Ski season: the second half

Some time after the Bogburn, I took over as the CSU head coach, without a huge amount of warning. After an initial rough patch, we ironed things out and life kept on keeping on, but this put a real damper on my own racing. Didn't stop me, though!

Craftsbury Marathon(s)
I showed up to the Craftsbury double-header marathon weekend, and had a great weekend of hanging out with Jess and Kathy, but the new stress of suddenly having a much fuller plate meant I wasn't very focused on the races.

Saturday's classic 50k was one of those days that just makes you glad to be alive. Perfect tracks, sunny day, hard cold snow and a good group to ski with; what more could I ask for? I ended up choosing my klister skis, feeling like they were gliding a little faster, but ended up going a little *too* light on kick. You'd think I'd have learned this lesson by now. So, the skis were fine, but I had to work for my kick, which can make for a long 50k. Luckily, I was confident in my fitness and the speed of my skis, and despite losing a little bit on the uphills, I felt like I was making it up with the rockets I was riding down the hills.

The race started out easy around Duck Pond, and then it felt too easy, so I put in a small surge heading down to Elinor's, so that I could ski the hill alone, which ended up being a good choice, avoiding a crash. The pack caught back up as we headed up Sam's, and at first I was like, this is great that I'm leading, I can dictate a nice slow pace! But everyone just went around me. Oh. I didn't have a huge amount of oomph, and not much motivation to push hard, so just let the pack of six pull ahead.

Lindley V caught me as we headed up Dante's loop, with much kickier skis, and I let her pull ahead, too, but kept her in sight. My fast skis caught her on the downhill. Did some good hard double poling on Ruthie's coming back to the Center, always keeping my head up for any stragglers from the lead pack. Lindley caught up again going up Sam's, but she didn't pull away quite as fast, and then I caught back up to her climbing Dante's loop. I was finding that I did still have really good energy, able to run up the hills, but my arms were tired.

Down Ruthie's again, and the men were passing me now. So when Sarah Graves caught up, I totally thought she was a man first, because she was moving way faster. I hadn't been dogging it, she was just cruising. Tried to match her pace and really just couldn't, so got ready for a sloggy last lap. But, found a second wind going around duck pond, and finally made contact with her as we headed down to Elinor's. She had skis as fast as mine, but with better kick, and I couldn't hang as we went up Sam's. Still fighting around Dante's loop, but it was taking a lot of concentration to ski well up the hills. I was proud that I was really kicking and gliding, not just shuffling. Down the hill I kept the energy high, and finished feeling like that race was very representative of where my fitness is right now, and it was a good classic race for me. 4th overall, first M1.

Jess in the classic marathon

Craftsbury Marathon, part II
Sunday was the 33k skate, and after a pretty restless night I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a dump truck. I'm sure skating 33km is going to help, right? The morning brought much warmer and softer snow conditions, after snow all night. My left elbow was in a world of hurt, but I took some ibuprofen, did a little warmup, and lined up reasonably far back.

Off we went, and I quickly discovered that I didn't have much pop in my stride, but I felt ok heading up the hills. Drifted from chase pack to chase-chase pack, and as we climbed up Ruthie's backwards I realized that actually, I felt pretty good, and this was too slow. So, went a little faster, and only Sarah G kept pace. The climb up Dante's was actually pretty skiable. I continued to try and keep the tempo up, and we swapped leads a few times. Got a little too chatty coming down Sam's, and lost some time there I think.

I was scared of Elinor's, but it wasn't that bad, just 2.5 minutes or so, and from the bottom I could see Elissa ahead of me, looking tired. Sarah put a bit of a gap on me up the hill, but I kept plugging, and caught back up to her and Elissa by the stadium. It was really a problem to V2 today, elbow hurt a ton and my arms didn't feel very strong. Alia Johnson caught up to Sarah and me on the Duck Pond loop, and they actually had a small gap on me heading into lap 2. My goals had been revised down to "finish the race" at this point, so I wasn't exactly heartbroken. But, caught them by the bottom of Ruthie's, and then surprised myself by staying right on them up the climb.

