Quarry Road Training and Racing

Quite an eventful week for us!  After a magical start to the winter, we got hit with a nasty January thaw last week.  Pineland lost a ton of snow and had to shut down for a couple days.  This was frustrating, but fortunately we were prepared - the day before the thaw hit, we'd just done a session on mental strength with sports psychologist Tiff Jones.  There was a challenging team exercise combining memory and movement - it was fun and a bit nerve-wracking watching the skiers figure it out, but they did a great job.

While Pineland was closed we took a day trip up to Quarry Road.  This worked out just fine, since we had the Quarry Road Eastern Cup races coming up - nice chance to preview the courses.  The night before the races, we got together at the Alsobrook house for cookies, Pictionary, and 21st birthday well-wishes for Sam.  Three small children were very excited to hang out with the skiers, and there was much showing off.

Saturday's race was a skate sprint.  The refrozen snow was nice and fast - perfect for sprinting.  The team looked really sharp in the qualifier, but we didn't know exactly how they'd fared because the timing got messed up and the posted results were constantly changing.  It was pretty frustrating to sit and wait through lengthy delays and uncertainty, but once again our skiers used their recently honed mental strength skills to roll with the situation.  When everything finally came into focus, we had several people advancing to the heats - Hannah (4th), Mac (6th), and Sean (22nd) made the open heats, with Ian, Russell, and Lily just outside in the junior heats.  Hannah absolutely dominated her first 2 heats and won an exciting battle in the finals to take the overall victory!  Pretty sure that's the first time we've ever had a skier win an Eastern Cup - quite an accomplishment with a very strong field full of top juniors and college skiers.  Mac advanced to the semis and narrowly missed the finals.  There was a very short turnaround between the semis and the B final, and as the racers started off the line it was clear that people were fighting fatigue.  Mac was up to the task, though - he got off to a good start, stuck with the leader in 2nd, and pulled ahead in the final stretch to take the win and 7th overall - great tactics, and a very encouraging sign of fitness to be able to rebound so quickly after the semis.  After waiting patiently for hours and hours, our junior qualifiers toed the line with darkness approaching.  Russell went huge at the start and pulled away to win his first heat.  There was a little excitement before the finals because someone had taken his skis by mistake - he ended up racing on a pair of our test skis.  These had formerly belonged to Walt Shepard '10, which means they were meticulously cared for and still very fast despite their advanced age, much like Walt.  Russell hung tough on his borrowed skis to take 3rd overall for the junior heats, with Ian 11th and Lily 10th.  A VERY long but fun and successful day.

The next morning was a 10/15k classic mass start.  Conditions were pretty straightfoward - abrasive klister skiing - but any time klister is involved there's going to be some scrambling, especially with a mass start and especially with so many people to wax for.  Fortunately, former Bowdoin parent John Eldridge, a local master skier and occasional coach, joined us for the day as our volunteer wax tech.  John's help proved to be crucial - we were able to do some good testing and get the women's skis dialed in on time.  Hannah was on fire and pulled away for a commanding lead late in the race, but she had a dramatic crash on a sweeping downhill turn and went tumbling off the course.  She did a great job of recovering and getting back into the race to salvage 4th.  This was disappointing, obviously, but she was more or less unhurt, and it was really encouraging to see her skiing so well for the second day in a row - definitely looking ready for prime time.  The other women were solid and put up strong races - Ellie even came away thinking she might like classic skiing after all!  Things got frantic in the waxing tent before the men's race, but fortunately we had the cool head and skilled hands of Jake Adicoff available to bail us out, and we got everyone to the start on time.  The men's race was just as chaotic as the women's, with lots of crashes on the technical turns.  Most of our guys stayed out of trouble, and the whole group looked strong, with Sean leading the way in 12th behind a cluster of top college skiers.  The veterans were clearly a bit tired in this race, but the youngsters picked up the slack, with Christian, Orion, and Ian showing great energy and putting themselves right in the mix.  Right now the men's team has a level of depth that we've never enjoyed before - it's going to be fun watching these guys push each other all season.

RESULTS

Overall, two very good races and a great tune up for the upcoming carnivals.  The weekend wasn't without cost - like every team, we had our share of crashes, resulting in some injuries and broken gear.  We'll dial it back a bit in the coming days and hopefully get everyone healthy soon.  Many thanks to John for choosing to spend his Sunday with us - we had good skis today, and we couldn't have done it without him.  Same goes for Jake - gold star for him.  Looking forward to the St. Lawrence Carnival this weekend!