Until the Snow Ends

50k in a snowstorm. Consider me officially stoked.

I wasn't joking when I said the first seven minutes were amazing and the rest kind of sucked .

It's a good thing the Tuesday night series is almost over because I'm running out of Tuesday Night _____ post names. This one is pretty accurate though -- this was the most contentious Tuesday nighter I've been to yet. The conditions were bizarre -- it was 34 and raining, with a half inch of new snow on top. I had my old Madshus Hypersonic wet base super-rilled skis with HF10, which I was expecting to be smokin' fast, and they turned out to be barely ok. There were spots where they would catch from the suction and I would stumble -- and these are rilled skate skis with flouros on them! Now that the high school season is over we had some new faces, although Luke was not among them. At the pre-race meeting Andy, the guy in charge, warned the high schoolers that this was an "adult race" so they should "not break anyone's poles." Unfortunately these words caught the ear of the irony gods, who repaid Andy mightily for this statement during the r...

The Stowe Derby is one of the stupidest ski races ever invented. It combines one ridiculously awesome element (descending the Mt Mansfield Toll Road on cross country skis at 40 mph) with a host of terrible ones -- incredibly narrow trails, mediocre snowmobile grooming, and the worst-shoveled road crossings I've ever seen. But it doesn't matter. The race is legendary, it's huge, it's never going to change, and if you took the stupid parts of the course out the old-timers would riot. And the first 7 minutes are unparalleled. I might complain, but you can bet I'll be back next year. Linnea and I made the questionable decision to camp out the night before the race. I haven't winter camped since I was a little kid and now that I don't sleep like a rock it turned out to be a less than restful evening. I compounded the error by hitting the first breakfast place we could find after getting out of the woods and eating what might be the largest prerace breakfast...

By my own subjective definition, one's life is pretty good when you get up on a Wednesday morning and realize, "crap, I haven't blogged in 4 days and now I'm 3 race reports behind." It's safe to say that I might "have a problem," but just like my "coffee problem" I've yet to figure out how it's anything less than totally awesome. Maybe I can link ironically to this post when it's July and I'm blogging about how burned out I am. Anyway, Tuesday was yet another Weston ski crit. After the weekend's torrential rain, the "snow" was rock solid, and for some reason Weston skipped their normal "till something skiable into utter crap" afternoon routine. The course was even icy and faster than usual, so cruising at a comfortable pace was easy, but going faster required more technique than fitness -- it was easy to flail and slip around a bunch without actually accelerating. In other words, it was a good day...

This race had been on my radar since November, mainly because it's run by the Bethel Outing Club and organized by my dad, and takes place about 5 miles from the house I grew up in. It had been in decline for several years, run as a 10k in 2006 in a 40-degree rainstorm (one of the only races that actually happened in The Winter That Never Happened , but still...), and drawing only 30 people last year when an Eastern Cup on the same day was moved to a nearby venue at the last minute. But, this year was different -- it was back to its rightful 20k length and it was the only event of consequence on the calendar, by sheer scheduling luck. In any case, these factors, coupled with the massive amount of snow in Bethel (the snowbanks are so high you can't read the speed limit signs) meant that they would be receiving the full brunt of the New England citizen racing scene, and I was thrilled to join in the fracas. My desire to vicariously promote a race led to me pestering my dad a f...

I bet you didn't know I was an elite ski orienteering athlete. Well, I didn't either. It turns out that to be an elite American ski orienteer, you don't need much. The criteria are as follows: 1) Have a friend who does ski orienteering and can loan you a map holder. 2) Be good enough at skiing to go somewhat fast, but bad enough to have an aversion to "real" races. 3) Be under 50. That's all there is to it. Notice that "ability to read a map" wasn't on that list! Alex and I headed up to Gunstock Saturday morning for the long distance and sprint races at the Eastern Ski-O Champs . I was still reeling from a depressingly small number of beers the night before, but hey, at least I can get drunk efficiently. I realized things were going to be a little rough when I drank a pint of water and a 32oz Gatorade on the way... and still didn't have to go to the bathroom. At all. After a few prerace instructions from Alex, mainly centering around h...