Racing
Race One: Chestnut Valley Freestyle
Jan 5, 2002

The big question: When training's over and the racing begins, how will I do? Now we know…

The Chestnut Valley Freestyle race in Harbor Springs turned out to be the first race in Michigan. All previous races were canceled because of marginal snow conditions. Harbor Springs was blessed with tons of snow - 92" in the days immediately following Christmas.

The Course.
The racecourse follows trails groomed by Nubs Nob. Nubs grooms trails around their own downhill site, plus has an arrangement with Chestnut Valley Golf Course for additional kilometers. The trail at its narrowest allowed two skiers to skate side by side, even up hills. Originally scheduled as an 11K race, the distance was increased to about 13K.

At it's widest, three skiers could skate beside each other. The track was not too hard, not too soft. Along the edges, and in the very center, racers with aero pole tips (like me) found their poles sinking quite deep into the trail. Skiing on one side of the trail, or the other, or dead center solved the problem - poles missed the soft sections. (I had almost changed to poles with bigger baskets before the race began but decided I could deal with the soft spots).

The course was, in a word, hilly. Many of the hills were climb, plateau, climb, plateau. Downhills were screamers, some with fast corners. All the corners could be skied without snowplowing for the more experienced skiers - jump to the outside before hitting the corner, then skate / parallel turn through the inside of the corner. Later skiers probably had scraped off hard pack and a bank of snow to deal with.

Midway through the course, the trail exits the woods at the top of Nubs Nob and travels down the side of an alpine trail, a fast and long straightaway followed by a turn to the left, another straightaway, then a hard right turn back into the woods. Bamboo poles very well separated alpine and Nordic skiers. I did snowplow this section of trail - In my oxygen-deprived state, I couldn't judge how hard the first left turn was going to be, and so did a light snowplow to control my speed. (Next year, I'll tuck that first section - I think a quick speed-control move at the last moment would have worked, at least in these conditions).

The course was generally uphill for the first two or three kilometers, then up and down, then it returned on much of the same trail it started on. That meant mostly downhill to the finish. That was fun! My wax was fast!

The Wax.
I decide to move to Toko waxes this year. Swix was always changing their wax line, and their waxes are more complicated. I wanted a simpler system. I also like Toko's online Wax Coach better than Swix's equivalent.

The previous time I'd been out skiing, I had Toko Dibloc Low Fluoro grey Molybdenum, scraped and brushed, covered with Toko Dibloc High Fluoro red, scraped and brushed. For the race, I put on one layer of Toko Dibloc High Fluoro yellow, scraped and brushed with a brass brush. I did not change the structure - the Rossi X-ium's I used have a general stone ground pattern that I'm planning on keeping.

The Race.
I started in the second row of the start line - I knew I wasn't going to win the race. I double-poled the first 200 yards and easily kept up with or did better than people who were attempting to skate within the confines of the pack. I was well positioned at the tail of the lead group as the first separation began to appear in the pack. By the end of the second kilometer, I had dropping off the back - I simply couldn't climb as well. I still passed a couple people who went out too fast, and was passed by several who hadn't gone out fast enough. Mark Schmude passed me and I started drafting behind him. We picked up another skier, then passed Jon Morgan who jumped on the end. Mark was tentative on the first couple downhills - no tuck, cautious approach - so on the first steeper, longer, curve downhill I tucked and skated around him. The strategy: gain ground on the downhills and make my rivals work hard on the uphills to catch me.

The strategy worked. We dropped the third skier. Mark and John always caught up to me on the uphills. But they didn't pass! I started feeling better a bit later in the race and was able to occasionally make it difficult for anyone to catch me on the uphills. (Well, at least I thought so - Mark said he didn't really have any problems catching up on the uphills). I think on the couple of occasions I V2'd the uphill, I actually pulled away for a short time. I was tired enough that I had to revert to a diagonal skate for a couple short, steep hills.

By the last couple kilometers, no one was directly on my tail. I pushed very hard on the downhills - low tucks, skating without poles, V1-alternate or V2 on the flats, V2 up short inclines, fast turnover V1 on the steeper ones - and was able to hold off any attack to the finish. I finished 25th overall in 44:12. (The winner: Milan Baic in 37:42. Race results).

So what does this tell me about my training. Four years ago when I last raced, I used to hold on to the lead pack for about the same amount of time, used to do better than others on the downhills, and used to do worse on the uphills. Now I'm four years older, but roughly in the same place in the pack - not bad. More positive, I was doing better in the uphills at the end of the race than I had in previous years.

I'll update with article with times and places as soon as I get a copy - I have no idea where I placed...