Those that know me or follow along on Stava probably notice that when I leave Edmonton on the weekends, I don't intend on hanging around on flat trails. We have enough of those in Edmonton. I seek out elevation gain and other than total activity time, elevation gain is the main stat I chase when I am out.
So, I "gravitate" towards big climbs, which of course lead to equally big descents. Of course, having rested on Friday to travel to the mountains, I am somewhat rested and ready to race up challenging climbs. I don't complain, I don't beg for shuttles and batteries. When I am tired and when I get old and frail, I'll ride the flat trails that I currently bypass.
My main activities are mountain biking in the summer (with running and road cycling becoming more prominent) and ski touring in the winter. Ski touring obviously lends itself well to climbing. Modern mountain biking is trending more towards continuous, one way, downhill trails that require continuous climbs, rather than loops and out and backs.
Cross country skiing has also increasingly crept into my weekend activities and although most popular trails are flat, following summer fire roads or trails along rivers and creeks. Slogging along the flats isn't interesting to me: in classic skiing, it is heavily reliant on the upper body for double poling and skate skiing is reliant on balance and fast conditions. Fortunately, there are a couple of longer climbs around and it has been fun to race up those as well.
I am a bit of a fan of World Cup Cross Country ski racing and in the leadup to the Holmenkollen 50km race, I saw it mentioned that the course also contained 1800m of climbing. So not only are those athletes covering 50km in just over 2hours, they are also doing that while climbing 1800m!
When you put it that way, it makes you realize that climbing is an essential component of competition cross country skiing. It's not just double poling in classic technique or riding the glide while skating! Now you have my interest. In a similar way, cross country mountain bike racing is requiring an increasing amount of downhill skill to put in fast times on the courses and at the competition level is removed from what one would think of when they picture typical cross country mountain bike riding (aka, going across the country on easier trails).
The Canmore Nordic Centre hosted the 1988 Olympics and has since been upgraded with a more modern set of competition trails that feature shorter loops. They all feature roughly 30-40m of climbing per kilometer. Like any good international governing body, FIS has created its own bureaucracy requiring that courses be certified to meet certain climbing statistics before a race can be held. Compare this to cyclocross or mountain bike, where we make changes to the course as we are setting up the night before!
This means that course maps are published, although it can be hard to find maps from the earlier days of the internet.
At Canmore, the older loops can be up to 15km long (the 50km race had a 10km loop followed by a 15km loop) while the newer, more modern loops top out at 7.5km. While the climbing per kilometer is approximately the same, the newer courses are wider to allow for mass start racing and have shorter climbs (105m climb on an old 15km loop vs 45m on a newer loop).
So, I was recently able to throw myself at various loops, racing 10km, 15km at a time. I was curious if having a course punctuated by climbs that I could run up and then coast a descent would actually be faster for me than double poling or skating the flats. I didn't have ideal snow conditions, but I think I might have been faster. And it was a blast. The climbing was a major portion of the loops, while the descents were a nice rest (compared to sprinting out of corners in a bike race), although requiring some commitment to go fast.
Something I'll look forward to doing more of next winter and there are a bunch of possibilities for comparison. Classic vs. Skate. Flat vs. proper course.
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| An old course map with stats and elevation profile |
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