.

The Sprint Triathlon on Saturday ended up being a great training race. I got some of those first race nerves out of the way. More importantly, I validated a lot of the things I was already doing and saw some things that I should work on. The swim was only 500 yds and I can remember telling my buddy Nelson before the race that the course looked really short. However the swim was a lot harder than I was expecting. The water was both rougher and colder than I had been used to over the last few weeks. I had signficant problems breathing and sighting the buoys. The swells were big enough that you had to be at the top to see the next buoy. As anyone who swims with me knows, I can't swim in a straight line to save my life. So I swam off course two times. Thinking back to what our coach told us, I did try and draft. But I had problems finding someone who was going at my pace. As I was swimming in, I did try and catch the waves. However, due to being out of breath, I had actually stopped twice after catching a wave so that I could catch my breath before the next one came. Coming out of the water, I did try and strip off my wetsuit as I was jogging out. I did pretty good getting it down to my ankles. But I couldn't get the damned thing over my feet. I actually fell over into water before I got it off. I ended up doing the entire swim in 11:59 (20th out of 80 in 25-29). Not bad, but I definitely need some more time in the ocean.

T1 went smoothly with the exception of the aforementioned wetsuit problems. The bike ride was a 20 mile out and back. There was some rolling terrain, but no significant hills. The wind was not bad at all. It was actually in the first part of the bike that I felt the after effects of the swim the most. It felt like I had just been hit in the gut. For the first 15-20 minutes, I was still gasping for air. I felt nauseus when I ate an energy gel. Over that time I was only averaging ~17 mph and getting passed left and right. Around the 20 minute point, my body seemed to settle down and I started feeling better and better. Over the second half I was averaging 20-24 mph and started passing some people myself. On the bike, I came in at 58:42 (25 out of 80). I came into the race thinking that the bike was my weak area and this result just reconfirmed it.

T2 went great. I was in and out in under 1 minutes. The run was 3 miles and consisted of two loops around the Amphibious Craft Unit Five area. Going into race, I already felt that the run was my strong point. I felt great throughout the entire run and was passing people the entire time. I came in at 19:56 (5/80). In retrospect, I definitely could have pushed it a little more. But at the time I was worried more about cramping.

Overall, I came in at 1:30.37 and had a great time. There was a lot of great competition there and I now have a better idea of what I have to shoot for to do better. The following are my lessons learned from the race:
1) The swim sucked. Need more time in the ocean. Pool workouts aren't the same.
2) More Interval Bike Workouts. Got to get faster.
3) Buy an Aerobottle. Everytime I went to take a drink, I'd slow down by 3-4 mph.
4) Set up extra towel and foot basin in transition area to clean off feet.
5) Use bodyglide on feet to help get wetsuit off faster. Must practice this more. Don't want to fall over again. Highly embarassing.

This morning I set off at 4:40 to head off to the AFC half marathon in downtown San Diego. If you're thinking about doing it next year, disregard the statement about the last bus leaving for the start at 6AM. That's not true. However, be aware that the traffic on the 163 is pretty bad. It took me 45 minutes to go a grand total of 2 miles to the parking area. The race itself was a lot of fun. There was approximately 6000 runners. Being a late arrival, I literally started at the very back. Unfortunately, I had to run through the entire field as I got started. But that was good in that it forced me to start off at a slower pace.

Initially I was worried that my legs were going to give out due to being tired from the triathlon the day before. So I started out at an 8:30 pace my first two miles. My initial plan was to eventually speed up to a 7:30 pace and hold it there. But I got caught up in the moment (it's so fun passing people!) and to my surprise, my legs kept feeling better and better as the race went on. So I just went with it and trusted that they wouldn't fail me. I averaged 7-7:30 for miles 4-7 and 6:30-7:00 the last 5 miles. The hardest part by far was the hill at mile 12. By the time I got to the top of it, I was genuinely gasping for air. It was very similar to how I felt after the swim yesterday. But luckily it was just a short coast into the park from that point. I ended up with a time of 1:37:15 which was good for 47th out of 406 in my age group. I feel pretty good about my performance in the race. I can't keep but wondering how I would have done if I wouldn't have run a triathlon the day before.
As for lessons learned from the half marathon, the big one is that I obviously didn't push it enough in the triathlon. If I would have truly been pushing my limits on the bike and in the run, I wouldn't have been able to run as fast in the half marathon. What I need to do in my next triathlon is to dig down, push through the pain, and go harder. Maybe my next brick workout goal should be to push myself until I find that limit where my body gives out.

Triathlon Update: Is There Such a Thing As An Easy Butterfly?

Every week, one of my triathlon teammates Emily sends out a couple of swim workouts. When we started out, they were entirely freestyle. I like freestyle. Freestyle is easy and its fast. However as the season has gone on, she's increasingly mixed in a stroke of our own choice in some of the sets.

Normally, it would be no question and I'd choose the backstroke. However, I normally workout at the USD pool over lunch (outside with the sun overhead) and am almost completed blinded by the sun whenever I try the backstroke. The other problem with doing the backstroke at USD is that they only have the flags at the end of the pool on one side. For those of you who aren't swimmers, the flags let you know when you're approaching the wall on the other side of the pool. I realized that one day when I was moving along at a nice pace and my head hit concrete. So there you have it, two reasons not to do backstroke over lunch at USD.

I could also do the breastroke. However, the breastroke is just so slow. I'm normally in a hurry to get in my workout over lunch and don't want to waste any time. So that leaves me with one other stroke...butterfly. It is fast. However, everytime I do it, it feels like I'm in an all out sprint. I'm fighting just to finish 25 yards. More often than not, my last few strokes look more like an impersonation of a dying whale than someone actually doing the butterfly. I actually kind of like it....yes I'm into putting myself through excruciating pain. I just wish that it would be possible to do the fly at something less than 100% effort. I look forward to the day when I can joke about doing a 50 fly cool down. My question for the day, is there such a thing as an easy butterfly?

Competition: Against the Clock or Your Competition?

This morning I saw a comment that did get me thinking some more about competition. Like I said before, I definitely am motivated by those I'm competing against. But I do also compete against certain benchmarks (the clock in the case of Saturday's time trial) to see if I'm doing well when compared with previous performances. In the case of Saturday, I did see a big improvement. In June we did a 20k time trial that I finished in ~40 minutes for an average speed of 18 mph. On Saturday, I completed 40k in just over 1 hour and 10 minutes for an average speed of 21 mph. So that was a big improvement. I should be happy. But psychologically, I saw my battle against the clock and my battle against the other riders as two seperate races. I could be glad that I had improved. But I wasn't going to be satisfied unless I at least caught up with the two riders in front of me (one being our 60 year old coach) going into our last lap.

