Well, first, they are for beating you badly and thereby depriving you of income.
But on the other hand, Kris did give me a lot of help at Craftsbury.

Let’s back up. A couple weeks ago Kris told me he had bad news: he was going to race at Craftsbury. Shortly thereafter, he gave me better news: Zach had told him a good way to get the workout he needed would be to ski with me for a good portion of the race before leaving me in the dust.

We drove up together – the race organizers made of point of asking people to cut down on the carbon footprint when getting to the race (I think that played into the decision to move to a loop format this year as well) – and my dad came with us as well. We were a little behind schedule getting to the race but with beautiful Extra Blue conditions it did not take long to wax and be ready.

The start was downhill, which meant it took a little while to spread out. Kris took the lead around three kilometers and a group of five quickly formed: Kris, me, Eli Enman, Brayton Osgood, and another skier who I think was racing the 25 km. We stayed like that for about 10 km, until Kris (accidentally he claims) made a move around the time we came through the Nordic Center for a feed. Eli and the unknown skier were off the back immediately, and Brayton and I chased for a kilometer or so. At that point, I was maybe five second off of Kris and ten up on Brayton. Kris slowed down and let me grab a ride, and Brayton saw this and knew it was over.
I certainly didn’t know it was over yet. We went very hard (from my perspective, I doubt Kris agrees) for a kilometer, then backed off a little. On the next big open climb I glanced back and saw that we had over 30 seconds. Kris led, asking me about the pace, for the next 25 km. I made sure we pushed hard up the final hill to the lap; by 25 km we had close to a 2 minute lead.
I was nervous all the way. The splits I was getting about Brayton were not consistent enough for me to trust them, so I raced hard. At 35 km, Kris warned me that the ride was going to end in a few kilometers. At about 38.5, he simply skied away. I don’t think he made a conscious decision to drop me; rather, he skied so well on a long double-pole kick section that I couldn’t keep up and he decided there was no point in slowing down only to drop me a little later.
Kris put 3 minutes into me in the last 11 km of the race. On the other hand, from what I can gather of the splits, I put at least a minute into Eli in the same stretch, and much more into Brayton who lost his one minute lead on Eli from kilometer 39 to 49 and then lost another two minutes between there and the finish. I ended up seven minutes clear of third place, easily enough to erase any question in my mind of whether I could have bested the field had my brother not been there to help.
Oh – and my dad picked up the win in the 60+ division. So it was a good day for the family.

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