I am on duty tomorrow night, the night before the Craftsbury Marathon and my first shot at a National Master’s title. Having been runner-up at Craftsbury three times in a row, I am starting to think I am cursed, which makes me very worried about the changing snow conditions. It sounds like they have an excellent loop put together, but depending on the upcoming snowfall and how deep they till it could be anywhere from klister to special blue hard wax out there. And I won’t know for sure until I get up there at 7:30 AM and test skis in the sub-zero conditions. And then maybe re-wax, again in the sub-zero temps.
Hopefully, this is my year. My fitness seems good, I have good skis for whatever condition, and my dad raced there today and should give me a good snow conditions update. But I am developing an unfortunate history with this race, so anything that looks like it could go wrong makes me very nervous.

Rain is bad for skiing. Very bad.

No ski yesterday–though I did get out for a 10 mile run, which keeps me in shape for May racing, I suppose. Holderness trails are closed until further notice, and Waterville is down to Tripoli Road, though I imagine they will be opening other trails soon.

And it is a good thing the Craftsbury Marathon is at, well, Craftsbury, because few other venues would be able to pull off a marathon (which looks like it will be at least four laps) when faced with such a string of bad weather.

But at least I am going to ski tomorrow…

The original plan this week was to join Kris on his 50 km workout. I would ski every other 5 km with him, which would probably be good pacing for both of us.
Unfortunately, with my busy work schedule and Kris’s allegedly busy schedule, we couldn’t agree on a time. So I did a workout based on the idea, but a little shorter.
I ended up skiing three laps of the Holderness outer loop, which is somewhere between 5 km and 6 km. I took about four minutes recovery between laps. The times were 15:52 (at a solid effort; maybe 15 km race pace), 15:32 (at an increased effort, definitely working) and 15:37 (which left me broken).
And I mean BROKEN. I was lucky to cool down and drive home. Then, back in the real world, I had to wrestle my daughter into a snowsuit to head up to the dining hall. And I did not have the energy left to win a wrestling math with a 3-year-old.
I was basically worthless for the rest of the evening. Fortunately I am on top of my teaching so I was able to go to bed early and actually get a good night’s sleep for a change.
Can’t write more, have to go teach.

I drove up to Rumford with my brother this morning. We made excellent time, so I had time to rub some FC2 Turbo into my skis, invalidating one of the excuses I posted last night.

I had a pretty good race, finishing the 15 km race less than 1:20 behind my brother. Now, given how close the women’s race was (my time back might not have been top 10) opening up a gap that large is impressive. And given that Kris made about 60% of that gap on the last lap, when by his own report he was not trying very hard, he can be happy with the result.

But so can I. I did lose a battle for 2nd to Russell Currier, who skied at Biathlon World Championships last year. I think I had him worried for a list a little bit, though. It was interesting racing him. I tend to be able to out-ski anyone I am near in a mass start when we hit a V-1 hill, but that is where he hurt me the most…

The points aren’t posted yet, but I suspect that Kris will set a record for low Nensa points with about 26, as they will almost certainly invoke the Freeman Rule (which tries to prevent one highly talented athlete from wrecking the points for everyone–once upon a time I was fast enough that they invoked it for me, too).

1. I pulled both my daughters to the top of Osceola trail, and partway up Tripoli Road, and a few other places, for over an hour today. And then I pulled just Sage for a while after that. Classic skiing with bad kick. For a lot of that my heart rate was above 150. Not the best way to get ready for a race.

2. I don’t have time or resources to get fluoros ironed into my skis. Kris does. At least 8% of the crushing margin by which he defeats me tomorrow will be due to better wax.

3. I am on duty in the dorm tonight and will not get to bed until midnight.

4. I am writing a silly blog post when I should be getting myself organized so that I don’t stress out in the morning.

Not in a ski race though. I won the Pine Cone Derby, a competition (scored on the honor system) within the Holderness Ski Club to remove the most pine cones from the trail system in a single day. Last Sunday I set out to remove 100, then 200, and ended up with 657. I really need to wash the pine pitch off of my gloves.

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