Competition

I have to admit that I've really caught the triathlon bug and hope to continue with it next year following ski season. Earlier, I wrote about my addiction to endorphins. However the high from an endorphin rush is not the only reason I've been having such a good time with triathlon training. This other reason has been simmering in my brain the last few weeks. Quite simply, I love competing against other people.

In races, you are either the rabbit or you're chasing the rabbit. If you're the rabbit, you want to work as hard as you can to keep the others from passing you. I know this sounds incredibly unfriendly. But the best part of being the rabbit is when you break the people chasing you. At the moment, I look back and see the look in their eyes that they can't catch me, I feel an instantaneous sense of joy. Although we weren't racing, this is the same feeling I had when going on ski tours and pushing the pace to the point where others would never be able to catch me. (Yes, I realize that this isn't exactly safe in the backcountry and only did it during extremely conditions where everyone knew where they were going.)

While being the rabbit brings a moment of euphoria if you win, I feel that the greater pleasure (and pain) comes from chasing the rabbit. On our triathlon team, I've established a pretty competition with a girl named Cassie. On Saturday, we had a 40k time trial. Although I started out ahead, she passed me by the end of lap two and due to a series of mistakes I was still far behind going into the final lap. I don't know what came over me, but somewhere inside I found a ton of untapped energy, was able to increase my speed by a few mph, and passed her with 1/3 of a lap to go. Although she ended up beating me by 30 seconds in the actual time trial, it was an awesome feeling to have caught up to her, passed her, and opened up a comfortable lead. It's the pleasure of setting a goal, executing a plan, and seeing it succeed.

Even though I'm talking about competition, I'm not going to talk about losing because losing sucks. The only good thing about it is that it provides you with motivation either to stay ahead (if you're the rabbit) or to catch up (if you're chasing the rabbit).

Triathlon Update: Iron Mt and More

I'm too lazy to write a whole update for my training over the last two weeks. So here's a copy of the most recent update email I just sent out to friends. For those of you who are new to my page, I am training for a triathlon with Team in Training which raises money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Research as well as patient services. My goal is to raise $5000 by August 18th. It's a great cause. If you'd like to make a donation, you can visit my fundraising website at: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister



Everyone,

Hello, I hope you all are doing well. The triathlon training continues to go well. Thankfully, it has cooled off considerably over the last 2 weeks here in San Diego. That's made the training much more pleasant. There's still a lot of pain involved, it's just that the risk of passing out from heat stroke has come down a bit..

My workouts continue to go well. Last consisted of a fun 20 miles running (can't believe my knees aren't hurting yet), 85 miles biking, and 4 miles swimming. As I said before, I feel pretty good on the run. I just need to get a little faster on the bike. This past weekend, we completed the Iron Mt brick workout, which is the most difficult workout we will do all season. We met up at 6:30 AM on Saturday. Yes, I am aware that I said 6:30 AM and Saturday in the same sentence. Unfortunately, in the interest of getting the workouts in before it gets too warm, triathlon training involves a lot of early mornings on the weekend and giving up late nights. (I promise to make up the late nights once the race is finished!) The bike portion of the workout consisted of a hilly 29 mile ride. The fun part was a twisty turny section where we reached speeds of 45 miles per hour. Unfortunately, on a bike, what goes down, must come back up. So the last 9 miles was pretty much one continuous hill climb and it was pretty painful. Being a brick workout, as soon as we got off the bike, we threw on our running shoes and ran up a mountain (3 miles up, 3 miles back). As we ran up, we ran past lots of hikers who looked at us like we were absolutely crazy. When I think about it, we must be a bit crazy for beating up our bodies like that.

I feel pretty confident in that as much pain as I was in, I was able to stay at the front of the pack and never ran out of gas. One of the biggest things our coach talks to us about is "fuel". Fuel is triathlon speak for food. It surprised me how much we're really supposed to be eating throughout the workout. For example on this workout, I ate 3 Guu Energy Gels (by far the tastiest gels) and one Lara Bar (pricey, but very tasty energy bar) and drank 80 oz. of water.

Upcoming Events: Just to get some of my race butterflies out of my system, I decided 2 weeks ago to enter the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon on Saturday August 19th. I'm pretty excited as this will give me the first opportunity to practice my transitions (going from swimming to bike and bike to run) in a race envrironment. The transitions are key because its time that you can make up (or lose) without expending a lot of energy. It makes know difference if you have a killer swim if it takes you an extra 2 minutes to get out of your wetsuit and onto your bike. Additionally, it will give me an idea of how I stand competitively. I previously said that I was aiming to be in the top 10% of my age group. Looking at last years results it means I'll have to finish around 2 hours 20 minutes. That might be pushing it. In my efforts to meet my goal, I swear that I won't resort to any "Landis" like tactics. (Not all San Diego residents are dopers.) Me being the type who finds it hard to say no to any athletic challenge, I've also pretty much decided on entering the "AFC San Diego Half Marathon" the following day, Sunday August 20th. It'll be a good base building run and a few of my teammates are already doing it.

On the fundraising side, I'd like to thank all of you who have contributed an awesome $800 over the last 2 weeks and $3155 total. You are all awesome! Last weekend, I set up a bike trainer in downtown San Diego for 3 hours and asked for donations from the people walking by. All in all, it was a great experience. I was literally set up right next to the bums on 4th and Broadway. (The bums know all best places to beg for money!) I ended up raising $131 while getting in an easy 45 miles in. The memorable part was the people I met. Some of the bums were certifably insane. The two best were JFK's personal lawyer and the guy who tried to sell me steroid enhanced orange juice. (formerly Lance Armstrong's smoothie specialist) But I also met a number of people who were cancer survivors. The most memorable was a family with a 7 year old daughter who had been suffering from Leukemia and just went into remission. As you all know I'm not one to normally show much emotion, but meeting her almost brought me to tears (while I was pedaling away) and really reminded of why we are out here. Its not just to do a triathlon. We're trying to save lives. The donations that all of you give are helping to save lives and improve the lives of families whose loved ones have leukemia or lymphoma. Without all of the scientific progress that we have made over the last 30 years, she probably would not be alive today.

