That was fun. Apart from a little transportation glitch* that led to the relatively minor problem of missing my start by a minute, the City of Lakes Loppet classic race could not have gone better. Okay, I might have skied faster – and will try, next year.
In brief, I started pretty well, maintained a solid pace throughout the race, did well on the uphills (thanks to a good wax job), and saved enough to be able to chase down a bunch of racers in the last 5k, which is mostly fast, flat skiing over a couple of lakes. I finished, officially, in 1:47:10, which is well under the guesstimate I extrapolated from training times and the previous two years’ races in the longer freestyle event. My finish was good for 74th out of the 233 male skiers – upper third, baby, and almost a half hour ahead of the average.
More than those particulars, I felt good through the whole race: decently strong, under control, and most importantly able to accelerate as needed. All those uphill double-pole interval workouts paid off! In addition to making me feel like I did a halfway good job training for the race, this good experience inclines me to think that with more and better training next year (and the luck to avoid getting sick the week before the race), I should be able to cut quite a bit of time off in next year’s race – only 360-some days away!
So, the race itself…
The transportation problems meant that I arrived at the race late, which in turn meant I had to skip any warmup except running up to the start pen. (I also didn’t have time to find and say “hi” to my e-friends. Bah!) I threw my bag into the pile that would be carried to the finish, found a way into the pen, slapped on my skis, fastened my pole straps, hit my stopwatch, and started skiing. If I’d made it into my assigned second wave, I’d have had roughly a third less traffic ahead of me, but the course was such that passing was easy, whether on the infrequent flats in the first half of the race or, better, on either the uphills or the downhills. I probably passed fifty people, altogether, simply because I descended in a tuck while they stood up, and half that many because I stepped through turns instead of snowplowing.
My wax job helped, too. The conditions were hardly sketchy – day-old but fine snow, air temps ranging from about 15° to 20°F – but I still had the right glide and kick waxes on my skis, and it was immensely heartening, especially in the first third of the race, on a hilly golf course, to kick better than a lot of people going uphill and to outglide almost everyone going downhill. Visual proof (as shot by a guy who skied the race with a camera mounted on his head!): that’s me on the left, bib #138:
Anyhow, I picked off people like crazy over the first 5k, and more slowly but steadily over the next 5k. All that’s not to say there weren’t a couple unfortunate moments. Back-of-the-pack racers tend to be terrible descenders, and while I avoided several actual spills, I ended up crashing hard on my shoulder after a woman did a funky little 270° thingy – but didn’t actually fall! – ahead of me. I bounced back up and used the adrenaline to catch and drop her right away (the better to prevent another such mishap).
A little bit later, the course flattened and the traffic thinned out, and I got into a nice groove of just skiing along, mostly in a steady double-pole that I swapped every now and then for a few minutes of striding. There were still enough people in front that I could pick out particular racers to chase, which helped immensely with motivation and keeping my speed up. I don’t think anyone caught me from behind, except for one guy whom I passed but who caught me back a k or so later and wound up finishing just ahead of me.
The emptier trails also gave me a chance to refuel with a few hits from my water bottle and a delicious espresso energy gel. Gel? What gel? Where the hell were my gels? They weren’t dangling carbohydratally from my drink belt when I reached for them, about an hour into the race, so I can only assume that they fell off when I crashed. Oh well. I took some water at the aid stations and, with about twenty minutes to go, downed a few ounces of sweet, sweet Coca-Cola.
That elixir did wonders. I had started feeling just a little peaked around then – maybe 1:20 into the race – and found I didn’t have the oomph to close down the gaps to a couple guys who were maybe 30 seconds up the trail and visibly skiing no faster than I was. But within a couple minutes of sucking down the Coke, I felt good enough that I could pretend to hammered my double-pole for two minutes, bringing me up to and then past both of those guys. As I went through, rather enjoying the slippery lake ice underneath me, I realized that we were already approaching the finish line. Herringboning up the rise off the lake, I saw that two other guys whom I’d written off were right there, just starting the straightaway to the finish, which is a gentle but long uphill. The snow here is always deep, sugary goop, but my DP continued to work, and I passed both of them well before the line – satisfyingly capping off a pretty decent race.
What’ll be even more satisfying next year is going ten or fifteen minutes faster, which would put me in the top fifty or so. It’s pretty obvious how do do that – more long skis of 2:30 or more, more longer intervals of 4 minutes or more, and better classic technique. It’ll be fun trying to improve on my time and place next year!
* The transportation glitch was simple, but annoying: too few shuttle buses running between the remote parking lot and the race start (which is too compact a place to have enough parking). The last two years, I’ve parked and walked right onto a bus. This year, I waited for a good twenty minutes, and finally boarded about 25 minutes before my race was supposed to start. This meant I had no time to spare for a warmup – or to stop at the Porta Potties – and that I even missed my wave, and thus started a minute later than my assigned time. Thank god I’d waxed the night before…
Ummm….how do you really miss the wax for 15-20 degrees and new snow?
I’m not sure, but there were plenty of people who were slipping and sliding on even the shortest hills. Fishscales, maybe?