The climb up Dante's hurt, but I didn't get dropped, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Pushed harder down Sam's this time, doing a lot of free skating, and I could tell that transferring all the effort to my legs was starting to have some effects. Elinor's hurt a lot more the second time up, and I got dropped, maybe 10 second gap by the top. I'd been yo-yo-ing the whole lap, so this wasn't surprising, but the string snapped there, and being unable to V2 with any power meant I was really done. Struggled through Duck Pond loop trying to keep fighting, but didn't have much to give, and failed to pass the two fading women ahead of me. Certainly less strong of a result, but I was pretty proud of just getting through the race, given my mental headspace.

Massachusetts Qualifier
The next weekend was the qualification race for my skiers to try out for the U16 and Eastern Highschool Championship teams, to represent Team Massachusetts. The race was out at Prospect Mountain, and Ed and I swapped roles that weekend - Saturday, I was his assistant timing the VT qualifier race, and Sunday, he was my assistant in the wax tent for the CSUers. Saturday was a pretty long day, and Sunday wasn't much shorter, but every one of my skiers skied their way onto either the U16 Team or the EHS Team, which is the goal.


Rikert Eastern Cup
No rest for the weary; we went right into the Rikert EC from the Qualifier. I signed up for Saturday's skate race in the open field, and then did the master's wave for the classic race on Sunday, several hours after the last junior race, so that I wouldn't be conflicted by trying to wax for the kids and also for myself.

Rikert is a super fun course, twisty and technical, and had good skis, if not such good legs. I was sluggish, un-warmed up, and still had my head in coach-mode, but it was fun to pull on a bib and try really hard at something.

Sunday's citizen race was even less of a real effort from me; I got caught talking to some parents after the junior races, and nearly ran out of time to get my own skis waxed. Not only that, we'd run out of the hardwax we'd been putting on the kids skis, so I ended up just slapping on some toko red and heading to the start, shivering and wishing I were still in a warmup jacket. Luckily, it was a mass start, so I had the motivation of passing all the people who'd started ahead of me as I slowly got warmed up. By the second lap, I felt like I was racing, and was having a good time hunting people down. My pace may have been more 50k than 10k pacing, but it was worth it. 

One of *those* days

Bretton Woods camp and final ECs

After my half-hearted efforts at Rikert, I decided that I shouldn't sign up for more races. I managed to escape from work enough to catch three days of our training camp at Bretton Woods, and the vibe there was just great. We did a lot of resting as well as training, but it was a ton of fun skiing with the whole group, doing some norpining at the alpine hill, and just getting in lots and lots of beautiful skiing in a winter wonderland. 

Vibe was great. So many smiles!

We went straight from Bretton Woods to the final weekend of Eastern Cups, with two short skate races on Saturday at Dublin, and a distance classic race on Sunday. The Dublin Double went well, with CSU kids taking all sorts of podiums, on a beautiful sunny day. Can't get much better than that! Ed was timing, and we were stayed at Kathy's house, which just made things fun. Sunday morning we woke up in a snowstorm, and headed to Holderness to do battle in the final Eastern Cup.

Fresh snow and temperatures right around freezing are the hardest conditions to find the right kick wax in, and of course that's what we were facing. We nailed it for the earlier races, but then totally missed the wax for the older boys, when the snow transitioned to rain partway through their race. I can't predict the weather, yet, apparently that's a skill I have to develop. It was interesting to watch them race, and see how much of a difference a fighting attitude made - some of my boys had great races despite really slippy skis, because they just never gave up. In the words of one kid "well, my skis didn't have great kick, but they were wicked fast, so I just double poled really hard!"

This was the final race to determine who qualified for the Junior National's team heading to Anchorage. We sent 2 U16 girls, 4 U18 girls, 2 U18 boys, and 1 U20 boy. A pretty big contingent! 

U16 Championships

I took a weekend at home while Ed timed the Bill Koch Festival, and then it was off to the U16 Championships, in Bethel, ME, with Team Massachusetts. I've never skied at Bethel, so it was fun to explore a new trail system for a great event. CSU sent eight skiers to this championships, and the girls were especially dominant, with one of my gals winning every race she entered. 

A cool barn up in the County. Tough living up there.

We did have a snafu for the classic distance race. Somehow, Team MA had gotten into our heads that the boys race was at 9:30, and the girls race was at 10:30. We distributed information all over the place (including the team meeting, the night before) with this incorrect information, and were thus very surprised when the announcer started calling people to the line a half hour early. We managed to hustle the girls down to the race, but the first three starters all missed their start. We kept calm, and I assured the girls that we'd fix this problem after the fact, because it wasn't their fault, and they went off several minutes later when the Technical Delegate deemed it a good time for them to race. They all three skied very good races, with Clara winning, Francesca taking 3rd, and Mica taking 4th. However, the jury ruled that because it is a skier's responsibility to know their start time, they should all incur a penalty, and assigned a 5min penalty to each girl.