As I've said before, I have committed to raising at least $4000 and I would still love to have your support. My fundraising deadline is August 18th. (At that point, I'll be making a personal donation to make up for whatever I am short of my committment. If you would like to donate, you can visit my fundraising website at: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister. Take care and I hope all of you are doing well.

Doug

More Thoughts on Why We Love Gear

As I was on a bike ride yesterday trying to rationalize why it was absolutely necessary for me to shell out $120 for a heart rate monitor, I inevitably came back to pondering my last entry when I put it out there that men love shopping just as much as women do. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to clarify my thoughts a little more.

First, why is it that it's so much fun to buy gear? The way I see it, gear is the adult version of toys. While it may help professional athletes perform better and earn more money, for the rest of us, it just helps us to play our games better and to one up our friends. Just as getting a supersoaker squirt gun instantly made you a force to be reckoned with in the neighborhood squirt gun battles when you were 9 years old, the $5000 carbon fiber road bike gives you that much more of an edge over the other guys you ride with.

Second, I think the reason that the belief persists that men don't like shopping is that we really don't like the act of shopping. We like spending the money for the new gear. But whereas women will spend an entire day shopping for one shirt, we like to make each shopping trip a quick in and out mission. We research what we want to get, find it, and buy it. We don't try on 30 other jackets or go to 10 other stores to see if we can save $5. Generally, we don't just go to REI just for the sake of seeing if there's anything we're interested in. If we're going to go, its for the purpose of buying one specific thing that we've decided on before we get there.

Women Love Gucci, Men Love Gear

We men are always bitching about women and their shopping. We are flabergasted at how they could spend so much money on shoes and handbags. But I have to admit that the truth is, we men are just as bad. Women's weakness is clothes where as ours is gear. I have to admit that I am very fond of it. I'm in to my hobbies (skiing, bicycling, travelling, etc) and I love buying all the gadgets that go along with it. I often tell my friends that the quality of your bike or your skis only makes a small difference as to how good you actually are. I firmly believe that. However, I still enjoy splurging and treating myself to a new sleeping bag or pair of gloves. Last year was a particular good year as I was updating my alpine ski gear for the first time in 7 years and just buying all of my backcountry gear for the first time. November's credit card bill was absolutely horrific. It's looking like this year is going to be a little easier on my mastercard. The past few weeks have been especially fun as I took advantage of the Sierra Trading Posts' 20th anniversary sale and got some black diamond gloves for $19 and a Sierra Designs Down Jacket for $55. The biggest items I plan on buying this season include a new fleece jacket, GPS device, and altimeter.

Triathlon Update: I love Endorphins

The triathlon training continues to go well with the last 2 weeks being especially good. This is an excerpt from my last update email:

In my last email, I mentioned that I had been having some foot problems. The truth is, I had those foot problems at the same time that my bike broke. So me being the semi-autistic workout fanatic that I am, I did somewhat get out of my workout routine and dropped down to 3 workouts a week for about two weeks. This also coincided with a 2 week period in which I was just in a bad mood. Over the last 2 weeks, I really started ramping up my workouts again and my spirits coincidentally started improving. Then last Wednesday morning as I was riding up a very steep, painful hill going from LaJolla Shores to Torrey Pines, I was hit with a sudden wave of ecstasy at the same time that my legs were telling me they had had enough. So what caused this ecstasy out of pain? I have two competing theories. One, I realized while going up that hill that it was less than 5 months from the theoretical start of ski season. (Yes, I admit that I am a complete ski dork!) Second, I think that I am addicted to the endorphins that go through your body when you're working out. That endorphin rush I got while going up the hill gave me the extra oomph to power me through the last 25 miles and put me in a great mood for the rest of the day. So after I'm done this triathlon, I might have to find another race to train for in order to maintain my sanity.

At this point, I know that I'll be able to finish the race. As I enter the last half of my training, my goal is to do well. I know that I won't win it. But I want to finish in the top 10% of my age group. This weekend, we had a bunch of great workouts. Friday night, we did a 2.5 mile ocean swim at LaJolla shores. In regards to my last update email, I just want to let you know that I was using sarcasm when I said that I was going to lube my black wetsuit with seal oil just to give the swim an added thrill. I'm not that stupid. On Saturday, we did a great workout riding from Lake Hodges to Solana Beach and back. It was a very hill ride and it was hot...damn hot. I'm not sure if it was Africa hot...but it was pretty close. On the way back, the thermometer registered 115F in the sun and a cool 107F in the shade. And as soon as we got off the bikes, we went for a 5 mile run. Luckily I stayed hydrated pretty well. But some of the people who were out there longer got pretty dehydrated and were shivering uncontrollably. Today I did a bit of surfing in the afternoon and then went for a 7 mile run this evening.

Now I'll share a couple of my lessons learned with you:
1) The Energy Gu's are great. When I'm on the bike, I now prefer those over the power/lara/cliff bars. That being said, all gu's are not made the same. Avoid the cliff bar gu's at all costs. They are absolutely the worst! The raspberry gave me flashbacks to the fluoride treatments I used to get at the dentists when I was a kid.
2) It's as important to poor water over your head as it is to drink it. I know what you're thinking. But I never used to do it to. But when it's hot, you can totally feel the difference in your body when you squirt a bunch of cool water into your bike helmet. Even better is to put ice cubes into your hat when you're running. It basically just cools down your body and keeps it from overheating.
3) Don't go cheap when it comes to bike repair. I had to replace my rear derailleur last November. I took it Performance (big box nationwide chain bike shop) to get fixed. They ended up putting a derailleur that was incompatible with my bike. (2 chainring derailleur when I have a triple) So when I got sick of my derailleur and my tri coach said that they had sold me the wrong part, I took it to another big bike shop (bike warehouse) to get fixed. At first they did a great job and they even cleaned up my bike. However after 2 weeks, I noticed that they must not have relubed my chain after they cleaned it off because it was covered in rust. Lesson learned is to take your bike to the small shop that can you better service even it costs a bit more.
4) Hamburgers, wings, fries, and beer are not appropriate to eat before going for a run. If you are going to eat them, 1 1/2 hours is not enough to let them digest before attempting said run. That's what I had for an early dinner tonight after surfing. I felt like I was about to vomit the entire second half of the run. So don't do what I did.

