Tuesday Night Waterskiing

I just read Alex's writeup and she basically took all the adjectives I was going to use to describe the conditions last night. In summary, it was pouring and hadn't been below freezing in 48 hours. In typical Weston fashion they groomed and tilled it anyway to make some pretty corduroy slush that didn't hold up at all. The untilled ice was way faster, but other people seem to like slush and/or get surprised when it doesn't hold up.

Thanks to mostly luck I had a pretty good run. I finally earned a front row start and got into the first lap in second place, which is basically first place since Bret quickly skied away like always. After the parade lap I pulled aside to let Dave Currie come through, and when I looked back there was a 10 yard gap behind him.

It turns out there was a crash at the start that Luke took the blame for which launched us off the front. In any case, it's been 5 weeks since I saw open space behind me at Weston so I was pretty stoked to put the hurt on people who were too far back to draft me. I passed Dave back, told him we had a gap and gunned it.

For a while it looked like Andy might be able to close the gap to us, but he never quite made it, and then we pulled away for good.

On the third lap Dave took the lead and the pace was high. He's an aerobic animal so the slushy V1 climbs were perfect for him, and I was start to suffer pretty badly churning through the piles of slush. There was no way I could hang on to this pace for another lap -- but wait! Dave attempts to finish with one lap to go -- which explains why the pace was so high -- and is understandably disappointed when I yell that there's one more lap to go. Now laden with incorrect-finish-sprint lactic acid, he drops away pretty easily on the last lap and I solo in for 2nd.

This ends the Tuesday night series. I made it to 7 of 9 races and ended up 6th, despite scoring the 5th most points per attended race -- they don't drop any races so one person who did all 9 finished just ahead of me. My best result was 2nd (twice) -- which is basically 1st with Bret B. racing -- and finishing with the lead pack 6 out of 7 times was a huge improvement from last season.

See you next year!

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