January 27th, 2008
I won my first race this year today.
It was just and Eastern Cup, but still, there is something nice about a win. I won by 1:36, hopefully enough to force them to invoke the Freeman-Chamberlain rule, which basically says that is some hotshot who ought to be racing in bigger races comes and screws up the points for everyone trying to qualify for Junior Nationals they can ignore him. At my slighter bigger victory in an Eastern Cup last year I got them to invoke the rule, which up till then was named more for my brother than for me.
Beyond a nice little ego boost, going to an Eastern Cup is a great chance to see the vitality of skiing in New England. There were almost four hundred entrants. Most were juniors trying to get to Junior Nationals but ages from about 12 to around 60. Every single racer was out there giving it their all, fighting for seconds, trying to best rivals. I got to catch up with a few friends, ski the awesome racecourses at Rumford (reworked a little so that there is no road crossing to deal with) and suffer three times up high school hill–so named because no matter how fit you are that climb makes you feel like an out of shape freshman! Or at least that’s what it always does to me.