I'd like to thank all of you who have donated an awesome $2925 over the last 2 months. You guys are all awesome. Two weeks ago was our recommittment weekend where I recommitted to raising a minimum of $4,000 by August 18th. As part of that recommittment, I have promised to make up the difference between what I raise and the fundraising minimum. So for those of you who haven't donated, I would really love to have your support.
http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister If you're already thinking about making a donation, I just ask that you make it before August 15th if at all possible so I can minimize the damage on my credit card.

Triathlon Update: Suck it Up!

The last time I wrote, I was complaining about my elbows and I wasn't sure if I was imagining it. The pain seemed to be moving around. It seemed to be moving around between my forearm and my tricep and everywhere in between. Finally, last Wednesday, I had enough. I told myself that I really must be imagining it and decided to go swimming the next day. Although my elbows felt a little tight afterwards, on the whole they were fine. I ended up swimming 1700 yds that day and am now back into the routine. So the lesson learned is, if it feels like your mind is playing tricks on you, it probably is. So just suck it up and deal with it!

On Saturday at our team bike practice, Lisa and Sara, two of my teammates, told us a story of their friend Rita who had recently died from Leukemia. Both of them joined Team in Training shortly after Rita was diagnosed. She was an honored teammate for several seasons and used to cheer on the team during practices. They told us that whenever they feel like they can't climb another hill, swim another lap, or run another mile, they tell themselves to do one more for Rita. I found that pretty motivating and used it get myself to do one more climb up Mt Soledad on Sunday.

My totals for last week were: biking 91 miles, running: 10.5 miles, swimming: 1700 yds.

Moving on to another topic near and dear to me, I'd like to talk about the world cup. The TV coverage this year has been great. The fact that every game is being broadcast this year shows just how far soccer has come in this country. Also surprising has been just how great the turnout has been to watch the games at the local San Diego bars. I never would have guessed that I wouldn't be able to get into a bar to watch a soccer game due to the bar being at max capacity. Like everyone, I was pretty disgusted by the US performance against the Czech Republic. But I've got to give them a big hand for the spirited effort they showed against Italy.

Triathlon: Problems with the Elbows While the Legs Keep Going

In the past, I've always liked running and swimming. However, I've frequently had problems with my knees when I've gotten into an intensive running routine. Beginning in my senior year in high school, I've experienced reoccuring tendinitis in my elbows from swimming. These injury problems were the reason I got into biking (almost zero impact). But they were also the reason I decided to give triathlons a try. I figured that if I didn't overtrain in any one sport, I wouldn't experience any of my old injury issues.

As the title alludes to, I've had great luck so far with my knees while my elbows have recently started giving me troubles. Beginning after my swim workout (2500 yards, mostly low intensity) last Tuesday, my right elbow has been bothering me. The weird thing is that the pain is sometimes just forward of the elbow and other times on the back of the elbow by the tricep. Because of this, I'm not sure if there's actually anything wrong or if I'm imagining it. Maybe the pain is there because my mind is focused on my elbow so much that it never really relaxes. I'm going to take a 1.5 weeks off and then start swimming again.

The good news is that my knees haven't had any issues yet. The running is going very well. Last Wednesday, we had a 3 mile time trial that I completed in 19:28.

On the fundraising front, I've raised $850 so far. I'd like to thank Roman Kogan and Nathan Luther for their generous donations. Again, if you'd like to donate, please click here to visit my fundraising page.

Overall, my totals for last week were as follows: swimming: 2500 yards, biking: 95 miles, and running: 11 miles.

Triathlon: The World According to Gurujan: What do When You Really Have to Go

Back when I was still on submarines, we used to say that one of the marks of a good officer was having a 6 hour bladder. That way you could make it through your watch without getting someone to relieve you for to go to the bathroom.

So as I was sitting on the ground at our triathlon team's running practice, I started laughing when one of the girls on the team asked our coach, Gurujan, what to do when you have to go to the bathroom on the course. Going with my old submarine instincts, I muttered to myself, "You hold it stupid." How wrong I was.

Like the answers to all difficult questions, Gurujan said it depends. First, if there's a port a potty or a gas station along the course, you could stop and use one of those. The positives are that you will have some privacy. The down side is that you lose time by stopping and leaving the course. Also, you need to make sure not to make any forward progress when you reenter the course as that would lead to potential disqualification. Secondly, you could go on the side of the course. Another girl on our team said this is what she did at the Lavaman triathlon. The positives are that you don't lose as much time looking for a real bathroom. The downside is that you can't be easily embarrassed. The girl who did it a Lavaman said that she had zero bushes/trees to hide behind and everyone passing by could see her. Another downside is that nudity is often against the rules at most triathlons. Gurujan told us that it would probably get us kicked out of the race at Pacific Grove as the 70 year old millionaires who live up there wouldn't feel good about seeing us piss in their roses. Finally, the best option according to Gurujan is just to wet yourself. He said that trying to hold it is a definite no-no and the aforementioned options all have too many downsides. Therefore, your best option is to just to go in your wetsuit (preferred as it also provides warmth) or in your shorts while on the bike or running. If you're embarrassed, he recommended camouflaging it by dousing yourself with gatorade. Apparently, wetting oneself is easier said than done. He was very proud of having completed the trifecta at the recent Wildflower Triathlon. I was half expecting that he was going to include this as one of our practical factors for one of our upcoming workouts. Luckily, he left that out.

Triathlon: Surprising Strengths and Weaknesses

I'm now two weeks into training for the triathlon. Apart from my body being very tired, it's been going great! Here are the stats for last week: Running: 8 miles, Biking: 88 miles, Swimming: 4700 yds. Going into the program, I was already in pretty good shape. But this is definitely a ramp up from what I was used to.

Going into the program, I was already averaging 30-60 miles per week on my bike. Although I was doing some running and swimming, it was at most 1x/week. Thus I expected the bike to be my strength. However, this weekend we just completed our last time trial that we'll use to divide people into groups for our organized workouts. What I found was that the bike is actually my weak area. Out of 42 people, I came in 3rd on the run, 4th in the swim, and 7th on the bike.
For our workouts, we've been doing shorter distance, high intensity workouts for our team workouts. The program has us focusing on longer distance, low intensity, base building for our individual workouts. For the base building, we are aiming to do the workouts at 75% max intensity. As our coach said, if you can feel burn in your muscles, you're working to hard. The goal for these workouts is to build up an aerobic base, not to build muscle mass. This was by far the hardest thing to get used. Like most people, I've always tried going as hard as I could in all of my workouts. After a long ride, it just doesn't feel right seeing that I only average 13.5 mph.

