Saturday - Prospect 10km skate
Well, Saturday shouldn't have happened for me. I should have been smart enough not to race, but obviously I'm not that smart. As a coach, I'd tell a kid who was tired to go ski easy and not race if he or she was this tired. But I'm not very good at coaching myself sometimes. I was exhausted all week and died in Tuesday's Weston race 1/2 way through the first lap. I went into the Masters wave and they had me seeded first for some unknown reason. I tried to make it look good at the start but was pooped before I got out of the double pole zone and it went downhill from there while the course went uphill. Charlie Gunn was the first to go motoring by, never to be seen again, then Damian Bolduc, John Brodhead and the whole rest of the field and I couldn't hang with a single one of them. When Victor went by I hopped in behind him. If you can't draft behind Victor then something is wrong. As big as he is he creates the perfect vacuum. At Weston if you are behind Victor and there is a wind in your face you won't even feel it. But.......not Saturday. I was spit out the back, fried, cooked, toasted, barbecued, spit and bonked and I hadn't even gone 1/2 way around the first lap and I had the uphills to go! God, what torture! I hung in there and on lap two, completely alone out there, I actually started to move a bit better....but not much. Anyway, I was miles behind everyone else....what a disaster!
On the other hand, CSU was a strong presence in the race. Rob skied very well in the younger guys wave and many of the CSU jrs had good races.
Men
19 Chris Stock
25 Isaac Hoenig
48 Luke Siebert
49 Jimmy Burnham
56 Rob Bradlee
62 James Tracey
85 Andrew Reed
92 Evan Doucett
95 Victor Golovkin
98 Jamie Doucett
Women
14 Hilary Rich
19 Alex Jospe
29 Olga Golovkina
47 Juliana Slocum
50 Blair Robinson
J2 Boys
7 Jackson Rich
16 Neil Garrison
17 Chris Burnham
21 Nick Serbedzija
J2 Girls
16 Hannah Smith
Sunday - 10km classic
Sunday was interesting. Very interesting. Interesting weather. Interesting waxing. Interesting snow. First, about 4-5 inches of new, wet snow overnight. Slushy. I went out to load the car and said to myself "orange klister". When I arrived at Vt Academy sure enough Rob, who had arrived early to test waxes, was trying orange klister covered with a variety of hard waxes for the J2s. At least for the J2 race the conditions remained somewhat consistent. However, given the glazing tracks Jackson Rich wisely went for the waxless Rossi ARs and then hammered his race to take 2nd place! Some of the kids with klister had issues. Issues like slipping. Issues like icing. Very interesting issues.
Then the weather got interesting. Very interesting. The snow started, nice big flakes. Interesting wet flakes. It started snowing hard. Hilary Rich then grabbed the ARs from Jackson and off she went. And Hilary hammered home in 3rd place! Gotta love those ARs!! I went out to do a warmup lap during the women's race and the weather got more interesting. Very interesting. It snowed hard for a while, it got windy, the wind blew snow in curtains off the trees and you couldn't see where you were going. That made the downhills interesting. Very interesting when you can't see where you are going. Those with the klister and hard wax combination slipped quite a bit. It was a tough day out there, for sure.
For the men's race it got even more interesting. It stopped snowing. It stopped blowing. The tracks glazed even more. It started to get colder. Those who had waxless skis grabbed them. Some without waxless opted to make hairies and that worked great.......for a while. Evan took our ARs, which we share, so I waxed with Orange and covered with Swix VR75. It seemed to work acceptably well. I was getting kick. Not great kick, just interesting kick. Like sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. On my first lap I was getting kick, but when younger guys on their 2nd lap passed me I had to hop out of the track.....and that induced icing. Interesting icing, not bad icing...I could kick it off when I returned to the tracks, but nonetheless that slowed me down. Chris Nice went double poling by on an uphill. Interesting....he had no kick either. Ben Haydock's hairies stopped working at 3km....interesting. Evan's ARs didn't work so well on lap 2....interesting. Rob passed me and disappeared around a corner on the next downhill, until I passed him sprawled out in the middle of the track.....interesting. On lap 2 I got into an interesting rythm...hop out the track to run the uphill....hop back into the track before the top to start kicking the ice off before the course flattened out or went downhill....it was an interesting rythm.
It was an interesting day. Just like Craftsbury was interesting and the Bogburn was interesting and the Mass Qualifier race at Prospect was interesting. I'm tired of interesting. I'm looking for boring. Special Blue boring....how about that?
J2 Boys
2 Jackson Rich
17 Eli Hoenig
10 Nick Serbedzija
J2 Girls
9 Corey Stock
20 Hannah Smith
Men
24 Chris Stock
28 Isaac Hoenig
50 Rob Bradlee
67 Evan Doucett
81 Jim Stock
85 Jamie Doucett
86 James Tracey
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