Posted by Caitlin Curran-

This past weekend those of us who were around traveled to Jackson, NH for racing and of course some quality spa time.  On Friday, after a picturesque ski at Bretton Woods we spent the afternoon at the Mount Washington Hotel Spa.  Thanks to Coach Weave’s awesome connections we discovered that our Nordic trail passes gave us access to the Hotel Spa.  Spending time in the spa was a refreshing and relaxing change from most ski trips.  It also served as an educational experience for Fritz, as he added the word “concierge” to his vocabulary.

After a relaxing afternoon, we were ready to go fast on Saturday.  The “Crit Race” was a mass start skate race around the 1.3 K sprint course at Jackson.  Before the start, there is no set number of laps, the racers were just told that they will race for about 30 minutes total.  The girls went first and skied four laps, and then were signaled that they would race for 3 more.  The race started at a moderate pace, and sped up after the 3-lap countdown began.  Ellery was the first UVM finisher in a close 7^th place.  The rest of us (Caitlin, Janey, Mary, and Mae) were all close behind all finishing less than 2 minutes behind.

Guys, courtesy of Dennis Curran

The boy’s race was a similar format, they skied about 9 laps of the course.  Alex, Fritz, and Pete were at the front of the race, and finished 1^st, 4^th and 6^th, all within 5 seconds of each other.  Jesse, Paul, and Newt were not far behind, all finishing in the top 20.

Guys, courtesy of Dennis Curran

Sunday was another cold, but beautiful day in Jackson.  The girls raced a 5k individual start classic, and the boy’s 10k.  Fritz and Pete were close again finishing in 6^th and 7^th. Newt, Alex, Paul, and Jesse took 16^th, 18^th, 21^st, and 27^th.

Smithers, Photo courtesy of flyingpointroad.com

In the girl’s race Caitlin was 6^th place, 44 seconds behind Natalie Ruppertsburger from Bates.  Janey, Mary, and Ellery took 11^th 15^th and 19^th, all within 90 seconds of the leader.  The races were fun, and competitive with skiers from every school on the carnival circuit except for Middlebury and Dartmouth, as well as some U.S. Biathlon Team skiers.

As a reward for our hard work in the races, we went back to the Mt. Washington Hotel for some more spa time.  This time around we enjoyed 2 hours of steam room, sauna, outdoor Jacuzzi, and lounge time before heading back to Vermont.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Good times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.