The fundraising is off to a good start. I'd like to thank my mother for a very generous donation of $750. I'd also like to thank FedEx/Kinkos for donating copying services for my fundraising letter.

Lastly, this is a good article I recently came across in the San Diego Union Tribune which talks about one girl's fight against leukemia and her association with Team in Training.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060602/news_lz1s2herdream.html

Training For a Triathlon

With a successful ski season coming to a close, I decided that I needed to find a new athletic challenge to get me through the summer. So I’ve recently started training for the Triathlon in Pacific Grove, CaliforniaMonterey) on September 9^th. (near It's an olympic distance triathlon, composed of a 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike, and a 6 mile run. I’ve told myself in the past that I was going to do a triathlon or a century bike ride. But as many of you know, I’m like the guy in “Rain Man.” Once I get out of my workout routine, everything falls apart. And more than likely, it will be a whole month before I workout again. So I decided to join up with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training (TNT) program to train for the triathlon. Not only do I have a whole team to keep me working out, but I get to raise money for a great cause.

The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a non-profit health organization dedicated to finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improving the quality of life for patients and their families. I've made it my personal goal to raise at least $5000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and I would love to have your support. Every donation that you make, no matter how small, will help in the search for a cure to blood cancers. 75% of your donation will go directly to research and patient services. If you would like to donate, you can make an online donation by visiting my personal Team in Training webpage: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsdh/leister

Be sure to come back to the blog throughout the summer for updates on my training and fundraising! Thank you for your support.

Backcountry Ski Trip Report: TTips weekend at Tobacco Flats

After making skiing my number one priority this winter, my other committments (school, work, family, etc) finally won out and kept me from doing any skiing during the last 5 weeks. So when I found out about the Telemark Tips gathering taking place this past weekend at Tobacco Flats on the East Side of the Sierras, I was all ready to load up my car and make the journey from San Diego.

Truth be told, I was a bit concerned with the weather. As of Thursday, it looked like we were going to be getting some rain on Sunday. The only question was when. But Friday morning, the latest weather report from Howard Scheckter, Mammoth's Local forecaster, said we weren't going to get anything until Sunday afternoon. That gave us the green light.

After 6.5 hours in the car, we made it to the Tobacco Flats camp site at 1:30 AM. The directions were spot on. I woke up at 6, half surprised that I was the 4th person up. I guess everyone wasn't as hardcore as I thought. Eventually the rest of the crew up. After a nice leisurely breakfast, a cup of French Roast (thanks Jim), and a motivating bag pipe performance (you the man Charlie), a group of about 15 of us set out around 7:30. Being my first time there, I was content to follow the rest of the gang. About halfway up, we split into two groups. The Socal group (myself included) went up Old Man Bowl on Little Morrison. The rest of the group headed for the Hippie Chutes (also called Finger Chutes) and Mt Aggie.
During climb up, I was surprised by how much the 5 weeks off had affected my stamina. After only 4 hours, my legs were exhausted and my lungs were gasping for air. By the time we made it to the top of the Old Man Bowl at 11:30, it had already softened up quite a bit. We stopped when I started sinking in up to my knees with every step. The run down was awesome though. This was my first time skiing corn and it was wonderful. The base was hard with a nice soft top layer. I cranked big GS turns all the way down. As much as I wanted to stop and savour the run, I was having too much fun to stop.
Once we made it to the base of the bowl (~1130), we had a decision to make. We could either keep skiing or head back to the campsite and start drinking. I'm embarassed to say that we were all dead tired and chose option B. We were back at Tobacco Flats drinking cans of PBR by noon. The other group didn't arrive back at the site until 4 pm. They ended up making it up to the top of Aggie and doing several laps on the Hippie Chutes. They reported that the snow on the Hippie Chutes was still excellent as late as 3:45. After hearing how great their day was, we were looking forward to rallying and skiing the Hippie Chutes on Sunday.
As the afternoon went on, more and more people started showing up. By the end, we probably had about 25-30 people there. It was great to get to know all of these other people who share a passion for backcountry skiing. As a couple of us remarked, the gathering was really a testament the power of the internet. Five years ago this gathering would not have been possible. But thanks to the Teletalk forum on Telemark Tips, a group of strangers coming from everywhere from Seattle to San Diego was able to get together for a weekend of skiing. Most of my friends think it's a bit weird to be driving 7 hours to meet a group of strangers I met over the internet. If I were them, I'd think so too. But let's face it, there aren't that many backcountry skiers in Southern California and the internet allows us to all come together. More importantly, if a person is into backcountry skiing, they might be a bit crazy (aren’t we all?). But deep down, they’re probably a pretty good person.

The last weather forecast we saw before driving up said that it wasn’t supposed to start raining until Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, I started hearing drops hit my tent around 1:30 AM. By 3:00 AM, those drops had turned into a downpour and heavy winds. Worse for me, I was too lazy when we set up camp Friday night and too drunk on Saturday to put on the rain fly. So I bailed from the tent around 3 when the tent started leaking like a sieve and finished the night in the front seat of Tyler’s car. Needless to say, we didn’t go out skiing on Sunday. So the Hippie Chutes will have to wait until next year.