This seemed wildly unfair to us, and not just because we wanted to see the girls on top of the podium - no matter where they'd finished, it wasn't their fault that they'd missed the start - it was the fault of their coaches and team leaders! We ended up going over the heads of the race organizers, and appealing to NENSA itself, which decided after much debate to reinstate the racers. Phew. 

CSU contingent at U16s

Eastern Highschool Championships

With that excitement over, it was time for the Eastern Highschool Championships, in Fort Kent, ME. The last time I went to Fort Kent in a bus, it took rather a long time to get home. We were praying for better weather this time, and we got it. The bus didn't get stuck even once, and we had a grand old time with a big group of nice kids. The CSU kids knocked it out of the park again, with Linden winning the classic race and the overall, and Devin 2nd in the overall and top 10 in all the races. Mica continued to impress, and what I loved most was watching every athlete on the team lift up the people around them. 

This is my waxing face, apparently.

Those are my CSUers leading the race

Positive vibes on team MA

The MA EHS team

Meanwhile, the kids at JNs in Anchorage were kicking butt, and are coming home with four all-Americans and one podium, for the 7th place girls' team in the country. 

Quebec City World Cup Finals

The final hurrah was simply for spectating. Kathy and I headed to Quebec, to watch the World Cup finals. Alex Harvey was racing the final World Cups of his career, and experiencing the roar of 30,000 Harvey fans was a physical experience. It felt very special to be there watching him win the last race of his career, on home turf. Of course we snuck in a little skiing of our own, too, and a lot of pastry-eating, and the weekend ended up being a ton of fun. 

Great view of the women's pursuit race. Go USA!

Now Ed is off to Supertour Finals in Presque Isle, and I'm going to do some laundry. 'Twas quite the winter! 

The Bogburn: two perspectives

Version 1:
The indoor track workout got moved to Friday night, and I can't miss those because I paid perfectly good money to go run in teeny tiny circles. After the workout, I bribed Ed to pick me up by going out to dinner at one of our favorite brew pubs, and had too much beer and not enough water. We got home super late, so I put off all my ski prep until the next morning, when I groggily rolled out of bed and got to work on that, questioning whether this ski race was even a good idea. Mystery time happened, and somehow I had to leave before even making coffee and definitely before breakfast.

Picked up Ari, and we zoomed up north, where it was very pretty after the last snowstorm. Lots of people at the race, and we had to park way down the road. Conditions were soft and tricky, and on one corner the course was basically down to dirt. I didn't even use the test skis I'd set up, because Rob was already testing wax on the "chick sticks" which are flexed for me and Kathy, so I got sort of grumpy about having done extra work this morning. Skied a lap with Kathy and spent the whole time complaining about how terrible my life was, and how my problems are so much harder than everyone else's problems. Got back to the start area, and realized that I didn't have time to run up to my car to grab a thinner pair of gloves and a thinner hat, so had to race in wet mittens and a fleecy hat.

Figured I'd pop into race mode once I started going, but that never happened, and I sort of waddled around slowly instead of racing, feeling really stiff and sore after the track workout. I couldn't catch up to my 15-second girl, Jess M, and I knew I was faster than her, so why wasn't I catching her? God if you weren't such a fat slug you'd be skiing better. Fell on my ass on the corner with the dirt trying to avoid the rocks, now you'll never catch Jess. Look out for that gal who started behind you, she'll be tracking you any second. Slogged around the rest of the course and Jamie was taking photos on the longest hill, ugh, why am I so slow? Walked up one of the herringbone hills, and then on the second lap started passing some slower skiers, and that's the only reason I caught up to Jess, because she wasn't as good at passing. Thought I was doing awesome to hold her off, but turns out she fell in a river. Go figure, the only way to beat my competition is if they fall into a river. Finally trudged across the finish line, nearly six minutes slower than Kathy's time. Thank god that's over.

