Change of Pace

Today:
Run 8 miles
Bike Commute 3 miles

Yesterday:
Run 20 miles

We finally are getting some snow and cold. I'll probably bust out the cross country skis tomorrow. Ran on snow packed trail today. forgot how hard that can be.

I decided I'm going to ease back on my training for the next two weeks. I'm planning to run 50 miles on New Year's Day so I think I'm going to do a bit of a taper going into that (beginning now) and then turn it back up after that with a peak sometime in late January before starting another longer taper for the Ultrasport which is on Feb. 24th. My hope is that spending a little less time training for a couple weeks will refresh my body and mind and give me some time to focus more on testing and tweaking my Ultrasport gear.

The tweaking began today when I spent some time duct taping together an insulated sleeve to fit around a fuel canister. My hope is that I can slide a couple chemical hand warmers down in the sleeve and keep the fuel warm enough for my stove to operate in extreme cold:


If this will work I can save a lot of space/weight vs. using my liquid fuel stove. If I were planning to use my stove a lot while I was out there I think I would just go with my Primus Gravity VF liquid fuel stove but I'll basically only be carrying a stove for emergency snowmelt purposes. I'm not super optimistic that this insulated sleeve idea will work but I'm going to test it out in my freezer (about 5 degrees) and then if that works I'll take it to work and test it out in the walk in freezer which I presume is colder than that.

I've also begun trying to improve my sled from last year, including a different pole system, different skis, and a cover that will fit over all the gear to keep snow out. All of these upgrades are in the beginning stages but I'll be getting at those within the next several days.