Cheri Walsh Memorial

After a so-so race on Saturday, it's good to have a chance to race again on Sunday. It was a bright and blustery day, not too cold but the wind was serious - standing out where we were waxing was pretty chilling. Luckily, the course is all in the woods, so you didn't notice the wind. After some brief ski testing, we settled on a good klister, and I left my skis with the wax crew. I was more in the way than helpful around there, so I took the J2s on a course tour - it was fast, not too icy, but tons of leaves down in the tracks. Cate did a pretty spectacular faceplant on one of the hills, and we all learned a little lesson about not planting your kickwax over a beech leaf.

I ended up skiing on a pair of atomics from 1998 - they're good skis, but a bit old, and with a medium-warm grind. Luckily the hard conditions didn't really matter for glide, and the skis are barely stiff enough to be good in klister. My start spot was in that top seed, and I was 15s behind Rachel Hall (SMS) and 15 seconds in front of Elena Luethi (GMVS), some good skiers. It was a pretty good start spot, and I was feeling a lot more ready to attack the course than I had felt the day before. I guess I just need a hard day first to get motivated.

I started out, fast, and by the top of the first climb I was already catching glimpses of Rachel. The downhill didn't last nearly long enough, but I could tell I was moving fast across the flats, and into the hill at 2km I was closing down the gap with a good kick double pole. We got some good downhills after that, and I passed Rachel halfway down, but skidded the last turn, which lost me some wax, even on a Chola binder. At this point, you basically have one long uphill, and then just a downhill finish, but as I started the uphill, I realized that I had started a bit too fast. My legs were pretty flooded with lactic acid, just burning.

Rachel was back on my tail as I crested the steep part of the hill, and for a while we were even, her striding, me kick-double poling, but then Elena came through, and I knew I couldn't stay with her. Rachel got on her tail, but I was starting to slip too much, just unable to set my wax strongly enough, and my arms were pooping out from making the skis work earlier. I was certainly taking a peek around the pain cave as I came through 4km, and luckily at this point you get some rollers, so I could rely more on my double pole. I may be weaker than normal this season, but I can still double pole well - technique doesn't die.

Elena was gone, but my fast skis narrowed the gap to Rachel on the last downhill, and I put in a hard sprint to the end, nearly closing the gap completely. I was pretty pooped, but the effort was good enough for 9th, which is better than my seed spot - always something to strive for. I was still a minute behind Hannah Dreissigacker (the winner), but much closer compared to yesterday, relative to the distance, and more importantly, I felt like I was skiing well out there. I haven't really been in that much hurt in a race in a while, so it was good to experience it again.

They named the JO team afterward, and CSU is sending 8 skiers! One of my J1 girls, Olivia, was on the bubble, and skied two really solid races to put her on the team, so I was super pumped about that. We also got the overall titles for the Eastern Cup - Corey won the open women's title, and Cate won the J2 girls' title. It is so much fun to live vicariously through these fast little skiers!

Post JO-team-naming, most of CSU headed to Jackson, for a training camp during their winter break. I'm here for a few days, and while it's certainly a bit crazy being in a house full of juniors, it's pretty fun, too. More on that, later.
Ali on the podium - miss Oh-I-don't-know-about-my-training-recently, on her home course had no problem going fast!

Silver Fox Trot

Photos by Jamie Doucett

The Silver Fox Trot is the last skate race of the season, and it's usually held at Oak Hill. I've managed to not race here since 2004, I think, and all I could remember of the course was that there was an endless uphill in a field, and there was a downhill that included a sharp turn and a steep drop-off, with running water at the bottom of the cliff, for if you didn't make the turn. Fond memories, clearly. Anyway, after skiing the course a couple times in warmup, I determined that the hill in the field wasn't actually all that endless, and the turn by the dam wasn't actually all that scary. The course was actually quite fun to ski - good rollers, a couple good S-turns near the end, and a nice long V2 grind for about a km somewhere in there.

I started early, and already the course was changing - some of the hills were transformed and glazed, where they were in the sun, some were chopping up to sugar snow, and anything that had been scraped was scarily icy. I chose a stiff pair of Q1.3s to race, and just handed them over to the experienced wax team of the CSU engine, and they came back criminally fast. I didn't ski on them before the race, and as I started out, toward the first downhill S-turn out of the stadium, I couldn't help but whisper "ohhhh, shit". The skis were just flying. The next words out of my mouth were "OHHH SHIT!" as I completely failed to make the second turn of the S. An ice patch had developed in the middle, exactly where you'd expect it, and like a noob I skied right into the ice patch, skittered to the side, and couldn't turn my skis fast enough to avoid going off the trail. I got up quickly, but my momentum was shot, and I'd just wasted a few seconds untangling myself from a snowbank.

