Middlebury Carnival 2017

Middlebury Carnival was one of our best so far!  Our team always really enjoys this carnival - nice venue, fun course, great lodging at the Midd Inn, and of course wonderful team dinners at the Groves house.  So all this positive energy must have added up to give us a boost last weekend.  The women were sharp in the 15k skate.  Hannah hung onto the lead pack until the final couple kilometers when things broke up, ending in 8th.  Ellie eased into the first couple k and then something clicked - she got a look on her face that I've seen in a few of her best races, and from there on she started passing people left and right to finish in 36th.  Rachel scored a big PR in 53rd, including a great finishing push to pick up one more place in the final few hundred meters.  It was particularly great to see these two put up great races, because this was their last race of the season - they're both headed to New Zealand for a semester abroad.  Very satisfying way to finish.  The men followed up with a great 20k performance.  Just like our last mass start in Jackson, they started out fairly conservatively.  Mac and Christian started in the middle of the pack - around halfway they caught up to Sean, with Orion close behind, and they worked their way up in a little cluster to finish with 3 in the top 25 - Mac 20th, Christian 23rd, and Sean 24th, with Orion not far back in 34th.  Christian has been really consistent all season, with several finishes in the 30s, but I knew he had a bigger race waiting to come out, and it was great to see him smash the top 30 barrier so decisively.  We now have 9 skiers who have posted top 30 finishes this season!  I think our previous best was 5, so this is a level of depth that we've never seen before - exciting stuff.

After the usual goofy team activities in the Porter Mansion that evening, the team woke up energized and ready to crush the classic sprint relay on a beautiful sunny morning.  Hannah got off to a hot start for our first team, and we were all super stoked to see her burst out of the woods with a gap on the pack - first time we've ever led a relay!  Asking a first-year to take over in the lead with all the top teams chasing is a tall order, but Lily is a tough customer.  She battled hard and stayed in contact with the skiers who passed her - only Dartmouth's first team got away.  The next four legs played out in a similar fashion - a blistering leg from Hannah to jump us up into second and then gritty skiing from Lily to keep us in contention.  UNH and the second Dartmouth team were able to slip past Lily in the last few hundred meters, but she finished right on their heels and held off the other teams to lock up a 4th place finish!  This was our second best relay finish ever - a real thrill to see our team contending with the best in the league.  Fiona and Katja were solid as well and hung in there with several of the other second and third teams - good skiing by the whole group.  Temps warmed up quickly for the men's race, which made for a bit of a mess - the snow became too warm and wet for hard wax, but not transformed enough for klister.  We ran out of time to test (things were changing too fast to keep up with anyway), so we threw out our best guess and hoped for good luck.  Sean's skis weren't great, but he was right in the thick of it when he came out of the woods - until his klister caught.  He crashed, broke a pole, and got tangled up with another skier - by the time he got free and tagged off to Mac, we'd lost a ton of time.  Double poling on skate skis, Mac put up some fast times, and Sean kept fighting despite variable skis - they were able to hold off Colby's top team and finish a solid 12th.  Meanwhile, Jake and Sam were skiing well and staying right with our first team, until Sam broke a pole on his final lap.  A broken pole is never a good thing, but when you're double poling on skate skis it's a rather huge problem.  Sam showed good fire grinding it out with one pole, but this bit of misfortune dropped them way back.  By the time Christian and Orion went out in the second heat, we'd had time to identify a more workable klister, but not enough time to actually put it on anyone's skis, so we ended up putting Orion on my test skis (Christian was double poling anyway).  They weren't super fast, but they kicked well and stayed free, and these guys were able to have a solid race with no crashes.  Overall a good day despite frustrations with the men's waxing situation - I took some small comfort from seeing that the other coaches were having similar challenges.

Many thanks to Meg and Laurie Groves for hosting us for dinner two nights in a row (and for some of these great photos)!  Thanks also to Deb Miller for tons of photos, and to all the parents who came out to support us.  Looking forward to finishing the regular season strong this weekend at Black Mountain.  It's not only the Regional Championships, but also the 11th Annual Broomhall Cup - can't wait!