I won my third consecutive Ski to the Clouds last Sunday. To the best of my recollection, this is the only race I have ever won three times, let along three years in a row, so that feels kind of cool. And it is a $250 purse, my first prize money of the year, so that also feels good.
It was a perfect day, a little chilly when my dad and I arrived (he won the over 60 division) but bright and sunny by the time the race started. Jesse Downs led early, and then about a kilometer in I decided to mix things up and charge past him on an uphill (the first 4 km of the race are on gently rolling terrain). Half a kilometer later, Duncan Douglas, one of the only talented skiers with less patience than me, charged past on a sunny spot where my skis dragged a little. He didn’t let up, and I spent the next couple of kilometers trying to reel him in as we opened up a large gap on the rest of the field before the real race began.
I finally caught Duncan just as we started the 6 km climb up Mt Washington. It was tricky to stay with him, as he was practically jump-skating up the hill for at least five minutes. I took one 30 second pull during this stretch, but could barely hold the pace. Around five minutes, I took a longer pull, then let Duncan lead again. He was no longer jump-skating. Duncan led for a while, then I took a third pull. When I was ready for a break, I started to pull over, but Duncan was five seconds back. I had to decide whether to stay with him or try to make a break. It wasn’t much of a decision–I don’t have the patience to sit for long. So I attacked, though I don’t know that anyone watching would have noticed that I was trying to go faster. I slowly got the gap to around thirty seconds, but when I stopped for a drink at the one aid station, halfway up the climb. Duncan got back within 15 seconds.
Again, I thought about letting him catch up and lead, but ultimately I attacked again. It was a slow process, but I steadily increased the gap. As we approached the finish, my choice of skis started to pay off. I went on a BNS 3/3 grind, which is quite aggressive, but I didn’t put any hand structure in. Where the snow was totally saturated, like the place Duncan first passed me and the first few hundred meters of real climb, the skis were a touch slow. On most snow, the skis equalled those with hand structure. But in the shadier and more windblown spots near the top, my skis were superior, and allowed me to maintain and extend my lead, even as I wished I could collapse on the side of the trail.
When the finish line came into sight, a massive headwind sprang up, and I felt lucky to get across it. My margin of victory was 50 seconds, and this was definitely the hardest I have skied in three years at Ski to the Clouds. I am already looking forward to next year!

That’s the racing plan for March. With my biggest (and most likely best) race of the season behind me it is kind of hard to stay motivated to train. I am still skiing most days, but haven’t put together an interval workout in a couple of weeks.

Still, I am very excited about the races coming up. I am the two-time defending champion at Ski to the Clouds, and I think I still have the fitness to hold off challengers in a hillclimb.

Last year I was bummed to miss the Bretton Woods Marathon. Bretton Woods has always been one of my favorite places to ski in the spring, and any classic marathon is something I feel like I should support. I am psyched that my schedule this year will give me a chance to redeem my failure at Craftsbury.

And I am once again finishing the season at Sugarloaf. That is another great marathon. Not one I enjoyed last year, particularly when it started snowing and I had to skate hard to get down steep hills, but a well-organized race on a challenging course, and hopefully a race I can do better in this year.

It has been a tricky winter for snow…never much though luckily there has been something to ski on every day since mid-December. It was frustrating though, in the last couple weeks to read about how “49 states have snow on the ground” (the holdout being Hawaii or Florida depending on who was counting) when we had hardly anything in central NH.

And now it is deeply ironic that when we finally got a blizzard, it came with such wet snow and high winds that there are hundreds of trees and large branches down across the ski trails of our state, and the clearing process won’t be complete for at least several days. What skiing Waterville had today was awesome, but it was quite limited.

While all of you have been following the Olympics–the most exciting 30 km pursuit in history, the sprint relays, and the Nordic combined team winning a silver medal–the real action this weekend was on the Eastern Cup circuit.

Okay, not really, and in fact I want to point out two things about the Olympics before I talk about my own racing. First, I have seen some complaints here and there about the coverage–too many commercials, not enough focus on U.S. athletes, annoying commentary. The last Olympics I watched on TV (Salt Lake) had nearly no coverage of cross country skiing to begin with. Maybe a minute or two of summary buried between figure skating interviews. I do wish NBC did a better job, but they are 1000% better than the average of the last few Olympics! And it the pursuit didn’t win over a whole lot of new fans, nothing will.
Second, our Nordic combined guys have won two medals and are favored to add at least one more. So when the peanut gallery calls for heads to roll at USSA because of poor results in cross country, it is worth noting that the program directors, medical support staff, and even some of the waxers have been shared by the cross country and combined teams over the last few years.