As I started skiing I could tell that I just wasn't relaxed - I was skittering all over the place, even though the footing was pretty good. Pre-race nerves that just wouldn't calm down, I felt so wobbly and unsure of myself after the crash. Kept repeating "its a 10km, you have time", but that didn't help. Finally I hit the first hill, and it was a relief to start working hard, and lose the jitters. I could hear the Dartmouth girl, who'd started 30s behind me, a little ways back, but my goal for the race was to just ski my own race, and ignore all the fast people around me.

It was climbing this first bump that I discovered my left boot was way too tight. I'd had enough time before the start to put on dry socks (oh the luxury), but when I re-tied my boots, I did it too tight. I did this last year at the Birkie, and you'd think I'd have learned from my mistake. I remembered that I'd suffered through 6km at the Birkie before cracking and loosening the boot, so I tried to just ignore the fact that my left foot was going numb. Unfortunately, when you're already feeling like you can't glide, being unable to feel your foot is actually a bit of a handicap. Sigh.

By the time I hit the endless hill in the field, the Dartmouth girl (Hilary McNamee) had caught up to me, and she was being cheered loudly by the coaches at the top. I snuck in behind her, and discovered that my skis were faster, which gave me a bit of a breather as we headed into the downhills. I made it across the dam without losing much speed, and as we started climbing, at the 3km mark, I noticed that she was coach-skating the steep part. In my naivety, I thought maybe the Dartmouth women's team had decided this was the fastest way to climb the hill, but when she didn't speed up as the hill flattened out, I realized she was just slow. So I passed her, and by now, I was feeling more stable on my feet, aside from the whole numb-left-foot issue.


I did scrub a little speed on the S-turns heading back into the stadium - not proud to admit that, but, I was running scared, and really just didn't want to fall again. Back onto the course, and I skied the first S-turn really badly again. As I finished the corner, slowly, I said to a volunteer "I swear, I can actually ski downhills!", and then I realized that A) I sounded ridiculous, and B) I shouldn't care what the volunteers are thinking of me. A UNH skier was struggling up the hills in front of me, and I used her as my rabbit, catching another Dartmouth girl (both on their first lap) on my way. The hill in the field was brutally windy, and it was hard to get a forward position on my left leg, but the sooner I got to the top of that damn hill, the sooner I could go downhill, so I kept plugging. I probably should have pushed a bit harder on the last flat part, because with a course that finishes on a downhill, the finish isn't actually at the finish, but hindsight is always 20-20.

I finished with a decent sprint, but I still ended up nearly three minutes back of Hannah Dreissigacker, the winner of the women's field, good for 20th place. It was about 45 seconds to 10th place, which is where I was seeded - I don't think that would have been out of reach with a good race. The good news is my body felt pretty good, after a few easy days, so hopefully the classic race tomorrow goes well. Nice loose boots. And cold klister!

Now is the point where I remember that I broke my good cold klister skis up at Mont Sainte Anne.

The Balsams Ski-O

This past weekend was the New England Regional Ski Orienteering Championships, and I was the meet director. This basically means that my life was consumed by work for this race for the couple weeks leading up to it, and Ed's life was consumed as well. Ernst Linder was the third guy who got sucked into this - he was the course setter for Saturday. I set courses for Sunday, and Ernst and I conferred on each other's courses extensively. Lex and Pete Bundschuh did the bulk of the volunteer work during the weekend, with Pete standing outside manning starts, and Lex inside manning registration while Ed dealt with the computer stuff. Overall, things went really smoothly, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without such a good team.
Lex instructing Ed how to do something.

Ed and I drove up there with all the set-up gear on Friday morning, which actually made things so easy it was like cheating. We met with the head ski patroller (Andy Pearson), who was planning to dump the control stands at strategic locations around the trails. This was crucial, because the stands are fairly heavy, and very awkward to carry on skis. All we had to do on the event morning was ski out to the dump-point, and spread out the stands. By midday, we had the registration area all set up, so we headed over to the golf course by the hotel to make some snowshoe trails for the sprint map.
All those dotted trails are snowshoe trails. Of course, on the day, it was snowing and very blustery, so the map was rendered useless since you couldn't even see the trails. People just went straight, and seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. That's good.