Version 2: 
Rather than cancel the indoor track workout when our usual Thursday became unavailable, the powers that be managed to get us access to the track on Friday night. I love indoor track, I love the group I run with, this is well worth the money I paid to be a part of it. This would serve nicely as some opener intervals for the race tomorrow! Ed kindly picked me up, and we got to have a really nice dinner out together at one of our favorite brew pubs, where I enjoyed myself, though I should have had more water. Luckily, the race on Saturday had a late start time, so I knew I'd have time to re-hydrate in the morning. Thanks to the late start time, I could put off my ski prep until the morning, and even though it took me longer than I expected, I made some really good skis. I didn't have time to make breakfast at home, but Ari, my traveling companion, didn't mind stopping in Lebanon for me to pick up breakfast and a coffee.

The course was absolutely beautiful, fresh snow coating everything and making the whole world a winter wonderland. This also meant that the course was soft, but I'd rather have fresh snow and a soft course than ice and rocks! Rob was testing skis when I arrived, which was great, because it simplified my pre-race prep, and allowed me to go for a nice pre-race tour of the course with Kathy, where she was a great sounding board for my troubles and made me feel a lot better about life. I was probably still thinking about our conversation when we started, because I didn't feel very race-ready, but I was happy to be out there giving it a hard effort.

Jamie was taking photos, and it was so great to see him out there again, after a medically-induced hiatus from ski racing. It took me a whole lap to catch up to Jess, who had started 15s ahead of me, but I was able to put some of the lapped skiers we'd just passed between us, and then I was on my own for the rest of the race. I may not have had the tiger's eye, but I really enjoy that course, and all the BKL kids were out cheering, and in the end, I won my age category, and a sweet buff. What a way to spend a day! I'm so thankful that Bob continues to host this race, it's really special.

Vermont post-snowstorm is the most beautiful time to be in Vermont.

The story
I recently read this article by Sabrina Little. It's worth the read. In the article, she talks about how changing the message of your story can affect your life, and while it's the same story, you have the power to change the message. This same story, the tale of my experience at the Bogburn, reads very differently from version 1 to version 2. I still want and need to acknowledge the things that don't go according to plan, but I have my friends around to help me overcome the challenges. Even if I don't reach my goal, I had a good day.

The hard part, sometimes, is how to change your story while you're living it.

Great two days of gravity skiing with the folks. Gorgeous views, if cold and icy conditions at Stowe.

The part of the story I suppose I left out, is that it's been a great winter so far. I raced in the Craftsbury sprint weekend in early December, placing 9th in the qualifier and advancing through to the semi-finals, where I was faced with the hard truth that I was NOT ski fit enough to handle that many races in one day. But I knew the fitness was coming, and that doing a strength workout the day before the race, while not great race prep, was going to serve me well down the road. It did - I raced again the following weekend at the Craftsbury Eastern Cup, qualifying in 34th in the sprint (just missing the open rounds), but that put me into the masters' heat, in which I was the only master who deigned to show up. That was disappointing and a little embarrassing (not to mention, we could have saved prepping my skis a second time!), but it did mean I won the race. The 5k skate race the next day went really well - I was classified in the masters wave again, but my time would have put me around 39th in the open race, ahead of all my CSUers. They should go faster. It's nice to have good races, where you feel fit and rested and you're riding a really fast pair of skis.

From the Eastern Cup, I put in a great two week block of training, at Mont Sainte Anne and then back at Craftsbury coaching for Senior Nationals. That was a great week, not without its up and downs, but the ups were real high points. We had a big crew racing, and I thought they all comported themselves very professionally, and skied very well against the deepest field in the country. It was such a luxury to be waxing in a trailer - I'm not sure I'm up to waxing outside again, like we will for the rest of the season.

Now that we've had a couple weeks of good training under our drink belts, the race season is kicking off in earnest. Exciting stuff!

Mont Sainte Anne with a gaggle of gigglers in front of one of the many trailside cabins

The appropriate way to do MSA is to stop by the Boulangerie on your way home from skiing, before lunch. Those croissants are to die for.

I like taking selfies with my team in the background

Ed and John, discussing where to put the big green bus for the announcers. Or something like that.

The Nationals crew, enjoying one of Christina's delicious dinners. So nice to have a big house and somebody cooking for us. I got home and had forgotten how to take care of myself.

CSU wax trailer, where you use a heat gun to get the windows open

Kathy coaching

Bullitt Timing's slogan: We bring buses full of cables, and zip tie them to everything.

Goofing off in coach-mode

Todd Eastman gave me a hat. I'd say it's a good fit! 

