The winter of abbreviated races continues. The Mora Vasaloppet did not have enough snow to run on it's normal course last weekend. Actually there was really no snow at all, the Vasaloppet has an ice grinder they ran around Mora lake to chew up the ice into a snow like consistency. The ice grinder has saved their race a few times, and this year it allowed them to build a pretty fun course. Having the race right in town on Mora lake instead of on the much larger Knife lake meant more loops and shorter races, but it made everything super convenient. Instead of busing out to a lake in the middle of nowhere we could park right in town, walk to bib pickup, to the race start, and to the party tent afterwards. I think this was a great move by the organizers, and I would be fully in favor of a race that started and finished in Mora in the future. Point to point races are exciting, but it is hard to beat the convenience of having all your warmups and everything waiting right where you left them and not needing to deal with the hassle of bag drop.
The race itself went by very quickly. The 58k was shortened to 17k, 5 laps around the lake. Matt took the race out hard and things strung out very quickly. I was not able to hold on after we turned the corner out of the wind and settled into 7th place. There was a group of 2 skiers a bit ahead of me, but every time I would get close they would put in a surge to keep me from catching on, so I skied almost the entire race alone. I was able to mentally keep up a good pace by keeping the two guys ahead in sight, and held on to 7th place.
Since the race location and distances were changed Erik and Elspeth came up with the idea of doing multiple races to get a longer day of skiing in. They pitched this idea to one of the race organizers, and the Vasaloppet board actually took them up on it and added an extra race category recognizing people who did 2 or 3 races. I was hoping to place well in the 17k, so I did not do the classic race before it, but I did enter the 10k race after. So I had a quick 15 minute turnaround from finishing one race to starting the next. I got some blueberry soup and a couple cookies for quick energy and kept moving around so my muscles didn't get too cooled off.
The 35k race went out at a more sane pace, but I didn't quite have the punch to go with the lead group when they split off. It would have been fun to ski with the leaders because Vakava was well represented, with Nate and Paul being 2 of the 4 skiers. Hans and I were in the second group though, so Vakava had the front of the race well stacked. I was the strongest skier in my group, so I tried to make others do the work into the wind and took most of my pulls on the tail wind sections. On the final lap I put in a hard surge around a corner with about 3/4 of a km to go and just kept it floored all the way in. I wasn't able to get much of a gap, but it was enough to keep anyone from getting right in my draft, so I held on for 5th place.
The age group prizes at Mora are cool looking dala horses hand made in Sweden. I have many friends with a large collection of horses, but I just won my first one last year. I was third in my age group this year, so thought I would be getting a horse, but they changed from 5 year to 10 year age groups, and to make it more cruel the age group I was in was 25-34, so I would have needed to place 4th in the 17k to get a horse. Oh well, that is good motivation to train and race hard for another year to hopefully add to my stable.
The Minnesota Finlandia was supposed to be this weekend, but Bemidji is short on snow, so it sounds like that event is not going to happen. A group of people might be headed over to Wisconsin for the Hinder Binder instead, so I could get to try out another new race this year. I might also take a weekend off of racing to rest up for the Birkie, which is only a week and a half away.
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