Speed test: heavy tele vs XCD touring

[Tom M]

Thanks for posting your stats. It was very interesting but not surprising. My theory is that everyone has a cadence that makes them comfortable, and you probably settled into that cadence on both trials. As expected, the heartrate shows that it was more effort to maintain your cadence when you were using the heavier gear. If you would have set your cadence based on the heartrate for each activity, there would have been a bigger difference, especially on the uphill. Now if the Norwegian XC Olympic team starts showing up with heavy wide skis and plastic tele boots for competition I'll have to rethink this.

[Theme]

Repeat the test with a 15 or 20 day tour in mixed terrain complete with steep mountain ups and downs, rolling Nordic terrain, forests, 30km long lake traverses, and snow in all its forms. If the heavy set up is still faster you are either Superman or Børge Ousland (when he was younger).

There are lots of great points made this far. To someone primarily doing long, long distances in the backcountry on light equipment, this is the one factor that rules over all other reasons to not go too heavy. Except, in deep powder, say a 5 pound forest ski rules over 2 pound fjellski even if only 30% in powder, rest in supportive windpacked snow.

But, going steeper, the real heavy tele setups might win in speed and possibly efficiency-wise again, even over longer distances. Nordic touring, cross country touring equipment has its limits, too. For me it is still worth it even in too steep a terrain, for I am the most familiar with lighter equipment at this point in time

[snow-mark]

Thanks for posting your stats. It was very interesting but not surprising. My theory is that everyone has a cadence that makes them comfortable, and you probably settled into that cadence on both trials. As expected, the heartrate shows that it was more effort to maintain your cadence when you were using the heavier gear. If you would have set your cadence based on the heartrate for each activity, there would have been a bigger difference, especially on the uphill. Now if the Norwegian XC Olympic team starts showing up with heavy wide skis and plastic tele boots for competition I'll have to rethink this.

I think this explains it. You were working about 10% harder (as measured by HR) and got almost 15% more speed from it. Not
a bad trade off though.

Also, overall speed is not always the goal (at least not for me).

.

[tkarhu]

Except in deep powder, say a 5 pound forest ski rules over 2 pound fjellski even if only 30% in powder, rest in supportive windpacked snow.

@Theme Could you possibly explain what you mean here? You write "Except in deep powder". Would "especially in deep powder" match the rest of the sentence better.

[Theme]

Except in deep powder, say a 5 pound forest ski rules over 2 pound fjellski even if only 30% in powder, rest in supportive windpacked snow.

@Theme Could you possibly explain what you mean here? You write "Except in deep powder". Would "especially in deep powder" match the rest of the sentence better.

Thanks for pointing this out!

What I meant, is that there comes a point at which a certain type of ski wins over another in total efficiency over time, depending on goals of course. A forest ski most likely is more efficient over a long distance than a fjellski, if on the skinnier, shorter skis maybe up to 30% of time is spent struggling up to your waist in snow.

[randoskier]

Repeat the test with a 15 or 20 day tour in mixed terrain complete with steep mountain ups and downs, rolling Nordic terrain, forests, 30km long lake traverses, and snow in all its forms. If the heavy set up is still faster you are either Superman or Børge Ousland (when he was younger).

There are lots of great points made this far. To someone primarily doing long, long distances in the backcountry on light equipment, this is the one factor that rules over all other reasons to not go too heavy. Except, in deep powder, say a 5 pound forest ski rules over 2 pound fjellski even if only 30% in powder, rest in supportive windpacked snow.

But, going steeper, the real heavy tele setups might win in speed and possibly efficiency-wise again, even over longer distances. Nordic touring, cross country touring equipment has its limits, too. For me it is still worth it even in too steep a terrain, for I am the most familiar with lighter equipment at this point in time

I would love to have a pair Finnish Forest skis to use in Scandinavia but alas you can not take them home on most airlines because of their length. I looked at a pair at the shop in Ivalo. Pretty cool, and very Finnish.

[DG99]

The Outback 68 is 189 cm. Apparently my size based on weight, but it fails the paper test. Not a super double camber kick and glide thing going on here. I don’t know that would help so much anyways since it’s not a whole lot of flat parts on the route.

I was surprised there didn’t seem to be a weight penalty. More speed but apparently more effort on the tele, so hard to figure out. Higher heart rate on the tele but I don’t think I was more tired out really. Pretty tired from both.

You were working about 10% harder (as measured by HR) and got almost 15% more speed from it. Not a bad trade off though.

Yes. I was thinking, as a way to compare, for XC it was 35 bpm/mph while for tele it was 33 bpm/mph. A way to measure efficiency by factoring in varying effort? But it is hard to see why the tele would be more efficient. I’m just thinking skinny and light doesn’t always gain the XC efficiency you might think.

[paulzo]

There are a pretty large number of variables involved in comparing two trips on two separate days. A Short list:

Your energy level, based on whatever else you may have done on each day prior to the ski jaunt, and how you slept the night before, and what you ate, and what you drank, and your mood.

Snow conditions.

Air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure.

If you skied the same route, were there already tracks exiting the first time out, so that you never had to break trail either day?

Probably more stuff I am not thinking of. At any rate, my point is that I would not put a lot of faith in a comparison of just the two days. Not that I think the information is useless, because what I think it really shows is just how little difference there is between the two setups you tested, in a real world, just this scenario, I'm going out to have some fun sort of way. Multi-day trips, as has been mentioned, would probably show up the difference more clearly. I mean, it's pretty obvious that in truly identical conditions, heavier gear takes more work to move up the hill but may speed you up going down, but all the little factors that go into the total effort and that are effected in different ways by a change in gear - stability, tracking, etc - can make significant differences, but are not obvious or easily measurable. So again, I see the main takeaway as - don't worry too much about the theoretically ideal setup or trying to find it. It's probably in a lot of cases more effective to get really comfortable with the gear you have, which will make you more efficient in using it. Sure, if you plan to ski across Greenland, you want to choose your gear pretty carefully for a lot of reasons. But for a fun day out in the woods, run what you got and enjoy.

[DG99]

If you skied the same route, were there already tracks exiting the first time out, so that you never had to break trail either day?

The first day on the XC skis was a couple of inches of new on old consolidated snow. Mostly a broken trail. Ideal conditions really for the light gear as old crusty refrozen snow is really sketchy with these boots.

The second day on fishscale tele was the old snow, broken uneven frozen trail but not badly iced up. Maybe a bit faster conditions but rather sketchy for the light gear anyways.

what I think it really shows is just how little difference there is between the two setups you tested, in a real world, just this scenario, I'm going out to have some fun sort of way.
I see the main takeaway as - don't worry too much about the theoretically ideal setup or trying to find it.

Yeah makes sense. I had not taken the tele rig out for mileage before as I thought it would be ponderous but…. Surprise! I think, like with light vs heavy bicycles, the weight factor comes up mostly in very short sprint acceleration and long steep climbing. Otherwise not a big deal.

[lowangle al]

I'm pretty sure my heaviest set up with a well waxed ski beats any light no wax combo I have for xc. The fastest I've ever gone doing K&G was on a kick waxed powder board (112mm x 185cm) with a four buckle boot and a free pivot binding.

I think of it like the comparison of driving a sedan to an eighteen wheeler. The heavier rig may have slower acceleration but similar top end speeds. They are similar in that in both scenarios the heavy rig needs more energy to achieve the same speed, but unlike an 18 wheeler the heavy skis are more maneuverable than the light ones, in powder anyway.