Laura in the Nationals heats

Spring Fling and Supertour

I hadn't been planning to head back to Craftsbury for the Supertour Finals. But, Ed had been in Vermont for a month, with no plans of coming home, timing various races, so that was my only chance to see him. And, it turns out, watching your heroes race in person is pretty cool. All the USST members were there, including Kikkan and Jessie from the gold medal relay team. I definitely cried when I watched that Olympic race, because it was just so cool to see Kikkan do it. She's been driving this sport for the last decade and a half, inspiring women and girls around her, leading by example, and building up a team around her worthy of Olympic medals. What a way to wrap up your career.

Kathy and I with a strong fangirl game, getting a selfie in front of Kikkan Randall finishing her race

Anyway, I got to see them race. They're so stupid fast. I got to cheer for graduated CSU juniors, who were also going stupid fast. The weather was awesome, and to top it off, there were citizens races after the Supertour races, so I got to race too! 

Saturday was the 25k Spring Fling, twice around the flattest loop they could put together. The weather forecast ended up being totally wrong, calling for much more wintry conditions than what we found, but Rob and I did our usual ski coach thing of testing rills and topcoats and skis, and we ended up on some ripping boards. Unfortunately, our one junior in the race never gave us his skis, so didn't have the same experience.

The race was a self-seeded mass start, and with over 200 racers, this meant chaos. It then had ~2km of flat to downhill terrain, so the chaos wasn't going to end for a while. Luckily I made it through the start unscathed, and in a reasonable position, a little ways back from Rob and Bob and ahead of any women. Gotta look out for ponytails and round butts in a mixed gender mass start. There were quite a few BKL skiers mixed in, doing the one-lapper, and they were kind of hard to ski with, sprinting ahead and then coasting. I guess you don't learn about pacing until you're older. 

My skis were great, so I spent a lot of time hanging out in a tuck. We finally started climbing up Sam's run, and I was with some masters that I knew, happy to not go any faster. A few minutes into that, a large group of college-ish-aged boys came through, clearly having gotten stuck in the start and not having the skis I did. One guy from my group upped the pace to go with them, but the rest were content to keep to our plodding ascent. We finally hit the crest, and I enjoyed the ride back down, gapping my group. Wheee! I could see Bob and Rob as we climbed back up to the Center, but I knew they were doing one lap, so didn't burn any matches to close the gap. 

The second lap was much more lonely, since a bunch of folks had pulled off after one lap. I was skiing with Steve M for the beginning, leading on the flats and he'd lead on the uphills, and still the three other guys I'd been with on the last lap. They started ducking and weaving as it warmed up and got sunny, trying to stay on the shady snow, which was a lot faster. Sometimes I followed them, and sometimes I just took the short line, because my skis weren't that dramatically slower in the sun. 

It spread out a little on the climb up Sam's, with the Craftsbury guy pulling ahead a little, and Steve discovering that his skis were dogs in the sun and dropping off the back. We started to see the back of my junior who hadn't waxed his skis, struggling in the slush and the sun. By the top, we'd made contact, and could see one other skier way ahead of us. Nice to have another rabbit. 

Coming back up Ruthie's, I got sick of the ducking and weaving, and took the lead. The pace had also started to feel a little stale. Let's kick this up a notch! I was feeling good, and could tell from the various breathing noises behind me that some of the guys were having to push a little. It wasn't a break, but that wasn't what I was going for, I just wanted to ski my pace for a bit instead of following someone else's lead. They came around on the final climb past the cabins, where we finally made contact with our rabbit, Ethan T, also suffering on slow skis. Up the finally little climb and into the finish I guess I didn't push as hard as I maybe could have; I had no skin in the game against those masters, and they were all gunning for each other. It was a good fun race, though, and my longest all season, so it was nice to feel strong at the end. 

You guys, skiing is just so much fun!!!

Sunday was relay day. First we watched the Supertour teams throwing down, which was a really cool experience. Then it was time for the NENSA Club Championship relay. I was on a CSU team of Tom Smith, Amie Smith, and Rob Bradlee. That would be team Fluorinated Bacon to you. Amie supplied us with bacon socks, and we were ready to roll. 

Rob went first (classic) then Amie (classic), then Tom (skate), then me (skate). Rob had a solid first leg, but Amie struggled a bit with the kick, and dropped some time. Tom had a good leg, reeling in quite a few teams, and tagged off to me maybe a few minutes behind the next mixed 200+ team, and even with the Mansfield Ice Agers, another mixed 200+ team.

