Rangeley and the Last Day

Last Saturday saw a small but hardy crew make the journey up to Rangeley for what has become an end-of-season Bowdoin Nordic tradition: the Rangeley Lakes Loppet. Alec, Spencer, Wilson, Riley, Rainer, and Tim all raced the 50k. The day started out suprisingly cold and windy, but shortly after the start things began to warm up and the snow got decently fast. The pace was relaxed, to say the least, in the early kilometers, and several skiers stayed with the lead pack for a long time, including Spencer, Wilson, and Tim. Eventually, Tim went to the front and started pushing the pace a bit, which thinned things out somewhat, but there was still a group of 8 or 9 skiers on the train by the lap. Gradually, people started falling off the back, including Wilson and Tim, but Spencer stayed with the lead group. Finally, master skier Phil Lawson showed the youngsters who was boss, making a big move with about 8k to go and breaking up the pack on a series of hard climbs. I was sad to see Spencer get dropped, but on the other hand it's always good for the college boys to get an occasional reminder that the wily veterans can still get it done. Meanwhile, Tim used the hills to move up, and the two of them ended up skiing the last few kilometers with John Dixon from Colby. Fortunately, they both pulled away from John before the final sprint, when, unsurprisingly, Spencer outkicked Tim to lock up a respectable 5th place finish. It wasn't Spencer's best day, but it was a pretty impressive effort considering that he was fighting a bad cold and probably shouldn't have been racing (with carnivals over, he figured he might as well go for it). Wilson was not far behind, gutting out an 8th place finish that left him wrecked for the next couple days (seems like he was in the process of falling victim to the same thing Spencer had, but on steroids). Alec had the race of the day - he finished 11th in hist first-ever 50k. This was probably his best race of the season - he skied smoothly throughout the race and outlasted a number of good skiers. Riley ran a bit low on fuel, but hung in there to finish 19th, while Rainer battled his way to 49th - this was the first 50k for both of them as well. All told, a great effort by all of our guys, and a very fun and challenging day.

Results

With Rangeley in the books, we rallied for one final team practice on Sunday - a victory lap of sorts. After a nice easy ski, we finished with a great game of Polasky Ball - the team's PB skills have improved remarkably since camp, which was nice to see. And with that, our season is officially over. Lots more individual post-season racing is in the works for March, including James at JNs (reports to follow soon), but the 2010-11 edition of Bowdoin Nordic is now part of history.