February 2nd, 2008
This will be a short post so as to avoid actually using the words I censored from the title and thus alienating my sponsors and ending my career as a blogger. I had about the most frustrating race of my life today. I led the Craftsbury Marathon from the start to 46 km, lost the lead for about a kilometer of downhill, took it back, and opened a gap, and then got beat 20 meters from the finish line.
I am rather proud of myself that I didn’t do anything regretable as I came across the line. Rather than punch Jan Arne in the nose, as I wanted to, I congratulated him. Not, I should point out, that Jan deserved anything but congratulations. He is older and wiser and did a better job of having skis that were fast both at the start of the race and at the finish. I can hardly justify being mad at him for good waxing. Nor can I fault my own wax tech, Nick Mahood of Swix. He gave me skis that worked perfectly at the start, and indeed for about half of the course. But after 25 km of icy, granular tracks, the second half of the race was held on dry powder. I crossed a line, and my wax went from awesome to not so much. Had the sun come out an hour earlier, as the forecast said it might, the snow would have melted more and my wax would have been perfect. If only.
While I am looking for positives and trying not to wallow in self pity, I should also thank the race organizers. They did an amazing job of putting together a fair, well groomed, well organized race (though if they could work on making the weather patterns more consistent next year I would appreciate it–I suppose if they had those powers though they might be busy with someting more important than ski racing…)
