I stopped into the Bear Valley Cross Country ski shop on Sunday morning and tried to deal with the overwhelming number of choices in cross country skis available for sale. Some skis seemed designed for experienced racers and others for back country skiing with ungroomed trails. How to decide - width, length, color?I borrowed two sets of demo skis recommended by the very helpful Jody and Anna. Both pairs were on sale this late in the season and I also got a pair of brand new boots that I promised to buy no matter what I thought of the skis.

Huh? You mean I shouldn’t just buy the skis that match the color of my truck?

I tried a pair of Fischer Cruiser and Rossignol Delta classic striding cross country skis. The Fischers were shorter and should make it easier to get up the hills. The Rossi’s were longer at 192 cm but that’s a good length for my weight (which is now around 198 lbs. – I’ve dropped 15 lbs. since the start of training). And they had more camber, like the skis Jackie purchased yesterday.

Both skis had a “negative” grip pattern in the middle of each ski. I didn’t know there were negative and positive grips. Anna at the shop explained how the center of the Rossignol EVO skis I had rented have a positive grip patter that looks like fish scales. These scales or bumps stick down slightly from the ski with a straight edge on the back. They grip the snow and keep the ski from moving backward and slip over the snow when the ski moves forward.

Positive & Negative Grip Patterns on the Bottom Middle of XC Skis

The negative grip pattern is recessed into the bottom of the ski so there is less friction when the ski moves forward but it requires the skier to press down a little bit more than the positive grip skis to keep the ski from moving backward.

Both skis should make me go faster but might take a little getting used to. Will I be able to press down more and grip the snow? Will I be able to get up a hill with either pair of skis? Good questions that are best answered by trying the skis in the snow.

We had a fresh four inches of snow on Sunday morning. In fact it was still snowing as I headed to the trails with my demo skis. A couple of teammates hightailed it home before more snow could accumulate.

I tried the short Fischers first – out on the easy Stables Cruise trail and then on the short but hilly Granite Roller trail (I was careful not to accidently take the longer and difficult Equipe trail from the same junction!). Granite Roller has a few hills that I could climb and descend. The Fischers performed well and it was easy to “herringbone” up the hill and I successfully “snowplowed” my way down. The fresh snow made it easier but at least I was trying both pairs of skis in the same conditions.

Three kilometers later I was back at the trailhead and switched to longer, and more yellow Rossignol skis that matched the color of my truck. I tried to keep that from coloring my judgment!

Up the same hills and down – no problem. They seemed faster. By the time I got back to the trailhead I decided to purchase the yellow Rossis. To be absolutely sure, I skied several more medium difficulty trails. The snow kept falling and I was getting tired since I had skied over 20 km the day before.

I returned to the shop and completed my purchase. Now I have my very own skis and boots to compete in the race in Anchorage. It’s too bad I can’t drive my color-matched truck up there too.

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To begin our training at Bear Valley on Saturday, our coaches asked us to ski around a loop of two trails as many times as we could in an hour. According to my GPS wristwatch, each lap was 2.4 km. I heard some concern expressed by the coaches about our speed (or lack thereof) and how long it would take us all to complete the marathon in Alaska. Time trials are a way to tell and I was ready to go! I was near the front of my teammates when Coach George counted down and I took off when he got to zero.

Towards the end of the first lap Coach Dave caught up with me. “Making good time Steve?” He asked.

“Yes!” I answered proudly.

“Well you should slow down. You have a full day of skiing ahead of you.” Dave advised.

Coach Dave had offered this kind of advice before. Start off slow, conserve your energy and have fun. With all the excitement and adrenaline at the beginning of a race, that’s hard to do. But it is best to pace yourself and not get worn out in the first 5 km.

My first lap took me about 19 minutes, ahead of all but one of my striding teammates (Lisa passed me about halfway) and behind most of the skaters. OK, time to relax. My subsequent laps were all slower but I finished three of them in 61 minutes.

Most of my fellow stride skiers hit the rest of the trails after finishing only two laps in 50 minutes or less. I did not see them the rest of the day. I put in my three laps then stopped to put some moleskin on some blisters I was getting on my feet. The boots I rented were “combi” boots that can be used for either striding or skate skis and they did not fit me very well.