Ski Report: Mt Baldy and the Rock Ski Theorem

I spent Saturday up at Mt. Baldy skiing with my friends Christina, Dianna, Tyler and Ben. It was a typical Baldy day...sunny (until clouds rolled in around 3pm) and upper 40's. The snow cover was good by Baldy standards, although there were still plenty of rocks and trees sticking out of the snow to keep things interesting. Due to the daily freeze-thaw cycle, we spent the morning skiing the south/southeast facing terrain off of chair 4 (to the left of the base lodge when looking up). It was already nice and soft by 10AM. We moved over to Thunder Mt around noon. Most of the off-piste terrain there was still frozen. But we were surprised to find that the snow on the north facing terrain(just to skiers right of the ridge the chair lift goes up) was still soft and powdery in spots. With this knowledge in hand, we headed over to South Bowl for a couple of runs before lunch. The snow in the north facing section of the bowl (all the way to skiers left) was good but inconsistent. It would alternate from being soft powder to ice topped with death cookies. All in all, it was good skiing that challenged you to adapt to the terrain and deal with it. We took a few more runs , moving further and further to skier's right working our way towards the lift. That side had definitely received more sun and we were able to find some nice untracked soft snow left over from last week's storm.
What left me really excited about Saturday was that it provided me even more reason to believe that there is strong scientific link between using rock skis and being able to ski over rocks without getting core shots. Like the week before, I was skiing where ever and as fast I wanted to, without really caring whether or not I hit a rock. The snow cover was marginally better than the week before, but there were still plenty of rocks to be found. Most of the day I was pretty good about avoiding rocks. But on the last run from the top, I was going full speed under the Thunder Mt lift. What I failed to notice on any of the rides up the lift that day was that towards the end of the slope, there was one spot where the snow stopped and a 5 yard stretch of gravel began. Unfortunately, I didn't see it until 10 yards before the snow stopped and I was going way too fast to be able to stop in time. So I decided to go with it and ski the gravel. I did jump off the snow a little to try to keep my full weight from being on the rocks. But as I was going over, I still heard that painful sound of base material meeting granite. Even though they were rock skis, a little part of me did die at that moment. I decided to wait until I was at the bottom to look at my skis as I'm a firm believer in the saying "igorance is bliss." Amazingly enough though, when I did look at them, there was nothing but a few long (2/3 ski length) scrapes and none of them were core shots. So it appears that either Dynastar is on to something in their choice of base material or there is a scientific link preventing rock skis from getting core shots.
The other interesting part of Saturday was that it was the first time I'd ever skied with little kids(since I was one myself). Ben brought his three sons along. The rest of us skied with Ben's two oldest sons, Andy (12) and Jake(9), while Ben skied with his youngest son Danny. I was amazed how good Andy and Jake were. Perhaps they weren't quite as good as the phenom kids who make it into the Warren Miller movies. But we took them down steep terrain that in places had really crappy snow. They didn't flinch for a minute and there was never any bitching. They were awesome. Before this I had always thought that it must be tough for a parent to have to give up skiing good terrain to spend years sticking to intermediate terrain teaching their kids to ski. But Saturday made me realize that it must be a great feeling when you finally see your kids become great skiers and develop the love for the sport that you have. The only thing that sucks is that Ben has a really narrow window to enjoy skiing with his sons because within 5-10 years they'll be good enough where they won't want to wait for dad anymore.

The Cougar, The Local, and The Liftie

No, isn't a C.S. Lewis knock off. I actually came across this article in Powder Magazine which touches on the Hardcore Skier Chick topic from February. Thing of it as a how to guide for the single guy to navigate through the ski town singles scene. Enjoy!

http://powdermag.com/features/columns/radar-love/

Ski Report: Sunday at Baldy

Today was my first day this year at Mt. Baldy. Before moving to San Diego last spring, I skied there twice last year over President's Day weekend while I was out here apartment hunting. I was treated to 3 feet of powder both days. I was told that I was spoiled and will never see conditions like that again. I haven't. But ever since then, I've been waiting to go back.

So today I finally made it. I got there around 9. The groomers had already softened up a bit, but all of the off-piste stuff was rock hard. I found a couple of strategies to make the morning off-piste experience more enjoyable. First, try to ski where others haven't gone (i.e. no tracks) yet. Even if its rock hard, you just dig in your edges and it’s just like skiing an eastern groomer. Second, try to challenge yourself by seeking out the worst conditions on the mountain. I’m dead serious! What I mean by this is that you should look for the worst combination of death cookies, rocks, trees and anything else that may be sticking out of the snow. Then you attack it and see who wins. I like to think that if it doesn't kill you, it only makes you a better skier. After a few runs of that, plain death cookies are absolute joy.
On their website, Baldy is reporting a 12-30" base. Although coverage on most of the mountain was surprisingly good, there were numerous places where that 12" was looking awfully generous. In the thinner areas, it was definitely more like 2" of snow intermixed with gravel and pine needles. Unlike my trip to Snowbird in December, I actually used foresight and brought my rock skis...a pair 193 Dynastar Max Zero's. For Baldy, this was the right choice and I would never recommend bringing your good skis there unless it was a year like last year. I don't how you are, but when I'm on my good skis and I really hit a rock and hear that scraping that screams "Core Shot!!!”, a little piece of me dies. But if you're on rock skis, it doesn't matter...they're just rock skis!. Just after lunch, I took a run off the chair to the left as you're looking up from the lodge. On the way down, I got to a section where there were interconnected 3 foot wide snow-covered bushes surround by gravel. With my Atomic MeX’s (my good skis) I would have run like a baby. But on my rock skis, I charged it, picked my way down with jump turns and had a great time doing it. The other great thing about rock skis is their tie in with Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law dictates that if you have new skis, every rock you hit will give you a core shot. But with rock skis, it says that you can purposely ski down gravel without getting a core shot. Sure enough, when I looked at my bases at the end of the day, even with a very sketchy thinely covered run down to the parking lot, they had nothing but minor scrapes.

The last part of today's Baldy rant has to do with high fashion. Baldy is the only place where I, dressed in a 5 year old red Patagonia shell and plain black Marmot bibs, feel like the pinnacle of fashion. It’s an old school mountain and people like to dress the part. I love the fact that you see one-piece suits (never thought I'd ever say that!!), old Descente ski sweaters, stretch pants accompanied by jester hats (always wanted one in junior high), and a woman sporting a white unitard. You got to love it! Oh yeah, one more thing, if you need any other reason to go up there, there was a dude on a hot pink Tua Monoski!

Mushy Longboard Waves and Riding Giants

Since I wasn't in Mammoth enjoying 16" of the Sierra's finest, I felt compelled to make my way down to Tourmaline (San Diego) to catch some waves this morning. I was pleasantly surprised. It was great longboard conditions...3 foot waves which which you could seemingly ride forever. While not nearly as good as skiing powder or skiing steep chutes, catching a good wave is pretty damn nice!

Speaking of surfing, I just recently saw the movie "Riding Giants." It's a documentary covering the history of big wave surfing. As much as I love Warren Miller, it puts any ski porn that I've seen to shame as far as quality. Besides just being a great story, what struck me about the movie was how similar the big wave surfer ethos is to skiing.

Like the ski mountaineers who continually push the limits on first descents, the pioneers of big wave surfing did the same with 30 foot walls of water. Some lost their lives, others like Mike Stang in Waimea Bay became legends. Similar to the best mountain guides, they were experts in their environment. They knew where every break was and how the weather would affect it. When their boards were limiting them, they experimented with new designs and materials that would allow them to surf still bigger waves. Also like skiing, in the beginning, there were few women out there. The waves were the love of their life. Similar to Alta Gold powder, it was an addiction that kept them come back and back for more. It was their life.

