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| What the heck are you doing here? Wow, you must be having a really bad snow winter if you've ventured here to the archives. What boredom could drive a person to such measures? Well, now that you're here, have fun finding out what embarrassing things I said years ago. | |||||||||
| RACE REPORTS | |||||||||
| River View Loppet-Results | |||||||||
| I got back into Ashland about 11 o'clock the night before this one started in Brule, WI. Ran downstairs, brushed the last coat of wax of the skis and put on some Solda solid fluoro and ironed in some binderwax on my kickzone. By the time I was done I set up for my 3 night in a row with less than 5 hours of sleep. Up early Saturday morning I drove over to Brule and got registered. Sadly, sometime since the last time I did the race, they had done away with the 24k classic, so I was stuck with 12k. I cruised over to the Afterhours trail system and pulled out the skis to start testing kickwaxes. I went out on Swix VR55 and it felt real nice, but a touch draggy, so I tried out some Toko Red and some Rode stuff, both of which felt ok, but not quite as good kick as the Swix. Just as I was finishing up my testing, I ran into my high school coach, Doug Liphart, over with a bunch of kids from his CANSki program. He hadn't figured out the wax yet, so I told him what I'd been finding out. I decided to put the VR55 onto my older pair of Atomic ARCs which seemed to be a touch faster than my new RC11s. The ARCs were waxed up with some Solda F31 Pink and the Solda solid Fluoro on top. I got up to the start about 20 seconds left for the start, strapped on my poles and was off. The first few k felt pretty good, but the kick wasn't that great. Then the sun came out and I lost all of my kick. Thankfully, the course was pretty flat in this section of the course, so I was able to double pole a good portion of the course. I was passing people who had started before me left and right finally reeling in one of Doug's fast high school skiers, Catie Cogger, before the eventual race winner Corey Brinkema blew by me double poling like a machine. Around 6k I started to feel the effects of all of the double poling in the race, and not doing much classic skiing lately, or much double poling at all this season. Things got that much worse when we hit the uphills at 9k into the course. I was herringboning everything and truly falling apart, my lack of intensity training of late showing through. Thankfully after a couple k of steady climbing, the last kilometer was flattish with a nice downhill thrown in. I double poled strong into the finish and was most relieved to be done. Doug offered me a cookie, which I most gratefully accepted. Following a couple of glasses of water and the cookie, I went out for a cooldown ski. I threw on some Swix VR70 Kilsterwax, and it was actually sticking ok. Not bomber kick, but not too bad either. Probably what I should have been on for the race. But as they say, that's racing. We headed back into town for a nice lunch at the Brule Town Hall. After lunch was awards, I ended up winning the 20-29 age group and getting 5th overall with a time of 50:15 right behind Scott Nesvold. Mark Howard was second and Brent Oja was third. Catie pulled out a strong 2nd in the womens race. The CANSki kids were representing over in the 5k youth race, with the winner and around seven of the eleven finishers. What a great day for a ski. | |||||||||
| Great Scott (Schweitzer Mtn.) | |||||||||
| Our original plan had Gabe and I driving all the way down to McCall, ID, for the Payette Lakes marathon, but due to a multitude of mostly school related factors, we decided that doing a smaller 10k skate race with less than half the driving made a lot more sense. We'd been up skiing the weekend before and had been surprised how good the skiing had been as skiing had been non-existent at Mt. Spokane for at least a month at that point. We headed up early (way too early) the morning of, and made a quick stop at the Cour d'Alene Safeway for some breakfast. Up at the mountain, we got registered, got dressed and started walking up the cat track, which was the access point for the nordic trails since all of the lower stuff was melted out. Basically, all of the trails on the south facing slopes were toast, while everything on the north side was still great. After a nice walk up the already mushy cat track, I was working up a sweat. Following some quick ski testing in which I picked my warmer pair of RS-11s with Solda