I was about to head out on my own when Jackie, another teammate that was stride skiing arrived at the trail head with a new pair of skis. She was trying a demo pair of skis from the Bear Valley Cross Country ski shop. The demo skis had much more camber (arched so only the front and back of the ski touches the snow if no weight is applied) and promised to be much faster than the rental skis I was using.

We took off down the trail together and stayed close as skiing buddies for about an hour. Then at the top of a hill I stopped to build up my courage for the downhill and to eat a Gu packet. Jackie took off down the hill before me and I never did see her the rest of the day.

We were on a long course of trails the coaches planned out for us to complete in several hours. Many were “blue” or intermediate trails with hills. Even so, I only fell once in a controlled manner and completed the training day without injury. Except for those darned blisters!

By the end of the prescribed course I had skied 18 km. My goal was over 20 km so I kept going on a few additional trails and stopped at 20.5 km.

Lessons for the day:

• Proper pacing – I did keep a steady pace but felt tired at times. I recovered after eating Gu, Clif bars and drinking water that I carried. I need to pace my eating as well as my speed to start slow and finish fast.
• Get better fitting boots – Those blisters were bugging me. Moleskin can be used around the blisters to keep the weight off. Coach Dave also recommends using burn pads made by 2nd Skin or even nylon stockings that stick to your feet and will slide back and forth inside your sock.
• Get faster skis – ski packages are on sale at the Bear Valley Cross Country ski shop and I promised myself to try some demo skis tomorrow.

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Accelerance client ChemSW and Costa Rica partner IsthmusIT are profiled in the Business Week article Costa Rica: Cultural Similarities Make It An Outsourcing Favorite. ChemSW used the Accelerance Rapid Ramp-Up service to select IsthmusIT. The article emphasizes many of the benefits of outsourcing your software development to Costa Rica.

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Some of us went back to Tahoe Donner for an “easy ski” before the drive home in the afternoon. I was the only stride skier of my teammates and coaches that were there that day. But Coach Larry’s wife Nina is an excellent skier and agreed to be my buddy stride skier for the day.

My other teammates and coaches headed back to the Euer Valley for their ski. Been there - done that yesterday. One of my teammates Ron described the Crazy Horse trail a couple days earlier as having a nice gentle downhill section. OK, let’s go!

But for every down hill section there has to be an up hill. Indeed, Nina and I found our way up the Sundance trail and then made the turn onto Crazy Horse. Oy, more climbing up the edge of hill looking down into the Euer Valley.

Meanwhile, the wind was whipping up pretty good from an approaching storm. I’m not complaining because we need the snow. But the wind got up to about 20 MPH and the snow was drifting over the stride ski tracks. They were useless going up these hills anyway.

I started to worry. Will the downhill be as gentle as Ron said? Will we get blown off the mountain first? You get the idea. I stopped often to drink water and eat a Gu every 30 minutes or so. If it could get me through 20 km of skiing yesterday, maybe it could get me up the hill in a gale wind.

Nina is a very happy and optimistic person. “Look at the view!” She yelled out.

“You mean that dark cloud over the pretty mountain over there?” I responded. “Hey we’ve gone kinda far. Do you think we’ll cross Interstate 80 soon? Maybe we could hitchhike back?” She the cock-eyed optimist and me the sarcastic realist; we kept each others spirits up during the climb.

Finally started heading down hill. It was a mixed blessing. From my previous posts you know that downhill skiing on stride skis is a “growth area” for me. I did pretty well however I did take one fall. I could feel it happening so I just rolled forward with it and landed on my shoulder. Nina said it was spectacular.

I told her I just wanted to get back to the lodge. She looked at the map and said, “This way is quicker but it’s steeper downhill.”

“Hmm. Let’s go the other way.” I said.

Needless to say, we made it back but our “gentle ski” took over 3 hours and it wasn’t so gentle. Not very smart. Maybe they should rename it the Crazy Horse’s Ass trail.

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We were back at Tahoe Donner this Saturday for more team training. Like last week, we are expected to ski for a long distance without extended periods of rest. No more stopping at the warming hut for a bowl of chili!