Ed was driving, so I tried to frame pretty pictures of Franconia Notch as we drove north.

It's not a trip in Ed's truck if this doesn't happen at least once...

This is how Ed feels about snowshoeing.
This is how I feel about snowshoeing.

Ed snowshoeing some trails on the sprint map, with Abenaki Mountain in the background. There is a ski trail that goes to the top of that, but I was a benevolent course-setter and didn't send anyone up there.

Saturday was the middle distance race, and it went really smoothly. Nobody got lost, everybody was smiling, and most people genuinely seemed to enjoy themselves!


Ernst calculating the points for the Valentine's sweetheart cup - chocolates (a Lindt sponsorship!) went to the top three couples racing today - everyone got scored separately, and then combined with your sweetheart's score, you get ranked against other couples. Last year, Ed and I won the cup, but this year neither of us were racing.

I did go out on a blue course, but I got my butt kicked. Apparently, when you don't sleep, and you ski too much, and you stress too much, you get tired. Who woulda thunk it?Check out all those contours under the powerlines from 5 - 6. That was just cruel.

Heading out to pick up controls on Saturday. Yes, I am totally sane! On a barely-related note, the classic skiing at the Balsams was skigasmic. I only put my skate skis on for 15 of my 100km weekend, for the middle distance race I did, because I just couldn't bear to be out there not striding.

That evening, we had the awards ceremony, in a small room off the major dining room of the Balsams. The thing about the Balsams is that it's a 5-star resort - you aren't allowed in to dinner if you aren't dressed right. It was funny seeing all the orienteers dressed up, but apparently we do clean up pretty good. Everyone loved the dinner - it was a mile-long buffet table of all my favorite foods. I only had three plates of dinner, but I did a solid 4-5 plates of dessert. Those dessert plates are way too small!

The Balsams was the title sponsor of this even, and they made us some Balsams Bark - dark chocolate with toasted almonds - to give as prizes. Combined with Lindt Chocolates for the Sweetheart's cup winners, there was much chocolate being given out as awards. Basically, the weekend was all about eating.

After my fifth plate of dessert, Ed rolled me out of the dining room, we did a little setup for Sunday, and then passed out into one of those exhausted sleeps, assisted by a serious food-coma. Morning rolled around way too early, and we got up and outta there in time for our first 20km of the day, spreading out control stands and setting epunches. I got back in time for breakfast, which was as sumptuous as dinner. Holy cow, that was a good breakfast. My mouth started watering just thinking about it. Poor Ed couldn't get away from the registration table, so I brought him a selection of pastries, which made him considerably less grumpy. So people started out on our long courses, the longest of which was 31km shortest skiable distance, with 650m of climb. Not easy.

While they were suffering away doing that, I toodled along through the "Feastival", a 15km ski tour with four gourment food stops. Can you say yum? I was still pretty full from breakfast, but luckily the first couple kilometers of skiing took care of that. What a great idea! The first stop was a sundried tomato, spinach, and feta fritatta. Then we skied another km and got to the second stop, which not only had a bonfire, but the executive chef was hanging out grilling chicken, for chicken sandwiches on cibatta bread with herb mayo. He also had chili and fried tostada things at that stop. We spent a while feeding Canada Jays from our hands, and then it was time to zip around the lake to the third food stop, which was some sort of pork congee with asian spices, and the hot soup was quite welcome after the windy lake. Then the last food stop was an apple-cranberry crisp, and the most delicious crisp I've ever had. Following the tradition of the night before, I had seconds, and thirds.

It's a good thing I had such a competent crew of volunteers, because I didn't do much of anything meet-related on Sunday, other than set out some water for some people who had asked nicely. There were reports that Alex was hanging out at a bonfire out on the trails eating food. They were probably accurate... I did see a fair number of competitors whiz past me, as I enjoyed my apple crisp.

Thankfully, there was much skiing to be done to pick up the courses, or I might not have fit into the car to go home.

We had some of this weather on Saturday afternoon, but then it cleared up, and we got this weather:

All in all, it was a great weekend, and I am super glad that I decided to try and put on a meet there. We ended up with nearly 45 starts on Saturday, and 60 people at the banquet, which was about five times more than what I'd expected. Good times, but I don't think I'll be doing another two-day meet for at least another couple months...

