January 13th, 2008
On Friday my brother called me. I know as soon as I saw the caller ID that he wanted something. In this case, someone to chase after during his intervals. His plan was for him to ski a hard interval up Tripoli Road at Waterville Valley, ski back down, and race me (I would be fresh for this effort).
I agreed to this. Yesterday he called back. After talking to Zach, the plan had changed. I was skiing up Tripoli twice as well, the first time with a 30 second head start, the second with a head start equal to whatever the time difference was on the first interval.
Tripoli Road (pronounced “Triple I” by the locals, though not often by me) connects Waterville Valley to Route 93, at least in the summer. In the winter the bottom four kilometers become a ski trail. Four kilometers, 215 meters, so an average grade of 5.5%. It’s not that steep as hills go, but long enough that I did not look forward to skiing up it twice. I wondered if this was really a change of plans or just a bait and switch.
We warmed up and Kris drew a line in the snow. I took off when he said go. I looked down at my watch a little later, at about 28 seconds. It didn’t seem like this head start amounted to much, especially compared with the huge hill looming in front of me.
There are mile posts on the road. I hit one at 5:40, feeling good, not hearing Kris yet. I picked it up a bit, skating well. By seven minutes I was entertaining fantasies of beating him to the top. I accelerated more, at least for a moment. But then I started hearing what might have been pole plants. By nine minutes I was sure he was back there. By ten he was breathing down my neck, and around eleven minutes he finally passed me. I let him go up the last, steepest pitch, too tired to even try to keep up. He put 12 seconds on me on top of the 30 second head start, beating me 13:06 to 13:48.
Twenty five minutes later I started up again. I felt slow at first, then fast, then slow, then fast. Sometimes it’s just hard to tell. At the mile post I was 15 seconds off pace. I tried to focus on technique, and wondered how Kris was feeling. Once again, around eight minutes I had delusions of victory, and once again by nine and a half they were crushed. Kris passed me, but skied slowly on the approach to the last pitch. I checked my watch–in the second five minutes of the climb I had lost only five seconds. Around the time I was processing this, Kris accelerated. At first I had no response, but then I was back on him. We hammered up the last climb in high tempo V-1. Halfway up I moved left, trying to find a way by. Kris felt me coming and found a gear I didn’t have at all. He sped up the top of the hill and with the finish line in sight I started to wonder if I could even get there, or if I was going to collapse.
I glanced at my watch at the top but it took several minutes for me to figure out that I had skied about five seconds slower, meaning I skied the last three minutes 15 seconds faster, than the first climb. Kris lost a second or two, beating me to the top by about four seconds.
Like I said, I was so tired it took long minutes for my brain to do this much math. Then we cooled down and I came home. I graded physics papers, wrote a test for one math class, and then decided I would rather write in my blog than write a review sheet for my other class. Maybe I should write that review sheet now…