My skis were rockets again, and I shot down Murphy's field barely holding the corners. Whooooooowee! Passed three teams by the end of Murphy's field that I hadn't even known I was behind. Then on the rolling stuff out past Duck Pond, I discovered that actually I was pretty tired. Rick, from Mansfield, caught back up, and I hopped in behind, even though that took some effort. Down the little hill in the field, I made sure to take the lead to give myself space, and that was the last I saw of Rick.

I started to push pretty hard up Eleanor's, knowing he was right behind me, and passed two BKL teams. Some people were cheering at six corners, which was helpful, and I got two more teams doing that little loop, but looking at results it appears those were both third-leg skiers. Back onto race course fare after that, over the B climb and into the final bit on Lemon's haunt, not too many people around to chase down.

 I ended up with one of the fastest last-leg times, which was sweet, and held off Rick by putting 30 seconds into him, which was also sweet. We're listed as fourth 200+ team, but I think there's an error because the team in third is the SLU coach and three of his athletes, no way they're old enough. So a podium finish for team Fluorinated Bacon! Super fun.

I'm super glad that I went up to race this weekend. It was a really fun way to wrap up the season, and now I'm ready for a little down time (though I won't say no if a ski trip pops up in my future). 

Ed catching some zzz's during the jury meeting... turns out he doesn't like early mornings. Who knew? But he and John crushed the timing game again, quietly making everything work and run smoothly. Fantastic.

Craftsbury World Cup

Probably two years ago, Adrian and Ken got excited about hosting a World Cup for ski orienteering in the US. They got the IOF excited (which doesn't take much, considering that orienteering with a global distribution is one of the goals of IOF, so they're always ready to jump if North America wants to host something big), and somehow got us committed to the thing before exactly having all the key players placed. I'm a sucker, so I got roped into course setting with barely a fight. With hindsight, should I have pushed back more, and had them find a different course setter? I'm not being boastful when I say that I think we needed me in the roles I was filling to pull off this event to the level we did, so I'll stand behind my decision to be course setter. But this last week was not easy, especially for a gal who likes her sleep.

But, I got to talk on the radio! Here's a link to the piece by VPR: 

http://digital.vpr.net/post/do-you-skio-ski-orienteering-world-cup-comes-craftsbury#stream/0

That sounds a little negative. This event was pretty awesome. We just needed four times as many competent volunteers with very specific and hard-to-acquire skillsets working on the event.

I won't bore you with the details leading up to the event. But consider it like planning a wedding, where nobody gets married. And if you screw up, the entire party will be upset at you. Particularly for the World Cup athletes, this is their livelihood. No pressure. 

Early on, Andy Hall had volunteered himself to help with course setting, and that was a lifesaver. We went a few times up to the venue to scout trails, and way too many hours on setting and redoing and redoing and redoing courses, and then redoing again on the night before the event when we finally understood how the map would look. 

Andy and Ollie, clearly in charge because they both have radios and coffee. Ollie was a little skeptical about this whole ski orienteering ordeal, but I think he came around by the time I saw him sharing beers with the Swiss "pirate" wax tech. 

The fun thing about ski orienteering is that the map will change on a daily basis, depending on the grooming. Our Senior Event Advisor, Antti Myllärinen, was a whiz with the snowmobile, and managed to get things groomed that we didn't think were possible. That was pretty great. COC staff currently refer to him as the "badass Finnish groomer," and rumor has it they're going to name a dog after him. 

Antti, our badass Finnish groomer. And everything else.

Our junior IOF Event Advisor, Staffan Tunis. This guy also won the World Cup back in 2012, so it was great to have him around to pick his brain.

Super thanks to Bill and the rest of the Outdoors Center staff for all their help this week. I think they were fairly entertained by the craziness of this sport, and enjoyed learning about something totally different than the usual slew of ski races they're so familiar with. John Lazenby photo.

So the order of events is that you have to redo the map, reset all the courses, place all the controls, and not screw any of that up in about 12 hours before every race. There's no way that's not crazy. Good thing ski-o is so much fun, or nobody would do it. The local kids (and grownups!) were all pretty excited with the narrow trails, too, and people were getting a real kick skiing around them. That made me happy. We had really good turnout for the Tuesday night open race.

