UVM Classic

The UVM Carnival opened with a 10k mass start classic today. We had nice hard tracks - frozen granular stuff mixed in with some fresh snow from Wednesday. Ezra and I had put a hard wax binder on everyone's skis last night. That was looking like a bad call for a while this morning - not great kick on my test skis, and a track that looked it really needed a klister base. Fortunately, it was just a matter of finding the right wax to go on top of the binder and applying enough layers - after a bit more testing, Ezra was loving the VR40 and wishing he was racing today.

Snow started coming down just before the women's race, much earlier than forecast. This could have played havoc with the waxing, but it was cold enough to make little difference. Their race got off to a clean start, and the pack spread out nicely in the first few kilometers. Elissa ran into some difficulties out on the course but toughed it out to be our top finisher. Another step forward for her - she's finally starting to feel like herself again. Grace also skied with a lot of snap today and picked off a few people to finish close behind Sarah and Courtney.

The men's race was a bit more crowded - the skiers broke into a few big packs that never really spread out. Our guys didn't have great start positions (these were assigned by a points system based on 2 classic races and 1 skate races), and some of them had to burn a lot of energy fighting their way through traffic in the first few kilometers. 10k doesn't give you much time to move up, especially on a rolling course like this one with no long hills to string the pack out, so there was a lot of pressure to position yourself early. Nonetheless, we had some decent finishes. Colman had a great day, finishing 36th for his best college result ever. He was our top skier heading into the last few hundred meters, but Walt put on a surge to pass him and several others just before the line. The two of them were just 20 seconds out of the top 20, which is encouraging.

Skate sprint tomorrow. Should be fun. College skiing is heavily focused on distance racing, and that's what our team trains for, so there's no pressure tomorrow - just a chance for some experience and maybe a little glory.