Lake Placid Loppet

Don't all races have an oompah band providing live entertainment?

I've been warned about the Lake Placid Loppet and its hills, and the grim tone of voice is usually what turns me off from doing this race. One of those season-wrecking courses, that just climbs so much you can't recover from it. But then Jess called me up and told me she was doing it, and I figured, how bad could it be? Its just hills. Turns out the course was sweet. There was a good bit of climbing; my garmin thought we did 1200m of climb over 47km, but the descents make it all worth it. You gotta go up to go down, the curse of this silly sport. The women's field was thin, to put it mildly, but that made it easier for Jess and me to ski together, without having to worry about some other fast chick to make us have to speed up.

It was a beautiful day to be skiing, warm air but cold snow, and bright blue sky. The snow was super soft on the Porter Mt. loop, and while that sucked mightily, at least I had a good pair of soft skis for it, that were running pretty quick. We lined up maybe three rows back, started out comfortably, and fell into the conga line somewhere around 35th probably. I don't think I could ever see the front of the race, but it was pretty packed until we hit the first downhill. It wasn't a long one, but it had a corner in it, so there were masters snowplowing right and left, and Jess and I passed a whole slew of people. Kind of fun, having fast skis and being able to ride out the downhills that intimidate other people. This trend continued for the first 15km, and so despite the uphills being pretty painful, I was having fun. The hills on Porter and East Mt. are big enough that by the time you hit the ladies' 5k loop, it feels easy, despite there still being some pretty serious climbs in there.

The ladies' 5km also has the awesomest downhills, and despite not knowing what was coming, I was bombing every one. That caught up to me on the last corner, where I was trying to step turn through the berm and got my feet caught up in deep snow, and fell down. I got up pretty quickly, but by the time I'd gotten up, Jess had gone down, because she had passed me as I sat in the snow, turned around to heckle, and caught her own rut. So we were giggling and picking up waterbottles and glasses, and I was eating one of Jess's gels that had fallen off her waterbottle belt, when the group of masters we'd dropped on the previous downhills caught up. They thanked us for both falling down, and skied off, but then we caught them on another downhill. Hey! Hey guys! Guess what! We're faster than you on the downhills!

After the 15km of hills, we got a 10km loop over at the biathlon side, really cruisy, and the snow was a lot firmer over there, so my shins and calves could calm down a bit. I drove the pace for a while trying to dump the group of masters that was drafting us, but it was too flat for that, so we slowed back down so we could chat. Eventually we got back to the XC stadium, and one of the masters took the lead (seriously, what's with making the small people do all the work pulling? At least it wasn't windy). I figured we'd be losing him soon when he mentioned that he felt like he'd just done a hilly 25k and had to go do it again... yup, you aren't going to last too long if that's how you feel going in to the hills. Shortly thereafter, a real heavy breathing guy came up behind us, lunged his way around, and staggered up the hill with much flailing. It was only amusing because he tripped himself within 3 seconds of trying to beat the girls up the hills, and we all just sort of skied on by. By the top of Porter Mt. we'd caught the Berkshire master, and then we got some downhills, so we put some time on the rest of the group.

I took the lead going up East Mt, because I figured then I could crawl along at whatever pace I felt was comfortable. Jess didn't seem to want to take the lead back, so it was basically like a hard-paced distance ski, pretty chill. At the top I mentioned that I was starting to feel it, and Jess just sort of chuckled, said she figured that was the case since I'd gotten pretty quiet. More sweet downhills, and by the time we came through the feed at 40k, the race was basically over. We'd dumped our group of masters behind us, and there were two more guys ahead of us that we could see we were closing in on. Some steady skiing caught them, and at 5km left, Jess skipped the feed and took the lead. I was ok with this, because I was planning a massive sprint finish win, and if I could rest for 5km in her draft, that would help with the whole "winning" bit. But then we went down a hill, that wasn't tricky or anything, just straight, and my foot caught a rut and my leg was too tired to correct for it, and I went down in a tumbled heap, killing my momentum.

I got up and going again pretty fast, but Jess had enough momentum from the downhill that she was already over the crest of the uphill, and I knew that if I were up there, I'd be attacking with everything I had left. So I put out more effort than I'd expended yet, and set to chasing. I got lucky in that we were 45k into a 47k race, and Jess was pretty tired, because I finally made contact on the last uphill of consequence, a steep little bugger out of the sand pit thing and up to the level of the tunnel across the road. I was wheezing pretty hard, its not easy to change pace when you've been at one speed for that long, but Jess didn't throw down a counter attack (again, I totally would have done that if I were in her shoes), she just kept skiing steady, so I got a little bit of rest before we crossed under the tunnel and back to the XC side of things. We now had something like 300m left, so I decided it was time to do this massive sprint win thing.