Orange and HP05 on them we went out for a pre-ski of the first half of the course. When Gabe and I got back to the starting line, people were stripping off clothes left and right (hey, watch where your mind is going). It was shaping up to be a real scorcher. Brendon Townshend was going topless, Gabe was down to running shorts and a t-shirt, and I was down to rolled up tights (knickers) and a Craft sleeveless undershirt. As the gun went off, I was in the front row, someplace I'm not used to being a the start of the race. I let Brendon take the lid and tucked in behind him. After a couple of tight downhill turns, Brendon jumped in the tracks and let me past. I continued on free skating and throwing in some V-3. At the bottom of the gradual downhill, we swung a hard right, and mostly due to my bad skiing, Gabe managed to step on my pole, and pull it clear off my hand. After retrieving the pole, we'd only lost a couple of seconds on the group, and didn't have much problem pulling them in on the ensuing climb. As we hit the crest of the hill, Gabe went nuts double poling in the tracks and got himself up to the front of the group and didn't stop there. He went off the front with one other guy who's name escapes my memory at the moment. By the time I got through traffic, they had a pretty good gap, and despite my best efforts to put the hammer down and catch them through the climbs, they seemed to be pulling away. Once I realized that my chances of catching them were pretty remote, I backed of the pace just a touch and continued grinding up the long climb I was in the middle of. On reaching the flat on top, I cranked things back up, hoping that one of them would crack. I had no such luck and I never saw them again. The long drag of a climb I'd just finished going up was a lot more fun going back down and in no time I was done with a time for the 10k race under 28 minutes which was good for third place, about 30 seconds back from Gabe who was 30 seconds back from our mystery man. After nice warmdown, we headed down for awards. Gabe picked up a nice Swix iron as a door prize, and even though my name was drawn last, I walked out with a candy bar, GU, and a pair of ski ties. Gabe and I headed up for another hour or so of skiing and on the way back down enjoyed some nice waterskiing on the Cat Track. It was seriously moist. On the way back through Sandpoint, we stopped by the Taco Bell (not imaginary this time) for some serious calorie loading. And thus our heroes rode into the setting sun and back to Gonzaga. | |||||||||
| Race of the Methow-Results | |||||||||
| Once the Spokane Langlauf was cancelled, Gabe and I decided to head back to the Methow for another race, this time a 15k classic. It had been three weeks or so since the pursuit, and I think I had been on skis a grand total of three times since the pursuit. We drove over the night before and grabbed some dinner at or favorite, the Twisp River Pub for some pub burgers. The waitress gave Gabe a little bit of a funny look when he ordered two right off the bat. After dinner, we cruised over to the wonderfully hospitable home of Joe Jenson, where we were joining the crew from University of Idaho. They were great and it was wonderful to sleep in a real bed instead of our original plan of the bed of Gabe's truck. As I was laying in bed, I realized that I'd left my all of my poles in Spokane. After I got that out of my head, I got a wonderful nights sleep, woke up early the next morning and gulped down a bowl of oatmeal. Over breakfast, I asked if anyone might happen to have a pair of poles that I could borrow for the day. Mike Thom came throug with a pair of Excels that were just about the right length though lacking any metal in the tips. Armed with a set of poles, we headed up for the venue at the Sun Mountain Lodge trails. We got up there plenty early to register and start checking out the kick wax. The only problem was that it was warming up, and the wax was klister, so rather than play around with 15 varieties of klister, we decided to wait for a while before starting to muck about. Eventually we decided on some KR60. A short warmup on it felt like it might be icing a little bit, but I decided to go with it. The race was an interval start and we had a nice steep climb right out of the gate. Once I got up that, I had what one would think would be a little bit of respite with some downhills, but I was about to find out how much the minimal skiing in the last three weeks was going to hurt me. Combined with the fact that I was