Instead, we are to carry snacks and water to last the entire skiing day. I have been wearing a CamelBack pack that contains a 3 liter water reservoir with a drinking tube. (I have been warned that the water may freeze in these packs, especially the hose, even if you clear the hose by blowing the extra water back into the reservoir after taking a drink. My teammate Abbie lamented that she skied almost the entire race in Alaska last year with a frozen tube, not thinking to dump the heavy and useless remaining water from her pack until the end!)

For snacks we are supposed to carry energy bars, trail mix and/or some sort of energy gel. A popular brand is Gu which gives you an “optimal balance of maltodextrin and fructose delivers a quick blood sugar rise, and then maintains that glucose level for up to 45 minutes.” Some have caffeine too. I have not used it because of the blood sugar drop that occurs after the 45 minutes are up. You have to keep eating the stuff to avoid crashing from low blood sugar.

But I was ready to try it after dragging my butt around the trails last weekend. Nothing I ate that day gave me the energy I needed. Today I went for the Gu and I also carried several apricot Clif bars to give my stomach something more solid to grind on.

I skied with teammate “buddies” Patty and Beth. The coaches had us go over to the Euer Valley at Tahoe Donner. We headed up the easy green trails North Fork and Pony Express and then down into the valley on the long gentle slope of the Last Round Up trail.

Hmm, long gentle slope down means big long climb up out of the valley too. That could be a problem.  But I couldn’t believe how good I felt! We skied every green and the blue High Noon trails in the Euer Valley. I was yelling out the distances from my Garmin GPS to my teammates – 8 km. . . now we are at 11 km . . . 14 km and still going! The photo is of me and my ski buddies at about 12 km.

We were about 17.5 km into the day when we climbed back out of the valley. We can’t stop now! Let’s do Lion’s Leap – an easy trail that added a couple more kilometers to our total. Woo-hoo! We were over 20 km by the time we got back to the lodge.

Above is my distance and heart rate chart from the day (click to enlarge). You can see how my travels correspond to the trail map at Tahoe Donner below.

You can also see how my heart rate went down during the breaks we took to eat or drink and then went to the max on the way up out of the Euer Valley. My change in elevation is in green.

As we approached the lodge my heart rate went down slightly as I traversed a gentle downslope. I felt great and could have skiied some more. But I figured I would stop and revel in my long day of skiing without a single fall. I wanted to leave some energy for skiing again on SUnday.

And I vowed never to eat anything healthy from now on – it’s only Gu and Clif bars. Well, maybe just during the race.

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After last week’s team training at Royal Gorge I was scared.

Up and down the hills at Royal Gorge had me exhausted after only 14 km and I am supposed to ski a 25 km race in less than a month. So I vowed to put in an extra effort this week with my training back home.

I went to training at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco Tuesday night and we hiked 6 km to the top of Mt. Sutro and back. On the way down my heart rate was dropping to zone 1 – too low for a good workout.
You can see in the chart (click to enlarge) how my heart rate went down along with the elevation on the downhill, about 1.5 km into the hike.  Later it went back up on the downhill where I ran extra jogs down side streets with Coach Dave to keep my heart rate up.

The chart shows the information collected by my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS and heart rate monitor. I bought it a few months ago to make sure my heart rate did not go too high during training. The other day I finally installed the software that came with the device on my laptop to chart my performance. Here’s another chart from my jog on Thursday. My heart rate stayed around an average of 154 bpm for this level jog.

On Wednesday and Thursday I ran on the levees in my neighborhood next to San Francisco Bay. I jogged 8 km and then 10 km respectively. I would have run longer on Wednesday but my dog got tired. She stayed home on Thursday!

I feel pretty happy that I can run this distance without stopping every couple of blocks the way I had to just a few months ago. I just hope it gets me ready for a long weekend in the snow.

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“Outsourcing is no longer just about cheap labor. … It’s also no longer just about India and China.”  That’s the beginning of a recent article in Forbes that describes global Outsourcing’s Big Picture.

Of course. Doesn’t everyone know this already?

Maybe not. The article suggests there are five key drivers to the growth of the global outsourcing of services. However, it mentions only these three:
1. Tremendously lower cost of labor in multiple global locations
2. The digitization of business processes
3. There is a global pool of educated talent such as engineers and programmers.

Again there are no surprises here.

Is there anything to slow or stop the trend? Maybe government regulation. But the recent warnings of a possible trade war and the downside of protectionism in the so-called Buy America Act by President Obama are likely to be heeded.

