Bretton Woods Marathon etc.

More racing this past weekend - here's a report from Erin about the Bretton Woods Marathon:

Spencer, Ollie, and I represented Bowdoin at the Bretton Woods Marathon on Saturday. Spencer raced the 50k classic, while Ollie and I raced the 25k. My day began at 4:30am; it was so dark out it was hard to believe I had even gone to sleep. Thankfully, Mr. Eusden was also racing and he drove Spencer and I to Bretton Woods. After a dreadful 5 minutes in the car before the heat kicked in, I rested for an hour or so until it got light enough to eat my breakfast. The early wake up was worth it after seeing the sun rise over the NH mountains. We arrived at the venue and I found out the race directors lost my bib and registration packet. ‘No big deal’ I thought, and they made me a temporary bib. We changed and headed out with Ollie to test klister combinations.

It was a beautiful day for classic skiing: sunny, cold, and FAST snow. Ollie made the wax call, universal klister with a hard wax cover. The 50k was starting first so Spencer scrambled to wax his skis. I covered them with some Super hard wax while he got ready to race. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Boy, he’s cutting it close. I hope he doesn’t miss his start’. He took off and I looked at my watch, 15 minutes to my race start. I threw on some universal and covered it with hard wax, stripped down my warm ups, looked at my watch, 5 minutes to go. I made my way over to the starting area and watched as a group of skiers took off. ‘Hm, is that the touring division?’ I wondered. Then, upon realizing there was no one around and no sign of Ollie, I asked the announcer what race had just started. He responded that it was the 25k classic timed race, oops (karma?). I took off, slightly embarrassed, as I received a pity cheer from a few spectators. I’m going to blame my misunderstanding of the start time on the fact that I didn’t receive the information packet with my bib (not my inability to function pre-race without upperclassmen and Nathan’s support).

Anyways, I skied the entire first kilometer between the tracks, winding in and out of the slower skiers. I finally reached a spot where I could settle down and I realized I had just hammered the first twenty minutes. Feeling good though, I ate a gu (considerably more difficult to do in a classic race than a skate race), drank some gatorade, and continued to pick off racers. Unlike the Rangeley 50k, I had no one to pace off, no clue where I was within the field of racers, and little idea how many k I’d already skied (at one point I passed Marty Hall and got called out for looking at my watch to try and determine how far into the race I was). The course felt relatively flat, lots of double poling, and lots of down-hills ending in 90 or 180 degree turns. At one point I started hoping desperately for an uphill because I was tired of scrambling around all the tight downhill corners (yes, I need to work on my downhill skiing). Plus, the wax was perfect, great kick and glide for climbing.

By about 20k I was completely alone, unfortunately my pace slowed considerably due to the lack of competition, but before I knew it I was approaching the finish line. They announced that I was the first female finisher and I was immediately whisked off for pictures. Ollie dominated the 25k race (he won by 12 minutes!), and we posed together for the race photographer. After, we went back out to watch the 50k finish up. Spencer had a spectacular day. His strength and balance definitely helped him tear up all the double polling and make gains on the tricky down-hills; he finished 5^th overall. I decided to take advantage of the beautiful day (and perhaps my last chance to classic ski this season) and went out to ski the trails for another hour before cleaning my skis and heading to the award/lunch ceremony. Ollie, Spencer, Mr. Eusden, and I all made off with raffle prizes (anyone interested in a men’s swix jacket?) before heading home. Overall a very fun day of racing! Big thanks to Ollie’s wax support and the Eusden family for hosting me Friday night!

A few other race notes from the weekend: first, Marty finished 7th overall in the 25k. Is there an M9 in the country as fast as Marty these days? I would have a hard time believing that judging by the way he's been terrorizing master skiers all over the Northeast this winter. Second, Ollie came back and won the Mt. Washington Cup (15k skate) the day after the marathon. 2 races, 2 wins for Ollie - not bad for a weekend's work. Lastly, Maren and I raced the Sugarloaf Inferno, a race starting on the Sugarloaf downhill trails and ending up at the outdoor center. It was a beautiful day for racing - sunny with nice fast snow. Sadly, both of us missed a turn on the way down the mountain. Maren got back on track quickly and managed to take third or fourth for women (no results posted yet). I took a little more time to find my way back to the course, but I was still able to lock up second-to-last for men ages 30-59. Nonetheless, a wicked fun race and a gorgeous day for skiing. Still plenty of snow on the trails around Maine - looks like we'll have a few more good days before it's all over.

