Social Hour

Well, if the weather today is any indication ski season is fast fading in the rear view mirror. I'm hoping that snow holds up well enough at Hyland for the Slush Rush race on Saturday, but other than that I'm mostly switched over to running mode. Last week still provided a lot of great skiing though. Wednesday night Vakava practice continued the trend of cold Wednesdays, so I opted to ignore the email calling for skate skis and take advantage of the last night of rock solid tracks and bomber kick. The reduced crowds at Hyland post-Birkie also meant that the tracks were in great shape and I was able to ride through downhill corners that would have been washed out earlier in the season.

Thursday provided another great opportunity for some late season classic skiing. Groomer Tom set tracks in the Carleton Arboretum and a handful of us met up for some nighttime skiing under the full moon. It was bright enough out that I wasn't using my headlamp for most of the ski. Unfortunately under moonlight patches of dirt and shadows can often be hard to tell apart, and I took a bit of a spill on one downhill. This is normally not a big deal, just a $0.25 fee to the biff pot (the biff pot is a "feature" of being a Team Nichole athlete where if a runner falls while out running they have to pay a dollar, and at some point that money will be used to buy something fun for the team. Since skiing tends to have a greater incidence of falling than running we decided the cost for falling on skis would be less). This time however I fell on my pole just right and snapped it in half. This made me pretty sad, both my classic and skate poles are red Swix Star poles that I've had for quite a few years. I first tried out the red stars at the West Yellowstone ski demo, probably way back in 2007 or so, and I was so stunned by how much better they were than the poles I had been using that I bought a pair as soon as I got back to Minnesota.

I'll miss you red star

This loss prompted a trip up to Finn Sisu on Friday after work. Devin was working and it was great to catch up to him as he helped me pick out a replacement pole. I ended up with a very nice Rex pole, so I will be sporting mismatched poles for a while. I also ended up with a pair of Atomic Skintec demo skis to try out. Heading up to St. Paul also gave me a chance to meet a friend and check out Foxy Flafel, a food truck that just recently expanded into a full restaurant. From there I continued North to my parents to check in on their house while they are on vacation. I fed the dog and cattle and got to bed early to get ready for an action packed weekend.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early for a trip back to the cities to help out with the Midwest Junior Championship races. Saturday there were a number of classic races and I was a course marshal for a few of the races before jumping in on the age gap relay races. It was awesome seeing so many kids out racing, having fun, trying hard, and enjoying the snow. I was also amused by how little speed/momentum the kids had on the steep downhills. Some of the fast corners that many adult skiers struggle with were no sweat for these kiddos, they could dance right around them.

The way these age gap relay races work is that an adult is paired up with a youth skier and each skier gets to race twice, alternating the adult and youth skier. Since there are different races for different age groups I decided why race just once when I can race 3 times, so I had Coach Jallie find me youth racers for the U16, U14, and U12 races.

Some kids getting ready to race - Photo: Craig Lovold

I didn't really warm up or check out the course well before the race, and I was caught by surprise a couple times when the snow suddenly changed speeds, so I ended up falling twice in my first leg. Not a very impressive showing, but I had a speedy partner, so we stayed in the mix. My partner William just missed 2nd place in a sprint finish. I managed to stay on my feet for the next race, and my partner Timothy and I ended up 5th in a very competitive U14 race. For the final race I could tell I was starting to tire, but the field was a bit less competitive by this point, so I was able to easily move up through the pack on my legs and Nico and I ended up third in the U12 race.

A few friends also showed up to race or just to ski, so after the racing was done we went out and skied a few laps because we all knew the snow would probably not be around for much longer. I swapped skis with Jeff for a while and his skis were comically slow. Maybe part of the problem is that I outweigh him by 20 lbs, so I'm sure I was bottoming out his skis, but I was double poling down hills just to keep up with the other skiers, some of whom were snowplowing. I stayed on his skis most of the time he skied with us so that paces were a bit more even. Eva and I went out for a couple more laps after Jeff took off, and it was a welcome relief to be back on the skintecs, which were still gliding quite well.

I was fairly tired after an early morning and a lot of fast and furious racing, but I decided to stop by Jeff's house and join him for a short run and some supper before heading back North to check on the cattle. Sunday I made my way back down to Northfield to join a good sized running crew for a long run. Starting out there were 7 runners, 2 dogs, and a baby in a stroller. We had runners doing a variety of distances, so every few miles we would drop off a couple more runners and head back out. By the end it was just Jeff and I running along singing Disney songs and Marco probably wondering what kind of crazy people he was running with. Counting the run to/from the Porath's I ended up with 17 miles for the day, a decent long run with Boston only 6 weeks away. This week I start back in to tempo runs and bike commuting, and probably say goodbye to skiing until next fall.