I raced two SuperTour races this past weekend, and had by some measures my best result since my “retirement” 9 years ago.
Saturday was a 10 km freestyle, and was a combined Eastern Cup/EISA College Race/SuperTour with 214 racers on the start list. I was in the second seed group, which started after the first seed, so if anyone had been giving me splits this would have been an advantage (but no one was…) I started very aggressively, attacking the first kilometer of the course and catching my 15 second man by the two km mark. I passed a couple of others who had started just in front of me as well, and caught my 30 second man near the lap. I drafted him for a bit, then took the lead again. He stuck right on me, and I was unable to generate the same power and speed I had on the first lap. Still, we worked well together. He pushed me hard up Screaming Mimi (the big hill at the end of the Craftsbury course) and then passed me, and I worked to hang on to him…he was spent as we crossed the lower stadium with only a couple hundred meters to go, and I thought I could get around him, but he crossed the line about a second before I did (for a race time 28 seconds slower).
I received no information on course, so while I knew from how I skied relative to those around me that it had been solid, I had to look at results to discover that I was 11th place, 1:35 behind my brother, 31 seconds off of Lex Treinen in third, and 19 seconds out of sixth place (and thus a cash prize). I was behind only five college skiers (four Americans and one Canadian).
This result is comparable to what I earned in the same 10 km skate race a year ago, and I followed that with a very disappointing 20 km classic, so I really didn’t know what to expect on day 2. It was cold with fresh snow, so I felt comfortable waxing my own skis – a newer pair of Salomons (three or four years old now) with a fairly recent (in terms of number of races) LS1 grind, and a mix of Swix BD4 and Toko LF red. For kick I started with Rode Multigrade Blue, buried a layer of Swix Extra Blue, and then covered with two partial layers of Swix VR30. My skis felt fast, with good but not perfect kick; I was feeling good and I wanted skis that needed a real racer to make them work.
The start of the race was refreshingly calm. The front two rows were all experienced skiers who had no need to take an early lead when all that meant was the chance to plow the tracks for everyone behind. I was in the lane behind Eric Packer, and after he made clear that he could have taken the lead, he pulled up, and I was able to follow him into a good early position.
Silas Talbot of Dartmouth was the only skier interested in pulling us around, so we settled in behind him. I was mostly able to hold on to fourth or fifth place, and so save the energy of slowing down or speeding up too much as the pack went up and down hills. Not much happened in the first lap and a half…there was some scrambling on some of the climbs, but I was able to cover all the moves without losing position or tiring myself too much.
Around the middle of the second lap I found myself at the front of the group. It wasn’t a conscious effort, but we were starting to climb so being in front wasn’t a detriment, and I skied at a solid pace. On the rolling section in the middle of the biggest climb, my brother asked me to let him by. I moved left, let him slip past, and then, the next skier in line having let a gap open, I slotted myself back in behind him. Kris attacked, and only one of the Green Team was able to go with him. At the top of Screaming Mimi Kris had only a few seconds on us, and next to nothing on his closest pursuer, but by the lap just one kilometer later he had a solid 15 second lead.
I fought for position in the chase group. With Kris gone it was clear that no one in the group was too much stronger than me, but I tried not to worry about finishing position and just tried to ski smart. I failed at that a bit going up the sprint hill, opening up a gap that was a little too big to be just relaxed skiing but far too small to be of any use. Still, I figured it was safe to keep the lead on the downhill, so I was still right at the front as we started climbing with 2.5 km to go.
The pace steadily increased as we climbed, and I could see a couple skiers getting away from me. I tried to pull them in on the descent before Screaming Mimi, but they had a length or two at the bottom and it was all I could do to hold position as we made the final climb. By the top Gordon Vermeer and Lex Treinen were clearly dropping me, and my connection to Eric Packer and Frederic Touchette was tenuous. Somehow I held on for the very small final descent and then put everything I had into the last few hundred meters. I couldn’t catch Packer but Touchette was behind me with 200 to go, then 100 to go, and even at 50 to go. I honestly had a hard time believing I had out-double-poled anyone at the finish, but I came across in fifth place, earning money in a FIS race for the first time since the 50 km national championship in 2006 (another race my brother won, and I would put up money we are the only two racers who finished both of those events).
The joy of my good race was somewhat dampened when I was accosted by two of the APU racers who accused me of … actually it is hard to say what they were accusing me of. They wouldn’t say directly, just that they used to respect me and now didn’t. What I could piece together from what they said to other people at the race is that they thought I was intentionally blocking for my brother, and that we had planned his breakaway.
There is video available on FasterSkier, and in particular you can see the top of Screaming Mimi early in Kris’s break. I think the video speaks for itself. (Also, there were three lanes on pretty much the whole course. Three.) I did Kris a favor when I let him by me, but that was two seconds out of the race, and the rest of the time I was focused on skiing my own best race.
I was rather annoyed with the accusations, particularly given that they were made almost entirely to people who were neither me nor race officials. But with a little time to reflect, I realize that this is well within the range of how basically good people react to being beaten by a guy who has been retired for nine years. In the unlikely event that I or some other long retired father of two manages to out-ski two different APU skiers on both days of the same weekend, I am guessing the team will respond with far more grace.