Alex: Could I get by on your right? I think I would like to do what they call "an attack".
Jess: Oh, sure, I'm pretty done.
Alex: AND she's attacking! After a grueling stage, will she have what it takes to win the sprint?
Jess: Does she have enough in the tank?!? Jess is pulling out a counter-attack, she is challenging Alex for her position!
Alex: I have to stop narrating now, I'm too out of breath.
Jess: Yeah, me too, ski racing is hard.

I did end up taking the win, by about two seconds. Jess didn't totally give it up to me, but I think she cared a lot less. Either way, it was super fun to ski 50k with a close friend, on a beautiful day, on a challenging course, with fast skis. Despite the 7hr drive home in a snowstorm (thanks for keeping me awake, Cary), I was in a pretty good mood by the end of the day. We ended up placing pretty well among the men, too - 21st and 22nd, of 58 starters.

Breakfast of champions. I meant to take a photo of every new setting and make a pretty little montage, of Alex downing two bowls of cheerios and two heaping bowls of oatmeal, but I forgot, and in the end, its not that interesting anyway.

Weston Eastern Cup

Weston and CSU ran an Eastern Cup last weekend. That's a big deal, because you have many skiers, and they're all fast. Luckily, Amie Smith did a fantastic job organizing the volunteers and making everything run super smoothly, and I was wicked impressed, as both a coach and as a racer. I decided to race, since they were two skate races and we had the full CSU crew on site, meaning I was basically redundant in the wax tent. The morning was a prelim-only sprint, and the afternoon was a 6km mass start. Short distance mass start races are almost guaranteed chaos, so I was pretty excited about that one.

The sprint prelim went pretty well. I was definitely starting to flag out on the flats, I could tell that I wasn't being quite as powerful in my V2 as I should be. I'd started 15s behind a Dartmouth girl, and while I was making up some time on her, unless I could will more speed out of my body, I wasn't catching her. You know when you're finishing a race and your arms are so flooded with lactic acid that you can barely get your hands up? That was how it felt. Slowest finish sprint EVAR, at least that's how it felt. It was still good enough for 10th, but Corey put something like 15 seconds on third place, basically we got it handed to us.

After cooling down from the sprint, I realized I had a bad race hack going on. My lungs haven't burned like that all season! Clearly I haven't done enough Tuesday night fights. Come time to warm up for the mass start race, I wasn't exactly feeling peppy. I consoled myself by imagining that everyone else was tired, too, and after a barely adequate warmup, I got to my start position, elbows sharpened.
Corey leading it out, I'm in the middle, #309.

I was in the second row, which was great, since there were lots and lots of people. Got a decent start, and then got a bit boxed in as we headed out into the flats. At this point Corey was in front, and she was looking to not be in the lead, but nobody else was stepping it up, so the pace basically stopped. Accordion time! This was good news for one of my skiers who is on the bubble for JOs - Olivia had had a horrible start spot, but was able to ski her way right into the top 15. Finally Anya Bean from UNH took the lead, and we started skiing again, but at this point we had 40 girls trying to fit into the space where 10 would fit easily. It was tight skiing, with a lot of contact. I was being pushed and bumped and kicked and poled pretty continuously, and dealt my fair share of elbows as well. I was still stuck near the middle of the pack, unable to move to either side, and while this was great from a hiding-from-the-wind perspective, it meant that I couldn't move up or back very easily.

I got loose as we started down the little hill towards the stadium for the first time, and moved to the outside, anticipating the accordion effect that would bog up the inside of the corner. Nobody went down that I could tell, but I certainly picked up another five places, and with my head up, I could see more carnage in progress on the uphill. Looking ahead meant that I could pick a better line, and I moved around the people who were tangled up on that inner hill, moving into a good position as we looped around onto the flats by the river. I was entertaining thoughts of moving to the front of the pack and pulling for Corey for a bit, skiing really comfortably where I was, but down by the river there is no wind. We came through the middle hills, and back around past the lodge, to start lap 2, and I liked my position. I also liked how I felt - skiing in control and well within my comfort zone.

