Cross Training

The 24 Hours of Old Pueblo is squarely in my focus these days and I will ramp up my training time as we get closer to February. This past Saturday’s training day called for a 5 hour “adventure” at a moderate to hard effort. Given the snow that fell on Friday, a BIG ski day was in order and Mike Piker was willing to join me.


Quick Stats:
Climbing: 6,600'
Moving Time: 4:47:00
Total Time: 5:57:00
Calories consumed: Not nearly enough



Our plan was somewhat loose in that we would let the weather and snow conditions dictate where we went. The top of Teton Pass was unusually calm Saturday morning so a hike up the Glory bootpack was a great way to kick off the day. Mike summarized the Mt. Glory bootpack climb perfectly. “It is like a hard 45 minute interval, but with an awesome payoff.” I don’t have many Glory hikes under my belt yet so it was a nice change to stand on top in light winds. It seems as if every time I hike Glory the wind is absolutely nuking at the top. With such moderate weather and good snow we decided that a second Glory hike was in order so we grabbed some water at the truck and headed up for round two. The snow in the trees on Second Turn was delicious!

NOTE: I am always amazed at how much I sweat hiking up Glory. Within ten minutes of beginning the hike I am literally dripping sweat from my uncovered head all the way to the top.

Our two Glory/Second Turn runs ate up about 2.5 hours of moving time (I stopped my Garmin 310XT timer whenever we stopped) so I had some more work to do. I threw on the skins, grabbed some more calories, and headed south to Edelweiss with a loose plan of doing laps there for the remainder of the afternoon.

NOTE: It is more difficult to accumulate moving time when yo-yo’ing shorter ski runs. Peeling skins at the top and putting them back on at the bottom takes time.

Despite being late afternoon, there was plenty of untracked snow left in Edelweiss Bowl so I was content to make a couple of runs there and use the existing skin track for my trips back up. With each run down my legs were screaming a little louder and letting me know that they weren’t used to long ski days yet. I finished off the day with great run down The Nose and then skinned back up to the parking lot where just a few cars remained.

NOTE: Bringing dry clothes and hot tea for the drive home was a good call.

Overall, this was one of the harder efforts I have done in a while and I tried to keep the foot on the gas any time I was going uphill. I could have done a better job of eating and drinking and that is something I will have to get better at if I want to do any truly epic ski days.

TECH NOTE: The Garmin 310XT does a poor job capturing ski files. It works fine for running but struggles with the start/stop nature of backcountry skiing.