NCAAs

NCAAs wrapped up with the 15/20k skate at Black Mountain today. Denver came away with the win, with Colorado and New Mexico in 2nd and 3rd. UVM gave a noble effort, flirting with a championship for the first 3 events before dropping back to 5th today. Pretty impressive nonetheless, considering that they were 2 skiers short of a full team. Overall, a good week for the East. In classic, 5 women in the top 15 and a win for Juergen Uhl in the men's race. Today, 4 women in the top 10 and 7 men in the top 20. As importantly, only 6 Eastern skiers outside of the top 30 in 4 races. The West is still dominant, but the East held its own. We'll pick up spots for both men and women next year - good news for all of us. Congratulations on some great racing, EISA folks.

Great Bear Chase

More reports of skiers representing Bowdoin in Spring Break races. Olivia and Maren raced the 26k skate at the Great Bear Chase last weekend, taking 1st and 2nd in their age group, respectively, and 3rd and 5th overall. Blair Orr passed along a couple photos - none of Olivia, unfortunately (she's not the one in the bear costume).

Congratulations to Maren on her first race longer than 15k! V2 looks good, too.


Apparently they really mean it when they say "Bear Chase."

NCAA Preview

NCAA Championships start this week at Black Mountain (nordic) and Sunday River (alpine). The GS was supposed to happen today, but it's been postponed until tomorrow due to weather. So - classic and GS tomorrow, slalom on Friday, and skate on Saturday. Check out these video previews by EISA media intern Lincoln Benedict.

My bold predictions are usually wrong, so I won't make any, at least not publicly. I'll be rooting for the Eastern skiers, though, like all good Bowdoin Nordic fans should - the East's results this weekend will partially determine how many spots we get for next year's Championships. Plus, we just want to see our fellow EISA programs do well - that's good for all of us. The Western women's field looks pretty fearsome, but our women are much stronger at the top this year - not sure what to expect from the Central. I'm confident that our men can take back a spot or two - this is a much deeper group than last year, and a shorter classic race (generally the East's weakness) should work in our favor. We'll find out soon enough...

Ski to the Clouds

The Ski to the Clouds is a 10k race up the Mt. Washington Auto Road - 4k on the Great Glen trail system and then 6k of climbing, ending about halfway up the mountain. Kind of like the Stowe Derby in reverse. I've been wanting to do this race for a while now, and last weekend I didn't have a good excuse not to, so I did. Sadly, I couldn't persuade any of our skiers to join me (in part because half of them had done a 50k the day before), so I was the lone Bowdoin representative. With this weight on my shoulders, I found myself shuffling in the icy start tracks on a beautiful Sunday morning, wondering why I'd chosen this as my first and only race of the season. Fortunately, the gun went off shortly thereafter, and things came into focus in a hurry. After a frantic start, I was able to work my way onto the tail end of the lead pack of 10 or 12 guys. The next 4k was some of the most fun I've ever had in a ski race - winding trails with lots of ups and downs and tight corners. So much fun to be skiing this kind of course on fast snow in a pack. The group included a number of elite skiers, so I figured I was in a fool's paradise. Turned out I was right - when we hit the Auto Road it was an absolute jailbreak. The fast guys raged to the front and disappeared - I couldn't believe how quickly they were gone. I eased back and tried to focus on skiing efficiently, figuring I'd pick off the folks who started the climb too hard. This worked, sort of - I passed a few people, but got passed by a few others who hadn't been able to stick with the pack down below. I settled into a pace that felt right, which was good, since I think I only have one gear after a season of minimal training - and the kilometers went by with surprising ease. Toward the end of the race I noticed a guy creeping up on me - I couldn't up my pace without flailing and wasting lots of energy, so I just tried to keep my technique together and hope that relaxed skiing would be enough to hold him off. It was, and I ended up crossing the line in 10th, a little over 7 minutes behind the winners. Nothing too amazing, but I'm content. It was a fun race, and I'll definitely do it again if the schedule allows next year. Thanks to Ryan and Danielle Triffitt '97 for moral support and getting my dry clothes to the finish!

Here's a photo lifted from the Great Glen website. This is the lead pack just after starting the climb - I'm the one at the back getting dropped. I swear that my technique is better than it looks here, but perhaps my skiers would beg to differ...

Rangeley Loppet

Nine intrepid Bowdoin skiers tackled the Rangeley Lakes Loppet on Saturday: Shem, Tom, Nat, Colman, Grace, Erin, Woody, Spencer, and Ollie. We were fortunate to have a beautiful day for the race - an overcast sky quickly turned sunny as the race got underway. There was some solid competition on hand: lots of Dartmouth and Colby skiers, Eli Enman of Rossignol, and tons of master skiers. After a few kilometers, Eli broke away with a group of three college skiers: Eric Packer of Dartmouth and Wyatt Fereday and Matt Briggs of Colby. Colman, Spencer, and Ollie formed a chase pack with a few other Dartmouth skiers - this group stayed together well into the second lap. Ollie took a long pull to help the guys stay strong for the final push - eventually, Colman and Spencer broke away and battled to the finish to take 5th and 6th, respectively, with Ollie in 9th (here's his story).