skiing on a pair of borrowed Rossignols, I felt out of control on the downhills all day long. I started reeling in some slower skiers who had started ahead of me, the kick wax wasn't working that well for me, but if I was careful, I could get some ok kick. About 4k into my first of three 5k laps, Laura McCabe blew by me like I was standing still. Heading out on my second lap, I kicked even less of the monster hill at the beginning of the course, but actually felt a little bit better on some sections of the course. I finally picked up my 30 second man, Brendon Townshend, and skied pretty well for the rest of my lap. Heading up the monster hill the last time, I kicked almost none of it and was definitely feeling the pace that I'd been setting. I tried to keep things together despite not having real great kick, but probably lost some time on the rolling middle section of the course. Towards the end of the final lap, a couple of people passed me and Brendon, having been nowhere to be seen for a while was back on my tail. Seeing that I was hurting, he said something to the effect of "Let's finish this one togther" so I picked up the pace and we were skiing together into the last kilometer or so, which was mostly downhill. I lost the line in a tough corner and almost crashed at which point I figured Brendon was gone. As I rounded the next corner, there was Brendon, digging himself out of a crash himself as I flew by. I managed to keep it together and negotiated the last tough corner without any problems. I put in a nice strong feeling finish for a time of 1:01:08, about 12 minutes off the winning time of Dakota Blackhorse Von Jess. Considering how little I'd been skiing and how funny the kick was, I was happy enough. After the awards ceremony, and finding out that Adam "the fastest man I know" Airoldi made the PNSA JO's team, Gabe and I packed up the truck and headed out of town. We stopped in Twisp for some food at the grocery store, but since I thought I'd seen a Taco Bell just up the road, we didn't really stock up. Much to my chagrin the next Taco Bell we saw was cruising into Spokane a few hours later. Needless to say, we were both pretty darn hungry by that time. All in all, another great race weekend. Thanks again to the Jenson's for their hospitality and to Mike for the poles. | |||||||||
| Methow Pursuit-Results | |||||||||
| This was one of my favorite races last year,
and it didn't dissapoint this year in the least. Eric, Gabe and I got out
of Spokane around 2 in the afternoon and headed towards Winthrop. We rolled
into Winthrop around 6:30 and checked into the wonderful Best Western Cascade
Inn. After checking in, we cruised over to race registration to pick up
our race packets. With these two tasks accomplished, we headed back over
to the Twisp River Pub for some dinner. I got some curry soup, fabulous
pasta and a salad, while Eric and Gabe stuck with the classic Pub Burger.
While I was still working on the end of my pasta, Eric and Gabe were debating
the merits of ordering another Pub Burger, and these are not whimpy burgers.
They're a good 3/4 pounds of beef. Well they ended up splitting another
one before I finally finished my pasta and salad. Bellies full, we headed
back to the hotel to get the skis waxed for the next day. We also enjoyed
some quality movie time. After ski waxing it was straight to bed. We awoke
early the next morning, ate croissants and headed up to the race site. When
we got there it was warm and the snow was looking pretty ugly so we started
trying to figure the kick wax out. By the time we were done, we'd decided
that Swix KR60 was going to work passably well, though we were wishing for
a tube of KR70 for the super wet conditions we were facing. For the second
year in a row, I had a pretty late start spot in the interval start race
and thus started passing people almost immediately out of the start. The
kick wax was working ok, but I was definitely finessing it a little bit
on the uphills. Knowing the course helped a lot and I felt like I paced
myself a lot better than last years effort, as this is definitely a "long"
15k. At the end of the day, I ended up with a 56:56, which I was pretty
happy with. We headed back into town to get some showers and lunch. Lunch
was another meal at the Duck Brand in downtown Winthrop. After lunch, we
cruised back to the hotel for some relaxation, more movie watching and to
get started on waxing for the next day's skate race. Towards the end of
the afternoon, we tuned in to watch Gonzaga pick up another "W."
