Icebreaker 2011 Report

by Duncan Marsden

I was not planning on running this year's Icebreaker but managed to sneak an entry, late on Friday, and so I decided that it would be good a good opportunity to see how fit I was at this time of year.  I guess the clue is in the title, but I did not bank on the 20 cm of snow which fell in Calgary throughout Saturday, leaving Sunday's race course somewhat of a skating rink.  When I warmed up with Jeremy Deere, there were a number of discussions about what shoes we should wear and we decided that there was no correct shoe (the course being either sheer ice or dry road) and that no one would win simply based on their choice of shoes.  As we watched the eventual winner (who was wearing spikes!) pulling away from us with ease on a particularly icy stretch in the first mile, we had to concede that we might have been wrong! 

Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable race with plenty of BVH interest upfront.  Jeremy was in second throughout most of the race but ended up finishing in third place, closely followed by Frank Woolstencroft in 4th, with me in fifth.  The picture above shows the only time I was in front of Frank in the whole race!  Scott Jensen (also ruing his choice of shoes) was a little bit further back but showing promising form after returning from injury.

All in all, it was a crisp, sunny day to be out running fast round some quiet neighbourhoods and was a very enjoyable race.  The times reflect the conditions and that is all I am going to say about that!  I missed the brunch but by all accounts it is unmissable!

Don't forget the 5K tonight.  Starting at 7 PM under the Olympic arches outside the YMCA in Eau Claire.  It will be a slightly shorter course (by about 150 m) due to some digging that is taking place behind the River Cafe in the park.  There may also be a few small pockets of ice so be careful on your feet.  See you all there!

MitoCanada Race and 5k race series

Don't forget to enter the MitoCanada run on May 1 in Canmore. Link to the entry here:

http://www.active.com/running/canmore-ab/mitocanada-canmore-5-and-10-km-fun-run-walk-2011

Let's make this one of the premier races in the area!

Also, keep an eye out for the start of the 5k summer race series. The plan is to have them on the first Wednesday of every month, leading up to Chicago (six in the series). The first one is planned for April 6. Time to get some speed...

MitoCanada Inspiring Success at the Canadian Birkebeiner (February 12, 2011)

By Blaine Penny

Kirk and Blaine at the start. (Photo by Marg Fedyma)

I am a big believer that you definitely give a little more when competing for something bigger than just an individual result. 

Just getting to the start of the Birkie seemed like a feat in itself. The week leading up to the event was a long week for all 3 of us (Brendan, Kirk and I) topped off by a late Friday evening drive to get to Edmonton (due to a Charity Gala I attended to promote MitoCanada as part of a Michael Bernard Fitzgerald concert at McEwen Hall). We arrived after midnight and checked into our “Express” hotel.  Totally bagged, we all just wanted to sleep in the next morning and drink copious amounts of coffee. Racing was so far from our minds.

With a 6 am wake-up, quick breakfast at the hotel, we were off to the start line to try and figure out the grip wax for the day.

The temperature was +2 degrees in the morning with a predicted high of +6, which meant it was going to be a beautiful warm day to ski, but tough waxing and likely KLISTER. For those who have experienced xc skiing with klister, you know it can be fantastic, but also hit and miss when skiing a long course with variable condition and temperatures (like the 55 km Birkie.) After talking to a few people who were wax testing and helping wax skis, a purple Swix klister was the goods. 

As if skiing 55 km wasn’t enough, the Birkie tradition was to replicate the great feat during the civil war of 1206 where 2 Birkebeiner Warriors skied the young 12 lb Norwegian Prince to safety. http://www.canadianbirkie.com/birkie-legend Yes, our version is a backpack with 12lbs!

GO! Kirk and I started in the front row to avoid the start line carnage and quickly settled into a nice groove of double poling across the lake in the beautiful sunshine. Before we knew it, we were a few kilometers in and as we skied through the opening for an 8’ high elk fence gate, I thought to myself that it was a whole lot easier to have the gate open than to have to jump it like last year. (Someone forgot to open the gate last year – serious carnage with 1,000 skiers hucking their skis and poles over the fence and then climbing over after them!)

Our wax was working pretty well, and the conditions were nice and fast with a rock solid track. As good as I have seen for Birkie grooming and conditions overall.

At about the 5 km mark, I looked around and was surprised to see that we were skiing along in about 4^th or 5^th spot (with over 1,400 skiers in the event), and many who chose the Birkie Lite (sans 12 lb pack).  Most of the younger competitive skiers tend to do the Birkie Lite, so I was quite surprised to not see more skiers around us – or maybe we started too fast.

In a long ski like the Birkie, there is definitely an advantage to skiing in a group and getting a bit of a draft to rest. Kirk and I were leading a group of 4 and at about 20 km the other 2 skiers fell off. We decided to just keep it steady and no t push too hard in fear of bowing up.

It was pretty uneventful for the next 20 km and then our wax started to slip quite a bit. Fortunately we could muscle our way up and over the hills and it didn’t slow us too much. With 5 kilometers to go we decided to ski it in together and give one last push to make sure no one overtook us. I spent most of the last 5 km reflecting on my son Evan who has Mitochondrial Disease and is a quadriplegic, and so many others who are suffering like him. I felt so alive, happy, sad and fortunate to have the option to be able to do things like this.  We crossed the finish line together to win the Birkebeiner, pumping our hands in the air and feeling proud of our ski and for MitoCanada.

The MitoCanada racing suits did garner some attention and I was approached after the race by a researcher from UofA who researches mitochondria and was asking what we were all about. Very cool!