Then going up Mt. Weston, I did the rookie thing and got my ski tangled with someone else. Dammit! I can ski this stupid hill just fine when its narrower and softer and the folks around me are flailing masters, but put me on Mt. Weston when its hard-packed, wide, and the skiers around me are the best for their age in the nation, and I get tangled. Grrr. A stupid mistake, and it cost me a few seconds, which equates to a fairly big gap, with many people gapped behind me, including two of my J1s. Out into the flats I started bouncing from skier to skier, trying to gap back up to that lead pack, but then we turned the corner and I discovered that the wind is a cruel mistress. Instant slowdown, and all of a sudden the morning's efforts caught up to me and slammed me backwards. My upper body was so tired I could barely get my poles up, and my legs were just burning. Emily Nice, a J1 from Ford Sayre, took the lead, but I was unable to get in line, and labored in the wind for a while longer, before falling into the last spot in that pack. The pain of racing had caught up, and it stole my motivation from me.

I basically hung out at the back of that pack for a while longer, suffering all the effects of caboosing it on a transition-laden course, and finally made some moves as we re-entered the middle section of the course. My skis were moving faster than the other girls', especially noticeable on the downhills, so I used that to eat up some more places. I watched one more girl get skied over on the last uphill, and then had a deja vu of the slowest finish sprint ever. Weston is a tough course, because there is just no rest for the weary, and the wind exposed my lack of race fitness. Although I ended up 19th, I was unsatisfied with the result. But racing is racing, and high-contact mass starts are part of the game.

Some of the CSU ladies.
What goes up, must come down. I loved the manmade additions to the course, I've never seen Weston with legit hills before!

Super-PRO waxing setup, we had some good skis out there.

Spectators everywhere!
The famed Mt. Weston was tamed for this race - they widened it, flattened it out, and removed some of her crest. Still a good hill, but not as bumpersticker-worthy!

Perfect skiing

I'm sure everyone has their memory of a day when the skiing was utterly perfect. I just made another one of those memories - temperature in the low 20s, blue sky, hilly trails, fast skis, corduroy so set that you can hear your skis humming as they cross the ridges. We had the trails completely to ourselves.



Ed and I were up at the Balsams, meeting with various head honchos of various things to talk about the ski-o race we're putting on. Everyone is super helpful and super enthusiastic, so I'm pumped. Its going to be a sweet race, we just have to convince people to show up. After the meeting, we skied. We were allegedly checking out trails and fixing intersections and covering everything with a GPS, but really, it was just beautiful skiing. That's one way to put me in a really good mood!




Now back in Boston, and prepping for the Eastern Cup at Weston tomorrow. That should be a pretty sweet race, too - Amie Smith is in charge, and you know when Amie is in charge, things are going to go EXACTLY right! I'm actually pretty psyched to race - there are two races in one day, but they're both skate races, so the waxing is easy, which means I can actually do a warmup, unlike at Lake Placid. And I just checked the seed list - I'm actually seeded by NENSA points, so for the mass start I'll have a good start spot. Fast skis on a transition-laden course... only I can get in the way of me having a good race tomorrow!

White Mountain Classic 30km

The one-day club championships for NENSA took place, like it does every year, at the Jackson 30km classic race. This year they put the course up over the "wave", an awesome downhill that has a bunch of whoop-de-dos and a couple corners that are just tight enough to keep you on your toes. Of course, what goes down must come up, so there is a fairly big climb to get to the top of the wave, but luckily it was designed by John Morton (or at least edited by him), so the trail skis really well, with a lot of rollers and some bits of recovery. The rest of the 30k course consisted of double poling through golf courses, which, when you didn't start rollerskiing until September and didn't double pole until November, isn't great news. Luckily, I was pretty good at faking it, thanks to fast skis. The course was also shortened, from 30k to 26, which definitely worked in my favor. Since everyone starts all together in this race, no men's wave and women's wave, my race plan was to go out hard with a bunch of guys, hope all the girls were behind me, and just ski with the guys and hope to not get dropped. Forget pacing, it's over-rated!

The morning dawned clear and cold, but not nearly as frigid as predicted - I don't think it dropped to the -6F it was supposed to, and this meant that the temperature was actually pretty comfortable for racing. Waxing had the potential to be a bit tricky since the tracks in the fields were all windblown and powdery, and not only is windblown powder wicked slow, nothing kicks in it. Luckily, all the climbs were in the woods, and the tracks were rock solid and beautiful under the trees. My skis were close to perfect. I could have used a smidge more kick, but that could also just be that lack of arm strength talking - I never slipped, but I did herringbone some things that I should have strode.