After the game was over, we headed down to the barn for another great salmon
bake. Following dinner, we headed home to finish up the waxing and watch
Kill Bill Vol. 2 The next morning dawned a little too early for my taste. We headed over just in time to be the first customers of the morning at the Duck Brand. I ordered my new favorite food, oatmeal. Suitably stuffed, we rolled over to the barn to pick up the bus up to the race start in Mazama. I tested out a couple pairs of skis and picked my colder pair, a decision I wondered about later in the race as I ran into some warmer sections of trail. I got ina nice warmup and headed out onto the course. I had another skier about 15 seconds up that just kept dangling there, so I just tried to keep skiing smooth, but things didn't feel quite right. A few k later, after a couple of major hills, I was passed by Alex Hall for the first of a few people to go by me during the day. I just kept on skiing my own pace, but was noticing someone sneaking up on me just before I got to the biggest climb in the race. It turned out to be Eric, who had already made up the two minutes that he'd lost during the previous day's classic race. We skied together for a while and then he was gone as soon as things went seriously up. I got passed by a couple of other guys during this hilly section as well. Near the top I caught my only racer of the day, Tom Pryor. Coming down the backside of the hills, I had a pretty nice wipeout, and took Tom down with me. As we got back down onto the flats, Andy Miller, a ski instructor at Sun Mountain Lodge flew by us. I let him go, thinking that Tom and I could work together and probably pull him back in. That turned out to not work out so well as the next time I took a pull, Tom fell off the pace almost immediately. Back onto a part of the course that suited my skiing a little better, I decided to try and see if I could catch back onto Andy and lifted the pace a little bit. There was someone in the distance, so I just kept on skiing. Once we got into the last three kilometers I seemed to be pulling some of the gap in and just put the hammer down and skied as hard as I could. I pushed all the way into the finish, to find out that the skier I had been chasing for the last 10k was Eric, not Andy. In the end, he got me by about 30 seconds. I didn't have quite the skate race that I would have liked (getting passed by a few less people would have been nice), but at the end of the day, I was pretty happy with how my overall race went. After the awards, where Gabe won a night at Sun Mountain Lodge, I won a sweet Swix pint glass, we headed back over to the Twisp River Pub for another round of Pub burgers, which were great as usual. Contentedly full, we crawled back into Eric's Nissan Frontier and headed home to Spokane. |
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| 24 Hours of Telemark 2005 | |||||||||
| Read all about it here. As a bonus, you get to see the site "old school style" | |||||||||
| Grand View XC Freestyle- 12/18/2004 | |||||||||
| This was a
tough one. I had three days on skis going into the race and temperatures
were hovering around 0 F on the day of the race. I decided to race the
college class, and with my limited ski time I was just hoping to avoid
last place. I got over to the beautiful Wolverine Trail System and ran
into Scott Chapin and the Toms, Meyer and Gaier. After picking up my bib,
I got back to the car, suited up and headed out for a warmup. My trusty
Peltonen Zeniths, waxed with Start green actually felt pretty good during
my warmup. I lined up and took off at 11:32. I felt ok until the peak
of the first hill, at which point I got the feeling that it might be a
long day. I was already hurting, and just didn't feel quite right. Within
the first two k, my 30 second and minutemen caught me and spit me out.
After they went by, I just tried to settle in and ski my best race. The
course moved into some more rolling terrain where I was able to recover
a little bit and work the course some, but as soon as things headed uphill
again, I was in trouble. I never seemed quite able to get my V2 going
the way I wanted. I have a feeling that some more time skiing and an interval
workout will work do wonders. I ended up finishing in 35:47. Not a bad
time for me, but dead last in the college race. I guess its not a huge
surprise since I've been lacking in intensity training lately. I'm already
looking forward to the Double Pole Derby down in Hayward. |
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| Spring 2004 | |||||||||
| Well, this past spring, I got a little bit
behind writing about the races I did, I figure now is as good of a time
