VT Eastern Cup Report

Here's a brief report from Nat on last weekend's Eastern Cup races:

Before bogging you down with the tedium of a race report, I first offer you this week's Eastern Cup Index (the term Eastern Cup Index is trademarked by Bowdoin Nordic):

Hours the Eastern Cup Team (ECT) spent in the van this weekend: 11
Hours each ECT member spent racing this weekend, on average: about 1
Number of waxes the ECT tested at Vermont Academy on Sunday: 6-7
Number that got both kick and glide: 0
Number of teams that used hairies: at least 2
Number of snow tires on the rental van: 0
Number of hours the ECT spent pushing the rental van around in the snow: about 1
Cumulative number of racers that Bowdoin skiers beat in Eastern Cup races, despite all of these challenges: 309

Amidst fierce snow showers on Friday afternoon, the Bowdoin Eastern Cup team departed the College for a weekend of racing at Prospect Mountain and Vermont Academy. An hour into the drive, the van's windshield wipers began working; an hour after that it stopped snowing; and two hours after that, we arrived at the Putney School in Putney, Vermont.
Having graduated from Putney in 2005, I fearlessly found changing rooms for the team and we set out on a pre-race ski. After some good pick-ups and threshholds, we cooled down with a powder-8 competition in the pristine powder adorning Putney's fields, with Nick and I the winners by a landslide. We followed a hearty dinner at the Putney Diner with some waxing, then bed.

Saturday was an excellent day for a skate race at Prospect--warm and overcast, with surprisingly firm skating tracks (firm and Prospect Mountain are words that very seldom accompany each other). The going was sticky on our rock skis, but much better when testing the race boards. The men raced first, at 11:00. A field of nearly 100 hungry athletes lined up for what was sure to be a hectic mass-start, and it was on. Bowers was taken out by a rogue high school racer, but fought on, and apparently Jeff exacted revenge on the upstart.
When the dust settled, the Bowdoin men had taken 42nd, 70th, 77th, and 91st in a tough field.
Grace raced next. Her start was was considerably less chaotic, and two laps later, Grace crossed the line in 57th, besting a few Colby and Bates skiers.

With Jeff Bush's mom, brother, and brother's girlfriend (Kathy, Matt, and Hannah) in attendance, we were treated to chili that seriously rivaled the stuff my mom served the team back in the fall. I personally had two huge bowls, as well as a few pieces of some amazing pumpkin bread. After everyone had eaten, we started our way back to Putney as a mid-day blizzard set in, making a brief stop for some homemade cider donuts at a sugarhouse on the way back. Oh yeah, and both Nick and Jeff's brother caught mice INSIDE the Prospect lodge--yet another reason why that place sucks (firm trails notwithstanding).

Amazingly, our snow-tireless van conquered the hill up to Putney, and we drove down the back side to the hostel before settling in for a nap. Around 4:30, everyone but Nick piled into the van again to drive back up to the school to wax our. Nick planned to meet us at the wax room after a jog to clean out his legs.

With me fearlessly at the helm, the van made all the way out of the driveway and at least 20 yards up the hill before pathetically drifting backwards into a snowbank. After a lot of pushing, some sand from a bemused pickup-truck driver, and no help whatsoever from Nick, we managed to turn the van around and drive the 20 yards back to the beginning of the driveway--which is about 200 yards of gentle uphill. With intensive thought and engineering, the Nick-less team devised a strategy involving spinning the tires until they kicked up a strip of dirt (SoD), backing up onto the SoD, and using the SoD as a launching pad to gain speed and momentum. Just as the van rolled into its parking space, Nick conveniently reappeared, refreshed from an easy jaunt up the hill.

I'll spare you all the gory details of our quest for dinner, but suffice to say that two hikes up the hill later, Kathy met Matt Bowers at the top of the hill with the ingredients for a delicious dinner, and there was much rejoicing. Jeff went down to the Putney Inn for the night, while the rest of the team waxed on the kitchen table, doing our best to keep the fluoros distinct from the food.
Sunday morning we awoke to a plowed driveway. With a stop to pick up Jeff at the Putney Inn, we cruised on up to Vermont Academy for a 10k/5k classic. Given all the new snow, we were all but assured of perfect, extra blue conditions, and we arrived with just over an hour before Grace's start--plenty of time for the guys to pick the right hardwax while Grace warmed up.
The first indication that things might not be going as planned was the brief but fierce snow that kicked up as we unpacked that van. As I noticed blow torches and klister boxes on other teams' benches, I started to wonder if things might not be as simple as we thought. The bottom line is that Sunday would have been a perfect day for waxless skis. With high humidity, intermittent snow squalls, and warm temperatures, the tracks were going from powdery to icy and back again quicker than coaches could say "uh-oh." Grace ended up racing on silver covered with yellow klister, and in spite of the crappy wax AND breaking a pole still fought to 72nd place.
Most of the men opted for a different tack. Shem went for Toko orange klister, which was underwhelming, but the rest of us opted for VR70. The 70 kicked like Jackie Chan outside the track, but also attracted clumps of powder like honey attracts Winnie the Pooh. This made for tough going over the tops of hills, turning the race into more of cross-country running event. The men pulled off 47th, 53rd, 58th, 78th, and 83rd.

Kathy pulled through again for us with some delicious sandwiches and cookies. After consuming these with gusto, we set out on the final leg of our journey, which turned out to be no less epic that the rest of the trip, given that we had to conquer the third snowstorm of the weekend. Both Jeff and I kept us on the road, though, and we pulled into Bowdoin in time for a delicious dinner at Thorne. And if you made it all the way to the end of this ridiculous race report, let me know--I'll send you a medal...