The Geschmossel

On Monday a bunch of us oldsters raced the Geschmossel 15km classic race at Bretton Woods, It was nice to worry only about 1 pair of skis instead of 24 after the JOQ races we were at over the weekend.  The bad news is that I overthought the wax for the day and lived to pay the price.  The good news was that almost everyone had problems, which made for interesting racing and results.

Rob and I drove over to Crawford Notch from the brown, dirty snows of Rumford at the conclusion of the JOQ races.  There is LOTS of snow in the Notch and big, white, clean snowbanks at Highland Lodge where we settled down for the night just as some new snow started falling.  We got in a good waxing session down in the basement before dinner so we could relax later on.  That was a great plan.  Joe Bouscaren and his brothers were also staying there, so we had breakfast together in the morning before heading over to Bretton Woods.

4" of fluffy snow had fallen over night, but Bretton Woods decided???  not to regroom the race loop, a single 15km loop using Dark Forest, Clinton, Beech Hill, Sebosis and some other trails!  What's with that???  The Piston Bully was sitting at the touring center running for the hour before the race for crying out loud!  Nothing like an amateur operation.....Some people, including Alex Jospe, who wasn't racing, went out and at least skiied in the tracks that no one had skied on, which helped a bit.  Tactic of the day - don't lead!  Not to worry for me.  Because the tracks we were testing waxes on was glazing and getting pretty slick I decided to be aggressive with my wax since my skis are reasonably stiff.  So, I went with some VR65 and covered it up well with Rode Super Violet.

At the start of the race, because it narrowed from 10 tracks to 2 quickly, I decided on being somewhat mellow.  I was pleased that I was able to pass people at will on double pole sessions as we headed for the hills and I could run right up the first few easy hills.  Slowly I moved up with Chris Osgood, Peter Harris, Nat Lucy, Doug Armstrong and others.  This was fun!  Until I came to Beech Hill - a long uphill that is totally skiable.....except when you ice up and develop high heels on your skis.  I couldn't kick the snow off effectively at that point and trudged up the hill.  Nat Lucy had stopped to scrape his skis off on his bindings earlier and Peter Hall was also in trouble.  Slowly I was left behind.  At the top I was finally able to get going as I whacked my skis with my poles from time to time to get the snow to fall off but every time I had to stride in the fresh, ungroomed powder I'd ice up again.  Double poling became the technique of choice.   Finally, we started the long series of downhills on Sebosis back to the golf course.  With the ice gone and a glazed track my skis were very fast.  I soon hauled in Peter Hall and someone else.  By the time I got to the golf course I had Ron Newbury in my sites and whipped by him in a mad double pole frenzy.  I ran out of race course before I caught the next group, but I'd had a good run there at the end.

This was a fun race if you didn't let the atrocious grooming bother you.  It was frustrating to ice up, but since nearly everyone did I wasn't too unhappy.  Motto of the story - don't over think the wax.  Sometimes it will come back to bite you!

I don't have any ski pics, so here is what Franconia Notch looked like on the way home.