as any to write a little bit about it. Race #1 Methow Pursuit My friend Eric and I drove over the amazing Methow Valley the night before the race, registered and had a nice bite to eat in Twisp. After dinner we sat down and got the skis ready. We got up to the start later than we wanted too, but still had time to get the kick wax sorted out and get in a nice warm-up, at least for me since I registered day of and was headed off near the end of the field. I started the race pretty well, trying to ski fast, but not quite bury myself on any of the hills. That didn't last for very long, and pretty soon I was hurting. About 10 km into the 15 km race, I was really wishing that it was over. I pushed on to the finish to come out with a time of 1 hour 1 minute, about 7 minutes behind the leaders. After the race I skied around a bit to cool off, and we headed back into town for lunch, showers and some relaxation watching people break bones in the Winter X Games. Seriously, big air on motorcycles on ice is just not a good idea. After the Salmon feed that night we headed back to the hotel for some crazy waxing. We got the skis all set up and turned in for a nice night of sleep. We awoke to another beautiful morning, got some breakfast and headed up to the start. I tested out my skis and decided to go with the Atomics since the course was reasonably hard. After that I just went out for a nice warm-up, wanting to get nice and loose after the hard effort the day before. The last time I'd done a pursuit race, I'd dropped precipitously in the skate race, so my goal was to try to avoid that. I started off at what I considered a reasonably pace, and pretty quickly had reeled a couple of people in. Soon after passing one of them I went waaaaay off the course, and he passed me back. When I caught back up to him, I just sat in behind him and grabbed a bit of a a breather. After that we worked together for a while before I got antsy and took off again. The course loses elevation, and is mostly open and flatish, so working together poses a definite advantage. After the big hills I had lost a place or two, mostly on the downhills due to poor skiing on my part. Right about this time, I hooked up with Doug Schwiesow, and started moving again. We worked together for the rest of the race, picking off a racer and there. Coming down the finishing straight he gained a bit of an advantage, and that was the race. When everything came in, I had managed to finish two places up on where I started in 22nd and 2nd in my age class. It was a great two days of racing, and I definitely want to go back. Race #2 Spokane Langlauf This was the hometown race and the one for all the marbles. Eric prepped my skis for me the night before, and we headed up early the day of the race to do the kick waxing service sponsored by Fitness Fanatics. After waxing untold numbers of skis, I finally got out on my own, which were feeling good. The race got underway and I had a good start spot. Around the first corner, people were going down everywhere, I managed to avoid a big pile-up only to simply fall off the side of the trail. I swear my skis were simply just too fast. After most of the lead pack had passed by, I jumped in and started passing people. I pushed hard, but only managed to sneak up into 11th by the finish, five minutes off the pace. It was a hard race, and a bit of a disappointment that the fall kind of took me out of it. Race #3 The Great Bear Chase As has become tradition, I ventured home to the midwest over my spring break to enjoy some skiing and do one of my favorite races of the year, The Great Bear Chase in Calumet, MI. After I finished my last midterm, one of my friends drove me out to the airport, and, I waited for a loooong time for my plane. I got back into Ashland after a relatively uneventful flight, and got a great night's sleep. The next morning I set out for Houghton, Michigan, where I would be staying with some friends of a friend. I got up to Houghton in the middle of the afternoon, and Tyler and I went for a ski over in Calumet. I hadn't been on snow much for a while and the trails were in great shape. I felt simply great, or as good as you can when you've barely been on skis. After the obligatory spaghetti dinner and getting registered, and a visit with the Schoville sisters we headed back to Houghton to get the skis waxed. If memory serves me at all correctly, we put on some Fast Wax Tan followed up by a pure fluoro overlayer. I got to bed (the couch) around midnight. At 1 a.m. I was still awake. 2 a.m. still awake. 3 a.m. still awake. Sometime around 3:30 I finally nodded off and caught 3 hours of sleep. I woke up the next morning feeling ok, my stomach was a little bit queasy, but I chalked that up to not sleeping very well the night before. I had some bread, a clif bar and some water, and we headed over to the race site. Just as we were parking Tyler said "Shoot, I forgot my bib" or something of that nature. So Tyler took the car and headed back to Houghton while I grabbed my stuff and got changed and tested out the skis. As with every other skate race I did this year, I decided to go with the Atomic RS-11s. The course was pretty firm, at least at the start, and I wanted the stability that they give. I warmed up some, and wasn't feeling too great, but I figured it was nerves that would go away during the race. After the race start I moved up into a nice fast group of guys from Riverbrook and we were skiing in a nice train. I thought I might be skiing a little bit fast, but I figured I would try to hold with them for a while at least and see if I could get used to the pace. I