Riding Giants continues on to the 1969 "Swell of the Century" (similar to weather channel "Storm of the Century" references???) that hit Hawaii. Big wave surfing legend Greg Nolan attempted to surf and was completely annhilated by it. Like the best ski moments, unfortunately no photos were taken. The moment was too pure to disturb with a camera. Even though he only just made it down the crest of the wave before it crushed him, he described it as being right up with the birth of his first child. In skiing, we says that if you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough. It's the same in surfing. He pushed the limits and he fell...but so what.

The story continues on to the development of the Bonzai Pipeline, the discovery of Maverick's (like the best powder stashes kept secret from the general surfing community for 15 years) in Northern California and Laird Hamilton's introduction of the jet ski to hit bigger waves than previously thought humanly possible. I must compliment the director on his choice to include numerous shots of ex professional volleyball player/supermodel Gabrielle Reese talking about her husband Laird Hamilton. Unlike skiing, surfers do get all the cute women today.

All in all, its an awesome movie. While touching on the history of skiing, Warren Miller's movies are not in the same league as "Riding Giants". I would love to see a serious movie about the evolution of skiing...dealing with everything from the first Austrians in St. Anton to the first single chair lift at Mad River Glenn to some of the first descents in the Chugach today.

No Mammoth This Weekend

Unfortunately, due to not being able to get out of work until 4 this afternoon and the LA posse deciding to leave early for Mammoth, I was going to be stuck making the drive by myself. As much as I love to ski, doing the drive solo just didn't seem worth it. 16 hours of driving round-trip, dealing with both San Diego and LA rush hour traffic, and storm conditions on the way up were too much for me. Maybe I'm just a pussy, but if I went, I foresaw myself being completely exhausted (and in no mood to have any fun) both while up there and after coming home.

Gear Review: REI Double Diamond Ski Pack

This is almost a great little ski pack. At 2000 cubic inches, it is biggest enough to take out on most daytours. I was able to carry food, avy equipment, a fleece, hat/gloves, water, skins and a basic first aid kit. With all of those, the pack is completly full. Personally, I prefer to have some extra space in case I need to bring extra clothing or water along. If you haven't noticed it from my other posts, I like to be prepared for any situation that might arise. So when I get another daypack, I plan on getting something slightly larger.
The pack fits great and is very comfortable to wear, both while skiing up and down the mountain. It has an external shovel blade pocket and attachments to hold your shovel handle and/or an ice axe. My favorite feature was the back panel zipper. It was so convenient that I almost never loaded the pack from the top. The pack also comes with a 2 L Nalgene Hydration pack that is integrated into the right shoulder strap.
As good as the pack was, there were several quality issues that were highly disappointing. First, the hose on the Nalgene pack has a fitting which disconnects (by pressing a button) from the bladder. When the pack was full, the hose would disconnect from the bladder about 25% of the time. As you would expect, I found this extremely annoying when to get a drink, I had to stop skiing, take off the pack, open it up and reconnect the hose to the bladder. Next, 2 weeks ago, the connection between the bladder and the hose started leaking and I lost all of my water at the very beginning of a ski tour. REI ended up replacing the Nalgene hydration pack with a Camelback bladder that seems to be better built. (So far, no leakage!) Finally, at the beginning of my tour this past Sunday, one of the connectors for my chest strap ripped off the pack. If you've ever seen me, you know its not because I was overflexing my pythons!

Overall, I can not recommend this pack. For day tours where you are not taking a lot of gear with you, it is a great pack. However, I expected more from REI in terms of quality. You do not want a pack that is going to fall apart on you in the backcountry.

Note: I just returned the pack to REI. True to their reputation, there customer service was excellent and they gave me a full refund when I couldn't find another pack in the store to replace it with. They even let me keep the Camelback hydration bladder/hose.

Its Snowing in Mammoth!!!!

....and that's where I'm going to be this weekend! I just finished looking at the latest weather forecast. According to the NWS, they are supposed to be getting upwards of 3 ft of new snow. It sounds like this storm will be wetter than recent ones. The snow level is supposed to be around 8000 ft dropping to 5500 ft later tonight. I won't be getting there until late Friday night. So I'm sure it will be tracked up by Saturday morning. Even so, the skiing should be great.

Backcountry Ski Trip Report: Baden-Powell/9088 Trip Report

I joined up with Dave Puzo (Carlsbad) and Scott Siegrest(Hermosa Beach), whom I met on Telemark Tips, to ski Mt. Baden-Powell this past Sunday. We met up at the Vincent Gulch parking lot parking lot at 7:45. From there we hiked about 1/3 mile along the Angeles Crest highway to the North Gulley(shown by where creek runs down on topo map). The highway is normally just closed in the winter. However, I doubt it will be open at all this summer. At one point, half a lane's worth of the highway (and the supporting ground underneath) has given way and slid down the mountain.















Due to the steep pitch in the gulley and the main bowl, we decided to leave the skins in the car and boot-pack up. However, the snow level in the gulley was far below normal. (We could see the creek running. From what I hear, there is normally 10-15 feet of snow in the creekbed from accumulated snowfall and avalanche runoff.) Since we also decided to leave the rope in the car, we were forced to abondon our plan to hike up the gulley when we got to a sketchy section about 20 minutes in. At that point, we were considering turning back and skinning up the main trail that starts at the parking lot. But as always, once you commit to one course of action, it is difficult to admit defeat and turn back. So we decided to climb the west side of the gulley until we made the ridge and then followed the west ridge up. The climb up the ridge was a bit sketchy. The rock was very crumbly and the mud was fairly loose. Once we started hiking up along the ridge, we wished that we would have brought our skins along. The pitch was low and the snow was deep. The extra 1 lb that the skins weigh seemed like a small price to pay considering we were sinking 1-2 feet into the snow with every step.

Once at the top, we found that the west ridge actually had lead us to the unnamed peak 9088 vice Mt Baden-Powell. We momentarily considered continuing on to Baden-Powell. But after 5 hours of hiking up, we were just too tired. Considering how tough the hike was, the ski down was surprisingly good. We skied the gulley just to the west of the ridge we followed to the top. The top layer (1-2 inches) that wouldn't support us in our ski boots, was more than enough to support us on our skis going down. For the first half, it was almost as if we were skiing a groomer with 2 inches of loose/wet snow on top. About 2/3 of the way down, avalanche debris in the gulley forced us into survival skiing mode. Once past the avalanche debris however, the snow on the last section, although thin and wet, was surprisingly good. We were able to ski all the way to the road.

