Great Glen Sprints

Great Glen Sprints yesterday. There was a good crowd, mostly college skiers - about 130 racers total. The weather started out windy and then turned into snow flurries as the afternoon went on - tough weather for coaches, but we came prepared and brought some donuts. The folks at Great Glen have a nice loop for sprinting, although the coverage was a bit thin on one section - most people ended up racing on rock skis. Ironically, there was plenty of snow on the rest of their trail system - just one bony hill that happened to be on the course. Interesting race format - everyone raced a qualifying heat of 4 skiers, rather than an individual prelim time trial. Subsequent heats were then seeded off of the results of the first heat, with winners getting a bye to the 3rd round. This was great - one flaw of sprint racing is that if you're eliminated in the first round, you've spent a lot of time and money for just a couple minutes of racing all by yourself. This format gave everyone at least 2 shots, and against live competition instead of the clock - much more fun. Time consuming, though - with so many people, the first round dragged a bit, and the organizers decided to cut the course in half to move things along. At that point, the race became a real test of speed, with each heat over in less than a minute.
So, how did our skiers do? Pretty well, I thought. We've only just begun working on the high-end fitness needed for such a short race, so it was exciting to see 6 of our 10 skiers advance to the 3rd round. Tom and Walt won their first heats, while Shem, Sarah, Forrest, and Niko battled through by winning their second heats. No one advanced further, unfortunately, but I was pleased with how good everyone looked. Niko was practically airborne with every pushoff; Forrest dropped two of Colby's better skiers in one of his heats; Sarah just plain overpowered a Dartmouth skier to win her second round. We don't have the speed to win sprint races yet, but yesterday showed that we're strong and fit. If our team can ski this well now, things look good for the races that count.