generally seem to need a warm-up in the race even if I warm-up beforehand, so I thought there was a pretty good chance that I would get into the groove. After the 6 k feed, I was starting to feel really flat and my stomach was starting to slosh around a lot. Around 8-10k I decided to let the guys I was skiing with go and try to recover my reserves a little bit. At the 12 k feed, I took down 3 cups of gatorade, and went and sat in a snow bank, I was there for about 10 minutes, during which time I lost most of my breakfast. After that much fun, I decided that my race, as a race, was over. I got a little bit of water from one of the volunteers and started of up the hill. By the next feed station I was feeling much better and took down a bunch of gatorade, and a gu or something. I eased myself back into the race, knowing I still had 30 k to ski on a basically empty stomach. I just cruised for the day stopping at ever food stop to make sure I kept my glycogen up, actually feeling better the whole time, and gradually picking up the pace. My goal for the race had been to finish in under 3 hours, and I finished around 3:15, almost the exact same time as the last time I did the race. The difference was that last time I was actually skiing pretty hard the whole time. Despite the fact that things didn't go exactly as planned, I still had a great time and actually felt good just to finish the race. I was totally drained, so I decided to stay in houghton one more night before trying to drive home to Ashland. |
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| 2/3/03 Spokane Langlauf | |||||||||
| The Spokane Langlauf is a 10 km classic race at Mt Spokane,
near Spokane Washington. The course profile is basically an out an back
(on different, but basically parallel trails.) The out is pretty much up
and the back is generally down. We had much better conditions than last
year when it rained during the race.
I had waxed my two pairs of classic skis up the night before the race expecting warm but not super warm conditions. I got a ride up with Eric Ginn and we got up there with about three hours to get ready. I went out on the Peltonens (which had been waxed with Fast Wax Salmon) first. They seemed to be running well, but it was warming up and sunny, so we were pretty sure that the kick wax would change before the event. For the next hour or so I casually skied around, testing some different kick waxes. With about an hour to go I went out on my other pair of skis, Atomic ARCs (which had been waxed with Fast Wax Bronze and Swix VR 60) and they seemed much slower than my Peltonens, which had swix VF-50 on them. I decided to put some Rode that Eric had decide to use over the VF-50 and use the Peltonens. I got the wax on real quick and headed out for a quick check of the wax before lining up. The wax seemed to be kicking and gliding well, so I was happy. I lined up in the 4th row in the "Elite" section figuring I probably wasn't going to win the thing. The start was pretty fast with people wanting to narrow things down right away. The first half of the race as mentioned before was mainly uphill and my wax was working well so I moved up into about 8th place or so by the time we reached the end of the first major climb. I ended up behind Meredith Hyslop (Whitman College) and was working to stick with her up the climb. I did notice that my skis were definitely not running as fast as the skis of the people around me (probably attributable to a little too much kick wax, or too warm kick wax,I'm pretty sure that the glide wax was almost perfect.) All told, by the time we reached the peak I was still in about 8th place, give or take a couple. Now it started to hurt that my skis weren't working as well as most other people's. I was losing ground with alarming quickly on the downhill sections of the course. We finally got to some uphills (and it started snowing, hard) and I pulled up close to a couple guys again, but lost the rhythym on a climb about 2 k from the finish and couldn't get it going again. So I pushed it into the finish in 34:15. All told, I ended up about 10th (official results aren't up yet) and 1st in my age group. I thought the race went really well, just wish I could have had a bit faster skis, I'm guessing that the Atomics with the same wax would have been rocket fast, since they generally are super fast. All in all, not bad for my first "real" race of the season! I'll always take a good fun race and good results. The race was won by Nick Bauer in a time of 29:56. Full results should be available Tuesday. Upcoming plans include, anything I can get to out in Washington and possibly the Great Bear Chase if I can get the flights worked out around my mid-term/spring break schedule. Update: Results are up 11th place overall |
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| 1/12/02-1/13/02-24 Hours of Telemark | |||||||||
This report will probably be just a bit longer than my
last one, since the event itself was a bit longer than the last one too.We
arrived at Telemark Resort Friday afternoon and checked into our room.
I immediately ran into an old friend whom I hadn't seen for a couple years.