Anyway, I raced twice last weekend. First in a 15 km race at Gunstock, a location chosen because they were about the only place in the state with a viable 5 km classic loop. I had to work all morning, so I asked to be seeded at the end of the race. This gave me time to get in a real warm up, and Matt and Sverre from Stratton offered to wax my skis and did an awesome job. It turns out the late start may have been a good strategy, as the snow started to speed up in the latter half of the course (though the first half continued to slow down, so it is hard to say). Anyway, I pulled out a 20 second victory over Juergen Uhl, and was a minute clear of third letting me feel that even if I did sneak by Uhl on the speed of the snow I would have been top 2 regardless.

On Sunday, racing at Holderness, with home course advantage, I was unable to repeat. It was a course seemingly designed to take advantage of my many weaknesses: transitions, corners, short races, climbs in corn snow, downhill finishes. Once upon a time I had the aerobic fitness to hide the fact that I am not a very complete skate racer, but on this course it meant I was solidly beaten by Fred Bailey and Russell Currier. Still, I have my one Eastern Cup victory for the year, and at this point, that is more than I have right to count on.

Oh–I need to point out that the impressive thing about the Holderness race is that it was held at all. Slade, the Chief of Course, put in 30 hours of shoveling, and many other volunteers put in a huge number of hours just to get a viable race course put together. And while it wasn’t very well designed to help me to victory, it was a smooth, safe, and fair race that a less dedicated crew never could have pulled off!

Kris collapsed in the fourth lap of the pursuit today after his blood sugar crashed. I have had conflicting reports from him and from out parents about exactly who helped him (perhaps indicating just how out of it he was), but somehow he got some sugar into him and, despite having lost two and a half minutes and still being rather unsteady, he stood up and finished the race. And I am proud.

I don’t want to be the proud older brother. I don’t want to be the older brother who cried when Kris was diagnosed because everything I read about diabetes told me this meant he was done racing and that furthermore he was going to die about a decade early after suffering various complications from his diabetes. I don’t want to have to sit here and remind people that Kris has already defied medical assumptions by being at the Olympics.

Who do I want to be? I want to be the slightly bitter older sibling who is jealous of the attention his brother gets. I want to pretend that I care more about winning an Eastern Cup today than I do about how Kris did at the Olympics. I want Kris to ski the kind of race he is capable of and win a medal so that I can remind people how much better I am at math than he is, and hey, I beat him at that race in West Yellowstone five years ago, and, um, I might be a better cook. Not that we are rivals or anything…

But on days like today, maybe it is okay to admit that I am one of my brother’s biggest fans, and that I hope with all my heart he can put this day behind him and go out and be the great competitor and skier and person that he is.

It makes me sad to see that hate on FasterSkier. The price we pay, I know, for an open society and a free conversation, but still.

It makes me laugh, though, to see how “the Freemans” are now a couple of excuse makers. I mean, I have good excuses, like, for instance, getting distracted mid-race by a way I might be able to apply a theorem from linear algebra, or addiction to blogging that decreases my available training hours, or Johnny Klister is jealous of my blog and put a hex on me that prevents me from crossing the line first at the Craftsbury Marathon.

Kris, on the other hand, has lame excuses like, “No one with diabetes has ever done this before and I have to invent all the protocols from scratch,” and “I have compartment syndrome.” What a loser.

What I wanted to say, only better written.

I raced this past weekend at the Eastern Cup at Stowe. Given that I cracked the top 10 at nationals, I was thinking I could make the podium there, even though it was a full field of Eastern college skiers and 10 skate is not my strongest race.

I was very wrong. I had fast skis, and I felt like I was skating better than I did in either Anchorage or Rumford, but I ended up 12th. I would barely have been top 10 in the college race.

Now, I did finish only 10 seconds from 5th, so I can try to see the silver lining there, but I was well rested, well warmed up, and I thought the snow was good for me, so I would have been disappointed with 5th as well. What this says is that my Nationals result was a bit of a fluke, that I really can’t maintain good fitness with 400 hours a year, and that I need to stop dreaming about my triumphant comeback. At least until I pop another good race…

Please note that I don’t mean I want a curse on Craftsbury, a ski area which has a combination of geography and staff which allowed it to host an absolutely incredible race last Saturday despite a profound lack of snow across much of New England. Usually when the alerts come the week before a race detailing possible changes in course it means you are in for a short, rough, and sketchy race, but the crew at Craftsbury put together one of the better marathon courses I have had the pleasure of skiing.

The course did have less climb at the end than the tradition course that finishes on the Common, and that was one thing that hurt me. I had great skis, but lacked the double pole fitness to respond in the last few kilometers. And so, for the fourth time in four years, I lost a race at Craftsbury that I might have won. In 2007 I was outskied by Eli Enman, in 2008 outwaxed by Jan Arne, in 2009 my great race earned me nothing as my brother was there. This year I faced solid competition, but if I had been able to get the kind of sleep last week that I got during Nationals in Alaska, I would not have been dropped.

And so it is difficult to believe that there is not, in fact, some sort of Justin Freeman/Craftsbury Marathon curse that puts me on the podium every year but will never let me win.

But then again, maybe there isn’t and 362 days from now I will finally get to cross that finish line first…