Fast Trax does SWC

Fast Trax does SWC

"Or two dudes in skinny tights"

A special guest post by Paul Moore

• Saturday 0900h = A light morning run before a full day of work at Fast Trax Run & Ski Shop.
• Saturday 2400h (yes, midnight) = Arrive at CBC Edmonton to cover a late-breaking house explosion.
• Sunday 0640h = Arrive home. Fall asleep more or less instantaneously.
• Sunday 1000h = On the trails at Strathcona Wilderness Centre, banging off some 6x10min intervals and a 2h ski with Patrick Moore
• Sunday 1500h = Commence napping.
• This truly is living the dream.

The Strathcona Wilderness Centre is about 30 minutes straight east of Edmonton. And today Patrick and I went for one of the most fun ski workouts I've done in a long time. And that's saying something.

The workout itself was 6x10 minutes of intervals. Hard, but not too hard. A solid two hours of skiing - you can see the details from Patrick's Garmin here: 6x10 minutes

You could have raced on the world cup with our skis today. We got the wax exactly right.

A fact, I suppose, that isn't surprising when you consider that Patrick waxes on the world cup circuit. And that two of his athletes won a litte race today called, oh, the world championships.

So, we threw down for about 30km. The master blasters at the SWC thought we were from the Olympics. Nothing new there. (incidentally, we're not even close to being from the Olympics).

The workout done, we got it in our heads to start taking some videos. So we did (see below).

 You can find a more serious one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qktNLxj2Zho

You can find a less serious one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJkil8lKHM

Sean Rickard and Will Rickard showed up. They're cool.

Then we were done. So Patrick decided to gear down in the chalet. Check his biceps.

All the ladies were impressed. So we had to go outside. Because they wouldn't quit staring at us.

So then we took this picture. Except Patrick didn't like it because "[his] legs look all janked up to high heaven."

(looking at this, I really have no idea how people get the two of us confused ...)

A good day indeed.

A Little More Birkie

Jack declaring, "Let the fun begin!" As Paul later noted, the fun had already begun several hours previous to this.

Figuring stuff out. It's never a good sign when the bench is covered in snow.

Tyla and me working the bench. Paul running defense for us in the foreground. Vern and Les bearing down on Camrose skis in the background.

Birkie

The Birkie was this weekend, which always makes for a crazy week of work leading up to the event. Wet snow, that started to fall about 90 minutes prior to the start of the race, also made for significant craziness. But that is a topic for another post.

On Thursday, CBC came to the shop to do an interview. You can see the article and video here - "Edmonton accountant moonlights as pro wax technician"

Heading out with Jack to test kick wax and glide wax the day before the race.

Contemplating kick wax options for testing at Islet Lake.

The tracks were in amazing shape the day before the race. Too bad they didn't stay like this!

Jack was the test pilot for kick. Here is our test fleet.

I was the test pilot for glide. For skate races I prefer to test by feel. But, classic races take place entirely in the track and I prefer use the speed trap.

Things get busy the day before the Birkie. So I wrote up the testing results and wax recommendation on the 40 minute drive back to the shop. You can see our final recommendation here - Fast Trax Final Birkie Recommendation

Burning powder.

Making race skis with Sean, fueled by coffee and Coke.