This article is a good summary of the global outsourcing trend, but most business people probably know about this already. Accelerance has over 40 partners in a dozen countries. I don’t think it’s a question of if you should outsource, but where.

“A decade ago, if you wanted to cut costs it was an India story. We identified 30 countries that have policies in place to promote service exports. … It won’t be one country that will knock India off the top. It will be a lot of small countries.”

I agree.

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An article in the Wall Street Journal realistically describes the state of affairs in Latin America. It describes Latin America’s quiet revolution this way:

Most of Latin America is, however, undergoing a period of unprecedented political and economic transformation. In Chile, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and, yes, Mexico … there has been a quiet but substantial movement toward the creation of societies that are characterized by increased economic opportunity, social mobility and political democracy.

Noticeably missing is a discussion of Columbia which is becoming another outsourcing destination for American companies in Latin America.

Clients are expressing continued interest in developing their software in Latin American countries because of the closeness in time zone and distance. This article gives a good sense of how close the various countries are to the U.S. politically and culturally too.

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Yesterday I got back from training at Royal Gorge and thank goodness this is a rest day. After our downhill practice in the morning, our coaches had us ski a 14 km course they mapped out (in yellow on the map below). It was long and there was lot’s of skiing up and down hills. I was exhausted at the end.

It was also warm with the temperature in the 50s. I had my Camelback backpack filled with water and lots of snacks to nibble on along the way. The coaches have been telling us we need to be eating every 20 minutes or so to avoid running out of fuel and “bonking” or “hitting the wall”. This was the first training where we did not stop for lunch in the middle and we had to bring our own food to get through it.

I did not bonk, but no matter what I ate or drank I felt run down. It was probably the altitude again and the effects of not being in the snow for two weeks. I did some training at home and jogged 10 km a couple of times, but that apparently is not enough.

The course was not too difficult at first. Then we came to some significant downhill sections. Hey, no problem! I just smiled and snow plowed down with as much control as I could muster.

I fell a few times and had one spectacular head first fall when my skis caught an edge in the slushy snow. A woman coming up the hill asked if I was OK. “Yes, fine” I lied, with my pride more hurt than my body.

“You were working on that fall for quite a ways down the hill!” She said, referring to my lack of control on the steep hill. Thanks a lot lady. I am glad our coaches are more encouraging!

Then near the end of the course at about kilometer 11 was a steep uphill on the Yuba trail. It was a challenge but we made it. My skiing buddy was Beth who lives in Reno and seemed more acclimated to the altitude. Go Beth!

And she did go - up the hill and around the bend before I could get to the top. Our training captain Stephanie was also hanging with us and was very encouraging. Finally the lodge was in sight and I made it to the finish line.

I completed the 14 km course in just over 3 hours. Blah! Is it really going to take me over 5 hours to finish the 25 km race in Alaska? I hope not.

My teammate Ron, a six year veteran of the XC team, says about two-thirds of the team gets discouraged by the course at Royal Gorge each year. Well I know which group I am in.

Although I have to say I am less discouraged than afraid!  I’ll have to get serious about my dry land training this week and the rest of the time before the race which is just a month away.

The good news is the Tour of Anchorage is not as tough as this course at Royal Gorge and it’s at sea level.

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As noted in previous posts I have had trouble with falling. My attitude is if I am not falling then I must not be trying hard enough. That’s OK except for the bruises.
Coach Dave watched me head down a hill at Bear Valley a couple weekends ago. He recommended I lean back more, like sitting in a chair. I immediately got better and successfully navigated several more hills.

Lined up for downhill practice at Royal Gorge

And this weekend at Royal Gorge, we practiced going downhill and turning while doing so.  “Big Deal” I imagine you downhill skiers saying. Yes, it’s true that snow plowing down a hill does not seem that difficult. But the skis are skinny and the boots are only attached at the toe. It’s not impossible but is definitely is more difficult!

Coach George showing proper downhill technique (and smiling)
I’m 3rd from the right

Oh, one more thing. Coach George says we should smile when skiing, especially when doing anything we find challenging. Somehow the act of smiling gives you more confidence. It worked! I smiled my way down most of the hills this weekend!

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