Recommendations: If you do plan on going up the main north gulley, I recommend that you bring a rope. We wish we would have brought it so we could have proceeded with our orginal plan. In the gulley that we skied, the cover was thin for the bottom third. So this storm coming in Tuesday/Wednesday should help to fill it in. Due to the steep canyon walls and it being an obvious slide path, I would wait a while to ski any of the gulleys. While we were sitting on the top of Burnham eating lunch, Mt Throop caught my eye. It looks to have some nice steep north/northeast facing slopes. They might be worth checking out.

Avalanche Activity: Most of the avalanches we saw were wet slides on west facing slopes. They looked to be several days old and a number had slid all the way to the ground. We experienced some sluffing of the top layer (~2 inches) at a few places. But there was nothing signficant while we were there.

Avalanche Safety Course

At the very beginning of this ski season, one of the promises I made to myself was to take an avalanche safety course. Previously, I had done a little backcountry skiing (twice in high school) and had skied quite a bit of powder, but I didn’t have a clue when it came to whether the slope I was on would actually slide. Looking back at some of the things I had done in the past, I knew that I was lucky not to have gotten hurt before.

Back in college, I did the standard semester abroad my junior year. I lucked out and ended up studying in Grenoble, France during the winter of 1999. That turned out to be one of the biggest snow years Europe had in recent years. Consequently, every weekend turned out to be a powder weekend. If you don’t know, there is no such thing as avalanche control in Europe. You go off-piste at your own risk. That winter, we used what we called the “Three-Track” Rule. It stated that if there were three or more tracks going off piste, it could be assumed that any avalanche that could take place, would have already taken place and it must therefore be safe. Not very smart, I know. But we were just reckless college students then.

Even though taking the avalanche safety course was one of my top priorities at the beginning of the season, I kept on putting off taking the course. I never had a sense of urgency. After all, one of the people who I normally skied with was very experienced in the backcountry. I trusted that he knew when it was safe to be out and when it wasn’t. I conveniently ignored the fact that no one else in our group had any significant experience. Furthermore, I bought into the argument that the western Sierra snow pack was more stable and not as prone to avalanches.

Eventually, I decided that these excuses just didn’t hold up to closer scrutiny and demanded that I learn more about avalanche safety. No group should rely solely on one person’s judgment. Each member should have sufficient knowledge to form their own opinions and to contribute to group decisions. If you’re just depending on one person, who is going to back them up when they make a mistake? What would happen if they got hurt? Besides the group responsibility issues, the western Sierra snow pack argument didn’t really hold up either. Two weekends ago we were skiing on 2.5 feet of super dry snow that was more like what you’d find in Utah than the Western Sierras. Despite the fact that we didn’t set off any avalanches, the snow that weekend was definitely susceptible to sliding. Again, nothing happened to us. But sooner or later everyone’s luck runs out. So I finally decided that it was time to give up a weekend of skiing, take an avalanche safety course, and take personal responsibility for my own safety while out in the backcountry. I no longer wanted to rely solely on luck and my friend’s judgment.

So I spent last weekend (Saturday through Monday) taking the Sierra Mountain Center Avalanche Level One course that was being given in Bishop, CA. The course was taught by S.P. Parker. He opened the course off by telling us that the course was not going to give us the one answer. In other words, nothing we were going to learn was going to tell us that a slope was 100% safe. There are simply too many factors that influence whether or not a slope will slide. Instead, the course was designed to teach you the right questions to ask yourself so that you could make an informed decision and minimize the risk of your or your party getting caught in an avalanche.

On the first day, we spent the morning in the classroom discussing case studies, types of avalanches, rescue procedures, how terrain influences the potential for avalanches, and routefinding. The afternoon was spent in the field looking at the actual terrain for signs of avalanche danger and practicing using our beacons. I found this really useful since I had never had much success practicing with my beacon before. (I’ve got an Ortovox M2. While its range is better than the digital beacons, it definitely takes more practice to use it effectively.)

On day two, we again spent the morning in the classroom covering additional case studies, group dynamics (what leads groups to make poor decisions), influence of weather, and snow pack theory. In the afternoon, we drove to Table Mountain and dug snow pits. S.P. showed us how to identify the different layers and to perform tests to determine how well the different layers had bonded to each other. I was surprised when S.P. said that he didn’t dig snow pits very often. He only considers them to be one of many factors that help you to determine what level of avalanche danger exists. He emphasized that other factors such as slope angle, wind loading, weather, sun exposure, terrain triggers, how the snow feels (slabby, soft, crusty, etc) and signs of recent avalanche activity should all help you to form a good picture of the degree of avalanche danger present. You only need to dig a pit when you are still unsure after looking at all these other factors.

Day three was spent in the field near Mammoth Rock. We spent the morning examining the terrain for signs of avalanche danger (recent slide activity, wind loading, slope angle, etc), discussing safe routes, and digging another snow pit. In the afternoon, we got in a short run (8” of excellent fluff with wind-pack in places) before practicing multiple burial (2 –3 people) searches. I found the multiple burial scenario much more challenging. Personally, I had a difficult time with my analog beacon (M-2) picking out where each victim was. I realize that I still need to a lot more practice with this scenario. We also learned that team organization plays a big role in coordinating search efforts to make sure that everyone isn’t converging on the same victim.

So was the course worth the $350? Definitely! You can’t put a price on your life. But like S.P. said in the beginning, it’s not the answer. If you are looking for the definitive safety guarantee, you are better off giving up backcountry skiing and staying at a resort. As an avalanche safety instructor should, S.P. comes off as being very risk averse and prudent. In the course, he would never say that a pitch is completely safe to ski down or skin up. It always felt like the textbook answer was to either go up or down the windblown section with no snow on it. But that is precisely because avalanche safety is not an exact science. It's about minimizing risk intead of eliminating it as well as knowing how much risk you are incuring and being comfortable with that. I do feel that the course gave me the tools to better judge how much risk I am taking on each run. Right now, I know the questions to ask and which factors are most important. The next step is to gain more experience so that I can better weight all of these factors to form a more accurate picture.