It was cold. -11F when we got to the commons at 7:30, “warming up” to -4F for the 9am start. I ran into Victor, who was smiling broadly, enjoying the cold “almost like home”. I had skied in my vest and covered my face with Vaseline but still got some bright red patches of cold burn on my cheekbones. I lived up to my reputation of the most boring of CSU waxers: Craftsbury 2010 was my 6th consecutive race with basically the same wax-job (Bogburn, Jackson, Craftsbury 2009, 2010): Swix VG35 binder ironed thin, Blue extra ironed thick, lots of layers of either VR40 or VR30. I did 6 layers of VR30 on Sat. There were discussions of green klister as an underlayer vs. binder before the race; I put the green klister on Sarah’s skis (she did the 25k) covered by 5 layers of VR30 which worked well for her. I stayed with the hard wax binder hoping for better glide and brought some VR40 in case I had to re-wax. Kick was great in the first 2 laps and still decent in the end – just used some low gears for the last uphills. My skis’ edges were scraped pretty clean, had about a half inch strip of thin wax on either side of the groove left. I think my glide (LF4 + turbo Cera) may have been a little better than the average in my train but it is hard to tell.
Given the deluge on Monday Craftsbury had put together an awesome course, about 250 altitude meters per lap. Adds up to 1000m altitude meters for the 50k – no cake walk. 50k times turned out about 5min faster than last year, so I felt pretty good about beating my 2009 time by 10min. Wes says that statistically you slow down by 0.9% every year beyond the age of 34 - always satisfactory to beat your odds J. (I do not beat those odds in 3000m track tests. 0.9% is about 6 seconds – pretty much exactly what I have been losing every year). Actually, at least in the short term for me the biggest driver of skiing speed is how often I get sick. This year I managed to avoid any serious colds, (knock on wood) maybe because I’ve been using the zinc spray that Andy put me on. The race started fast and furious. I skied with M1 Eric Eley of Stowe for the 2nd half of the first lap, and we caught back up to Reid Greenberg and Jesse Downs of Jerico VT at the end of lap 1. Earlier we had hung on to Eric Tremble – I had skied Jackson with him – but he took off and finished a great 11th in 2:42, repeating his great race of 2009. At some point Joel Bradley joined us as well and for the 2nd lap the 5 of us kept a nice train going. At the beginning of lap 3 our train suddenly fell apart. Reid and Jesse pulled away. Reid ended up 15th in just under 2:45. He is a kajaker with incredible upper body strength. I had skied Jackson with him last year and had marveled then at how he double polled parts of Yodel when his skis slipped. Eric and Joel dropped off behind me, I think Eric’s skis were a little slick. So I was on my own, for the first time in a long time because last year I had done both Jackson and Craftsbury ski to ski with Anson Moxness, then a Dartmouth Senior who was (still is?) dating Chris Nice’s daughter … Chris had quizzed me about Anson’s skiing politeness after the race. Anson must have graduated now and I haven’t seen him this winter. Lap 3 was challenging because there was so much passing of skiers from other waves, a little dicey in some of the downhills. I kept pushing pretty hard, felt good and stayed on the edge pretty much the entire race. I was completely spent in the end.
Looking through the results it is great to see so many of our CSU Junior alums doing really well. Matt Briggs from Concord who is now training with the Green team at Craftsbury was 6th in just under 2:38, Dartmouth Senior Matt Trueheart from Concord finished 9th in 2:41isth – probably his best marathon ever: Congrats! Ollie Burruss - also with the Green team came in 18th, I have not talked with him yet after the race but it looks like he ran into problems in the second half.
Anyway, it was a great feast of skiing and companionship. Lots of great results for all of CSU, I won’t attempt to list them here – just waiting for your stories.
Frank
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