I seeded myself about where the other women had seeded themselves, and when we started moving I quickly jumped out of the tracks and onto the icy crust between them, double poling aggressively up towards the front. We did a parade lap around the golf course, and by the end of this I was basically behind Rob Bradlee, which means I was near the front of the race. I knew that when we started climbing, I'd lose this position quickly, in fact, I didn't really want to be as far up as I was, but the icy crust combined with fast skis was letting me double pole with the guys at no real extra effort. We did more loops around the golf course on the other side of the road, and then started up the Yodel trail, and I quickly discovered that I was paying for those fast skis - I couldn't stride up the steeper stuff in the tracks, and was herringboning far more than I should have. Sigh. A group of guys went past, and I made no move to match their speed - I knew that I was double poling faster relative to my climbing speed, and I didn't really feel the need to blow up just yet.


We crossed the second road onto the Eagle Mountain golf course, and got more loopty-loops on that field. Luckily for those loops I was hanging out behind a tall guy drafting, doing a fair bit of kick double pole, and mostly just feeling like I was out for a relaxed ski. It was an absolutely gorgeous day - blue sky, blue wax, the best sort of combination there is. I made a goal to myself right then that no matter how I did in the race, I was going to truly enjoy the day of skiing, because there was nowhere else I'd want to be.

Then the golf course ended and we started up the Wave, and my focus narrowed down quickly, as I was herringboning and jogging again, losing the group of guys I'd been drafting. Another group caught me as we skied through the fields and caught some views of Mt. Washington, and I hung out behind them as we entered the woods and started climbing again. I couldn't go right behind them stride for stride, because they were all big tall guys with a powerful kick, and I'm just little Alex with a quick light tempo, but I kept them in sight, and just kept chugging away up the hill - nothing majestic about my skiing, but it was working. We finally turned the corner up top and headed into the wave, and I wish I'd gotten a chance to ski that downhill before the race - it was a bit terrifying because it was so fast, the corners were so icy, and I had no idea what was coming. There is one little bump where you catch air, and as you're airborne, the trail turns, so you have to be pretty nimble to change direction quickly once you hit ground again.

I enjoyed the roller coaster ride, and as we popped out of the woods back onto the golf course, I discovered I'd made contact with my group of guys again, but they were spread out. A couple klicks of double poling, and I'd passed four of them back. There was one section of trail that was pretty low on snow, it was bumpy and had a couple potholes and rocks, but it just reminded me of skiing at Harriet Hollister, makes you ski with finesse. Back up to the fields, and more endless double poling, but this time no tall guys to draft. I was still enjoying the day of skiing, but starting to wonder how much longer it was going to take. Into the Wave, and by this point I was lapping skiers who were still on their first lap of the Wave, so there was much more switching tracks - made the downhills really exciting! I was getting tired by this point, but I made a pact with myself that I wouldn't stop running, even when I really wanted to take a break when herringboning. The downhill was much more fun the second time, because I knew what to expect, and I took it right at the edge of control, the best way to ski downhills. I could see three guys from my pack spread out in front of me, but for all my efforts, I couldn't latch back on.

My double poling muscles were pretty pooped at this point, so I was doing a lot of kick double poling, which my striding muscles weren't all that pleased about either. At turns and corners, I could see someone making up time on me, and I couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl, so I kept the pedal down and motored for the finish. Luckily, it was a guy, because after descending the Yodel trail, he caught me in the fields, and I'm not sure if I'd have wanted a sprint at that point. I meant to sprint him for the finish, but I had neglected to read the course map closely enough, and I thought we still had to cross the road and do a lap of the golf course before finishing, so I was really confused when I crossed a red line in the snow and all the people in front of me were standing around blocking the way. Race brain. Anyway, brain fart aside, I ended up winning the race for the women, so it appears that my race plan of just starting fast and seeing what would happen, worked!

There was a delicious lunch served to racers afterwards, and CSU had a ton of age-class winners, so everyone was in high spirits. I won a shirt in the raffle, and CSU won the overall title (I think... there seem to be some strange ways of counting points, so maybe we didn't win. I like the story better when we won). That was fun, but I'm glad I'm not doing Craftsbury this year... 26km was long enough!

Thanks to Jamie for the photos!