My friend Brendan came up with the great idea of ordering MitoCanada racing suits for the WMC, and soliciting corporate sponsors to put their logos on the suits.  In no time we raised $5K and had the suits designed and ordered. Unfortunately it has taken the vendor longer than anticipated to deliver and the bulk of the order is just clearing customs as we speak. However a few suits did make it through and were debuted in the Canadian Birkebeiner last weekend in Edmonton.

A Living Legend

Two clips of my former coach talking about the British Milers Club that he founded in the '60s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koHkgVzyxTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AAS_WNMyb4

Chicago Registration Now Open!

Harriers from around the world crowded round their computers at midnight MST last night to be among the first to enter the Chicago marathon next October.  This is going to be quite the trip and you will not want to miss out on it.  Register here:

http://www.chicagomarathon.com/CMS400Min/chicago_marathon/runner_information/index.aspx?id=500

A Call to Arms...

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his sweat with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in Calgary now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That ran with us upon Chicago day.

Chicago Marathon.  Sunday October 9, 2011.  Be there...

Bow Corridor XC Ski Race (Canmore) – BVH Takes the Season Opener (Master’s) Classic Style Sprint Relay

By: Blaine Penny

 Just 3.5 weeks ago I was running along the hot pavement in the desert of the Las Vegas Marathon. Transitioning from long distance running to Cross Country Skiing Sprints in 3 weeks is not an easy thing to do I learned today. I managed to convince my good friend Kirk Howell – an ex xc ski racer from a previous life - that we should do this race and team up since it was a team relay sprint.  Each skier skis 3 laps of the 1 km loop.  How hard can it be….right?  Carl Pryce and Brendan McCracken teamed up, as well as Carl’s 3 kids.  Carl’s wife Rosie was on course cheering louder than anyone and definitely gave us all an enthusiastic advantage.

Running provides good endurance and fitness, but racing fast on cross-country skis requires a lot of upper body strength and speed on top of that.  I am definitely lacking the strength and the speed and was quickly reminded of that today.  Kirk on the other hand had managed some good strength training through the fall, but was lacking the endurance.  Together, we made a decent team to muster through this.

After a week of fine-tuning the nutrition over the Christmas holidays through eating copious amounts of turkey and chocolate, a few too many beers and wine, I was feeling like I had the energy to toe the line and light the afterburners.  (You sense the sarcasm I assume).  With Kirk having a history of pretty much never losing a sprint finish in his olden ski racing days, we decided he would anchor and I would start.  We registered in the Master’s category (30 years +) to avoid being embarrassed by the young guns in the open men category.

The 1 km loop consisted of a climb off the start, downhill, then slight up, down again to the stadium and slight up to the finish. There were approximately 20 to 25 teams and I bravely started in one of the front lanes.  We blasted off the start and I went as hard as I could and realized I was out in front – now the hard part was holding it.  About a minute later it hit me and I was a flailing carcass of lactic acid.  A couple times I got tangled up in myself and missed a few strides, but luckily didn’t fall.  I managed to double pole as hard as I could to complete the first lap, but was overtaken by one other skier in the last few meters as I tagged Kirk.  As I came into the tag zone Kirk started accelerating as I ran out of gas and had to ask him to stop so I could tag him. Ouch! Not bad I thought, but I was seriously hurting and already felt like I had burned a hole in my lungs. 

Kirk started cautiously on his first lap and then decided to light it up when he got to the first hill and overtook the lead skier (Charles – another east coaster from days past).  By the time Kirk finished his lap he had a good gap.  We kept building on the gap throughout the rest of the race and managed to win by about 45 seconds.  Not bad for a couple of old school ski dads I guess.

The only downer on the day was the unfortunate incident of a skier who went down on one of the down hills.  Apparently he was unconscious for 5 min and was rushed off to the hospital.  I sure hope he is OK.  Not what you expect in an old guy masters race, but you actually get going pretty fast on some of the down hills and a fall can actually do some serious damage.

We had a quick look at the posted results and our time of 16:44 for 6 kms, which would have put us about 15^th in the open men category, just a mere 1 min behind some Olympians who raced in Vancouver last year. Most of our Canadian National Team were skiing the race and it was pretty cool to watch those guys go.  Carl and Brendan came in the bottom 3^rd of the pack after making up some ground on the last few laps with a solid finish.

I know the BVH is mainly a running club – unofficial of course – but one of my goals is to get a few folks out for some of the local xc ski races for some cross training.  Here’s a list of a few great local races for anyone interested in challenging yourself on the skinny boards:

-    Bow Corridor Regional Race (Jan 8): Canada Olympic Park 9 km Skate Race - http://www.bcrr.ca/league.php?scriptName=LEAGUEINFO&leagueID=9899&leagueInfoID=70157

-    Canmore Ski Fest (March 26&27): 12/24 Hour Ski Challenge – solo or relay teams.  It would be great to see a BVH / MitoCanada relay team entered.  I am going to give the solo a go and would love to have some pacing from anyone interested. http://www.canmoreskifest.com/

-    Cookie Race (Feb 26): a.k.a. Kananaskis Ski Marathon http://www.foothillsnordic.ca/main.php?p=5

-    Canadian Birkibeiner (Feb 12): Edmonton, AB  http://www.canadianbirkie.com/

Matt had the idea last year to ski all the trials in PLPP, which has now turned into an annual 100 km ski tour it appears.  If anyone is interested in joining us on Jan 2 for the 2^nd annual tour, email me at blaine.penny@worleyparsons.com or check out the Facebook page Tony Smith of SMITH EVENTS has set up http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112550458813312