Yet again, 46 weeks to go - status report

So, I took a silver medal at the CLASSIC style nationals this year, men 18-40. Didn't see that one coming. I'm into skating. Somehow, especially when I get to double pole, I'm not slow. Possibly quicker than when allowed to skate while doing so.
Last second borrowed old no-wax skis (flexed 15-20kg below my weight), skate boots, skate poles, and I medaled. It was a strange race alright.

This winter, I was blessed with early snow at home. I managed around 9 or 10 days on home snow. Mostly lunch breaks and evening outings. All on streets, park lanes and sidewalks, by lack of grooming.

2 seperate weeks of Alpine XC skiing were absorbed. I think I've improved by a nice amount.

Just recently, I finally (FINALLY) bit the bullit and bought me a SkiErg double pole rowing machine. It's marvelous. Now I just need biathlon or XC footage, and I train super effectively. Just last Friday, normally a moment of hanging on the couch, I got home and tallied up 45mins of non-stop double poling with intervals, while enjoying a biathlon race download on my laptop.
Before and after running practice, at least once a week, I try to throw in an extra 10min warm-up and a 10min dessert both on the Skierg.
While my legs were toast after running Tu-We-Th, on Friday I could complete that SkiErg workout as if I were fresh as peach. It's just such a vastly different sport.
I have great hopes that my snow speed will be boosted greatly if I keep up my SkiErg hours.

Since the summer I've been doing frequent one-minute tests of pushups. I'm now at 75-76. Best in my life by a long margin. Despite being pushing 90kg. I'm holding muscle, probably thanks to over-eating and doing so protein rich at that.
Before I went to the nationals, I was up to 63x or so at 85kg, meaning I've been getting a lot stronger since.

Tonight I went out on the K2 inline skates with slow wheels, for the first time in many months. My skating speed has improved vastly, without clear reason why. I suppose the relatively high exposure to snow skating improved my balance. Perhaps the skating drills I now sometimes do, just lateral V2 hopping, with an elastic tube around my ankles, is already paying divident to that. Most notably though, is that when I double pole, I can attain significant speeds with limited effort.

This winter has really boosted my motivation to become a good skier. There were short moment of glorious good skiing on my part, unfortunately when no-one what lookking and I was demo'ing someone's Fischer Carbonlite skis. Only biblical outcries could express how that felt.
My stupid Fuji camera died on me at the end of the first week in the Alps, so I do have footage of my much improved technique from later in January, around the nationals races. Check out my Youtube channel "Cloxxki" though and feel free to comment.
Something silly and small is making all the difference in my skating, especially V2: just the notion that it's nice to keep the legs straightened after push-off, all the way till they close. Sure beats crampedly lifting them up high. And it adds so much balance to get it right, smoothly.
On the K2's tonight though, I for the first time felt a problem, I was twisting on them. Seems it's time to move up to longer wheelbase skates now. The Skike's I barely ever used seem prime suspects.

My goals for the next nationals are to get the same medal, but without the best guy being disqualified, the second and third best guys having ski problems, another being ill, and then the 50+ skiers finishing in front of me. I strongly sense that my body is capable of some seriously fast skiing. The SkiErg should help me to get the upper body cardio deal in place 80-90% of what's realistic for me. Some scheduled gym work will get me the triceps and shoulders I need.
More running races should boost my comfort zone by about a zone's worth.
Skating in my country I still passionately hate, so I need to work on that.