All klister, all the time last weekend - three classic days in a row! We made up for our double skate at Bates with a double classic at the Harvard Carnival in Dublin, NH. Warm weather and a little rain left us with spring conditions on Friday - a great chance to break out all the foul runny klisters gathering dust at the bottom of the box. Aggie popped a great race on her home course, finishing 18th - a personal best for classic. Morgan was 27th, and Carson (24) and Zach (29) led the men. Respectable, but not our best day - the crew was pretty tired. This time of year is always a bit tough for us - school is piling up, and it's hard to predict what we'll get on race day. Nonetheless, a good effort by everyone, and spirits were high for relay day (and Carni Crush) on Saturday. An overnight freeze stabilized the tracks and made for nice fast skiing. The problem with speed is that you can have too much of it, and that was basically the story of our relay day - lots of crashes on technical downhills! All four of our teams had at least one fall on the opening leg, so we were basically chasing hard all day instead of skiing in the pack. One or two more crashes in subsequent legs left us a bit further back than we should have been - our women were 9th and 10th, and the men were 9th and 18th. The good news was that everyone skied really well when they were upright! In particular, Adam and Zach had excellent legs for the men, and Emma's split was one of the fastest of the third leg. I was really proud of the team for rallying after a tough week and a low energy race on Friday. For the overall nordic scoring, we finished tied with Williams for 6th - a pretty good showing for an off weekend! The skiers capped off a fun race with some Carni Crush antics - something to do with pink cowboy hats and lariats - and a good time was had by all. Many thanks to Holly and Sean Macy for hosting the women's team and making dinner for the whole team both nights - this was an amazing gift to our team! Holly and fellow Dublin XC coach Kathy Maddock also helped us with wax testing, with John working on applications both days. This was the least stressful klister weekend I've ever had, and Saturday's skis in particular were some of the best we've had in a long while - all thanks to our first rate wax team!
We kept the klister train rolling on Sunday, with several skiers heading up to the Flying Moose Classic 25k in Bethel. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and a big crowd turned out for the race. Our skiers put on a good show - Ingrid, Francie, and Mia swept the podium, with Michael 4th and Luke 5th for men. We ran into all sorts of Maine skiing friends at the race, including men's winner Tyler DeAngelis '15 and 6th place finisher Jackson Bloch '15. A really fun event to close out a busy weekend. Looking forward to the Williams Carnival and the Dublin Eastern Cup next!
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