So we chatted a bit about breaking bones and then I went up to the room
with the rest of my team, which consisted of Sam Rayner, Adam Airoldi,
and Tyler Lulich. We went for a quick ski, during which time I'm sure
that we skied in at least 5 areas that were off limits, but it was dark
so we really couldn't tell. After the ski we moseyed over to get some
dinner at Baby Haakonens since the line for the Outpost was quite large.
After dinner we went down to the waxing tunnel to get some skis waxed.
The weather forecast really could not have been better. Temps were supposed
to stay between 15 and 30 degrees fahrenheit for the whole race, which
meant there was no need to use more than one temperature range wax. I
put Fast Wax Blue on one pair (Peltonen Zeniths), Toko Premix on another
pair (Peltonen Supras), and Fast Wax Salmon on the final pair (Atomic
Beta Race). After getting the waxing done I was feeling ready to hit the
hay so I went back to go to bed. I tossed and turned until 1 AM when my
body clock finally decided that I should get some sleep since I had to
get up at 7:00 the next morning. At 7 I got up and had a wonderful breakfast
of Smacks (I digg'em). We talked a little strategy and decided that our
goal would be to finish the race. After breakfast we went down to the
pre-race meeting and talked with some more friends and got the scoop.
After the meeting we headed over to the start area, the word from our
first skier (Sam) was that the skis were running extremely fast. At sometime
around 10 AM the cap gun sounded and the skiers were off in a flash. We
all migrated back to the room to get changed and ready for our upcoming
laps and begin the process of trying to stuff as many calories in as we
could. We had been planning on laps taking about 40 minutes, Sam soon
returned from his first lap reporting very fast course conditions and
a 34 minute lap things were definitely moving along at a good clip. He
reported marginal snow cover, but very hard snow so I decided to use the
Betas since they run the best on hardpack. I hurried down to the start
area in time to see Adam turn in another blistering lap of 33 minutes.
I was off! I took a nice pace that I felt I would be able to cruise at
for a while. The beginning of the course was down for about the 1st km
after which point it climbed steadily for 2km. Then I moved onto a nice
rolling section leading up to the 6 km food station. After the food station
there were a couple of good climbs followed by some nice downhills (with
more down than up), the last of these was pretty icy and only got worse
during the race. After this downhill the course was pretty flat until
the 8 km mark. After this were a couple nice uphills, and suddenly I was
done with my first lap. I turned in a 35 minute lap without too much effort
which was keeping things rolling well. Tyler turned in a solid lap and
we started out another rotation. I skied a solid 34 minute lap and sent
Tyler off and we were looking strong. We went through another quick rotation
and during the break I wolfed down a couple PB&J sandwiches. Adam
came back a little earlier than expected and I missed the hand-off, so
he was off to do another lap. Right about this point we found out that
we were running in third position, which was a major motivator. When Adam
got back from his second lap I went out to do a couple. I felt really
solid all the way through them and turned in a 36 and 38 minute laps including
drink breaks on both laps. Things were looking good as darkness fell during
my second lap. We kept doing two laps at a time, which gave me a nice
break in which to grab a bite to eat and get my rock skis ready for the
night. Since putting a HUGE gash in them on the first lap, I hadn't done
any further damage to the Betas but the course was continuing to break
down and in the dark it was getting much harder to avoid things I had
decided to do my night laps on my rock skis. |
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12/15/01-Selkirk Sprints |
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| My first race of the season! It was a 1.5k sprint at Mt. Spokane. It was my first hard skiing of the year, so things did not go so well. I did ok in the qualifier, but in my first sprint (also the final since there were only three senior men) I went up against a quite good skier and was basically demolished. I did another sprint against a masters skier and was much closer but still couldn't keep it together for the whole uphill. More intervals will solve that problem. The Peltonens were good, not amazing but good. There really isn't much to say about the races. They weren't close and when sprints aren't close they are pretty much a lactic acid induced haze after the first hundred meters or so. | |||||||||
| RESULTS | |||||||||
| Coming someday. | |||||||||
| Race News | |||||||||
| Maybe someday. | |||||||||