On the women's side, Erin ended up 7th after an impressive finishing kick. She was in 8th when she passed me with about 5k to go. When I told her that she was only about 40 seconds behind a Dartmouth skier, she groaned something like "Oh God" and promptly tripped and fell. After pulling herself off the ground, she started hammering - by the finish, she'd blown by the Dartmouth girl and a couple of masters. Lots of heart in this girl. She told me that she probably skied the last 5k faster than she's ever skied a 5k before. Hmm - perhaps a little more speed work next year...

Everyone on the team ended up fighting some mini-battles, largely successfully: Tom and Shem each pulled away from Colby skiers in the final kilometers; Woody and Nat raced with separate clusters of master skiers (read Nat's account here); and Grace went back and forth with a Colby and a Dartmouth skier before dropping them both late in the race. Overall, this was one of the best days we've had this season (two years in a row we've thrived at 50k races in March - what does this say about my training plan?) and I'm really proud of the team. Everyone skied smart races, even though all but Colman and Nat were doing their first 50k ever - good pacing and tactics, and a sensible approach to fueling during the race. I think this was a really quality effort and a great learning experience for the skiers - this is the kind of day that leaves people feeling excited about the season and motivated for next year.

A big thanks to Cindy Dixon for hosting and feeding the team on Friday night - a 50k race is hard enough without waking up at 5am to drive across the state!

Wonalancet Wander Report

A few of the ECT folks went over to NH for the Wonalancet Wander last weekend. Here's a report with some photos from Kathy Sanville:

5:45 am meet at field house to pick up skiis. Offfda that's early, especially with an hour time change. Good thing it stopped raining.

Much swearing and messing with combination lock. Manual dexterity of skiers must not be great in the wee hours of the morning.

Field house is toasty. Thinking this is a good deal and significantly better than waxing in a 40 degree garage with the smell of propane. But a little bit creepy so I voiced concern about the potential for dead bodies being stashed in the back. I was promptly told I am a wimp and read too many Sue Grafton murder mysteries for my own good.

Note to self: notice team uses Rode wax, a lot of coaches in the midwest switching to Rode claiming it is not as finnicky as Swix, need to check this out.

6:00 am packed, ready to go, one skier missing. Drive to skiers apartment and throw snowballs at window to wake him up. (alarm clock failure)

6:15 am skier exits apartment eating a bowl of nasty looking stuff - I thought the food was supposed to be really good here.

6:30 on the road heading to New Hampshire - road potholes are more numerous and bigger than Minnesota, did not think this was possible.

Somewhere in New Hampshire where hwy 25 merges with hwy 16 do a bunch of U turns before getting on track.

Somewhere further in New Hampshire do some more U turns. Admit to being totally type A and pass map quest directions (printed off at home in Minnesota) to lead vehicle. I had thought some of the skiers had done the race last year and some others where from New Hamsphire so I figured they knew where they were going.

Contemplate while driving what the back up plan might have been if lost with no directions or map.

8:30 reach destination, gorgeous day, have to take a picture of the mountains.

Totally amazed that anyone would let 19 year old pyromaniacs ( especially the one I know) use blow torches to wax skiis.

10:00 race starts, older ladies first. Interesting race setup where slowest skiers are given a time handicap by age and gender. Didn't seem exactly practical for a 3 lap race on a single track course with no skate lane that was really ice from all the rain the night before. Passing is going to be interesting and there will be a lot of it.

10:15 last wave of skiier starts - the 20 year old guys.

Realize I missed some of the skiers because they are incognito and not wearing the team uniform. Wondering where you actually get fuchsia spandex that zips up the back like a wet suit with a zippered hip pocket no less. Very impressed.

11:00 Many tales of carnage, mass pile ups on down hill turns and the strategic trees located at the apex of each curve on the S turn. But the brownies are good.

11:30 awards ceremony. Master skiers win. This seems highly suspect since said master skiiers also created the handicap spreadsheet. However, awards go down to 60th place and are generally in the food category. Everybody is happy.

12:30 wait 20 minutes for Darmouth bus to unparallel park and turn around on a single track road.

Head for Maine with no mishaps or U turns on the return trip.

Colby Photos

Photos from the weekend, courtesy of Andy Shepard:


Another solid race for Olivia - her best classic finish of the season.

Maren deep in thought at the start line.

Grace showing some pop out of the gate.

Erin has worked hard on her downhill skills recently - getting better every week.

Courtney warming up for her last college classic race ever.

Colman pre-stilts.


Walt battling Dimitri Luthi of Williams in the final stretch...


... and winning by a narrow margin (nice lunge by Dimitri, though).