Swix RC140 Skate Poles (170 cm)

swixRC140Overview

Got schooled by the kind and knowledgeable folks at Marmot Mountain on the ins and outs of skate poles. Considering my budget, the mid-grade Swix poles seemed to strike the right balance. These are the ones with the blue hatching. Definitely found the middle ground in stiffness in the Swix line, but seemingly stiffer than the full-carbon Yoko pole of the same size.

Poles weighed in at 261.6 and 263.3 g, so 262.5 ± 1.5 grams (with usual caveats about measuring errorbars off two points). Couldn’t find a Swix spec for the poles’ mass.

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Fischer CRS Skate Vasa 192 cm

 

fischerCRSSkateFull

 

The skate gear continues. As a review goes, I’m still calibrating myself as much as the skis for skate gear. No flaws, binding mount went smoothly, skis go fast.

If you’re looking at the photos, the 2000/2006 g calibration factor applies to this scale. One ski weighed in at 700 g, the other at 708 g. With the usual caveats (2 measurements is a poor way to sample a distribution),  this comes to 704±7 grams for each ski. I can’t find a spec from Fischer for the 192 cm ski.

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Rossignol F4 Skate NIS Binding

Skate gear is starting to cross the MeasuredMass scales. Once these bindings get some snow time, I’ll post a review. What did they say on the scale?

rossignolF4Skate

121.0 g and 121.3 g, respectively.  Two samples is too small to reliably estimate an uncertainty, but if I do, it’s 121.15±0.27 g.  Rossignol quotes 240 g/pr, so these might be less than 1% high, but without an uncertainty from Rossignol (depending on significant digits, that 240 could be 240±5), it’s impossible to tell.

Looking forward to getting some time on them!

Vasa

The skate skiing hook may have been set – it turns out that skate skis are fun going downhill too. A perusal of available nordic skis reveals a preponderance of skis from many manufacturers all labelled ‘Vasa’.

What, where, or who, is Vasa? The man who led Sweden to independence was Gustav Vasa. A 90 km ski race that follows a historically important route is called the Vasaloppet (think the original Marathon). The race is huge, and the mass start is incredible.

Whence Vasa on every ski? I’m not certain. This post suggests that mass-start skis are labelled Vasa. If you’ve more information, please leave a comment! (thanks!)

It wouldn’t be a measuredmass post without a plot; here are the winning times since 1922, as found on Wikipedia.

vasaloppetWinningTime