Adrian, our fearless leader, in the opening ceremony parade. John Lazenby photo.

The Races

First race of the week was the sprint race for the World Cup, and Middle distance #1 for the masters. Conditions were thin, frozen corn snow that softened into slush for the masters, with a generous scattering of branches, dirt, rocks, and pine needles. It took a good skier to stay on your feet, and Tove Alexandersson, the women's champion, said that she felt like a pinball, bouncing off of trees the whole time. Lots of broken equipment, but that's part of the game in this sport. 

Not such great snow conditions. 

Next up was the middle distance for the World Cup, and the second middle distance for the masters. These were good courses, but the snow continued to be thin. I started to hear some complaints from the older skiers about how they didn't appreciate the thin snow conditions, but they were also complaining when I didn't send them into the small trails, so really, there's no way to win. The wide trails were still in excellent condition, because Craftsbury has one of the best grooming crews out there. Anyway, the World Cup racers all seemed to enjoy the middle distance courses, and that left a warm fuzzy inside for Andy and me. 

Men's middle distance map. Pretty great courses, and the athletes 

seemed to really enjoy them too. Humility has never been my strong suit.

Men's champions on the middle distance: Erik Rost, Linus Rapp, and Jorgen Madslien. Lazenby photo.

Estonian racing through the forest. Lazenby photo.

It happens. Lazenby photo.

Tove Alexandersson skiing aggressively, a style she's known for. Lazenby photo.

Beautiful weather for the sprint distance. Lazenby photo.

Snowfall!

We got some snow finally on the "rest" day, Thursday. It was actually a reasonable dump, 8 inches or so, and that was good news except that it meant now we had to regroom and remap the entire area. Cool, no problem. We got behind on Thursday, and every step seemed to put us more behind, enough that we had barely finished printing all the maps by 5am when it was time to start getting the controls into the terrain. I still think it's a small miracle that our little team managed to get everything into the terrain and with the accuracy that we did - unfortunately, we did have one control mislabeled, and that caused some problems. There was no formal protest, but it leaves a really bad taste in your mouth to know that you've screwed up, and that it ruined somebody else's day. The mistake was in not having somebody who had actually slept review what we were doing. Live and learn, and hopefully never find ourselves in that position again. We also had a crucial gap in our information train, and some of the masters went out without knowing that they had a map exchange to do, which ruined more peoples' days.

On a related note, I don't remember my last all-nighter, but the experience has certainly not gotten any more pleasant with age. Kudos to Andy and Staffan for suffering through it with me.

Anyway, the final race was a sprint relay, mixed gender. This was good fun to watch, with the athletes going head to head for most of the race. The Swedish team of Erik Rost and Tove Alexandersson won the race, even though Tove broke her ski near the end of her last loop. I hopped into the open relay with Ari, just for kicks, and it was fun to race on my own courses. At this point I knew the trails so well that it's not like the navigation was a challenge, but it was a lot of fun anyway. 

Then on to the banquet (with a quick stop by Hill Farmstead). Some of the details for that had been left to the last minute, but we made it work, and the athletes all got their awards. 

Overall, a great week. It may be a lot of work, but it is rewarding to see something of this magnitude come together. Hopefully once I've caught up on sleep I can distill some of our lessons learned into something we can apply to our National Events.

Overall world cup winner Andrei Lamov

Flying ponytails! Salla Koskela, women's long distance winner.

Team USA - Ari and Jimmy! Next time we'll get them some team uniforms.

Race office before the chaos.

Boris was our announcer, and absolutely crushed it. And, he got to announce from the inside of John's sweet remodeled bus.

Not all manmade features are on the map. Probably better throw some snow on this one...

Very serious course setting team.

Office team, getting ready for the chaos

John and his bus

 The crush within the office when maps are announced as ready to return

Long distance medals

Jimmy on the start line. Photo by Greg Walker.

Pain faces. Greg Walker photos

Ed's timing hut. Greg Walker photo

Lamov coming to the finish. Greg Walker photo

Finnishing. Ha. Greg Walker photo.

Mass start - Greg Walker photo

Women's start. Greg Walker photo

Craftsbury breakfasts are my favorite part about going there. This week didn't disappoint. Somehow I didn't gain 5lb. Must have something to do with the 18 hours of skiing and 18 hours of sleeping that happened while there.

A huge thank you to everyone who made this week possible. It was a successful week in a great venue.