Be Careful Out There Folks

There was some ski racing to talk about last weekend, and we'll get to that in a minute, but there was a much more important event in the last week that I wanted to talk about first. I got a phone call on Thursday from my mom that my dad had fallen off the roof while he was up cleaning the chimney. My mom got him onto a sled and pulled him down to the car, and he managed to pull himself up into the trunk of the car so my mom could drive him to the hospital. (Why they didn't call an ambulance is still beyond me). He was in for scans until late Thursday night and in surgery most of Friday. He broke 5 vertebrae in his back and broke a couple of ribs.

The roof in question.

The good news was he didn't appear to have a concussion and he still had full movement and sensation in his limbs. Surgery went well, they removed a lot of bone chips and fused the damaged vertebrae to stabilize his back. Nate, Nichole, and I tried to stop and see him on the way up to Seeley Friday but he wasn't out of observation yet. We stopped Sunday on our way back home and he was already able to move around with help from the nurses. He was released to go home Monday, but still has some pretty significant movement and lifting restrictions for the next several months.

It was hard to find a picture of my dad. Here he is dancing with my sister at a wedding.

I thank God that he came out of this as well as he did. He didn't hit his head at all during the fall. Despite being moved, pulling himself into a car, and being driven over an hour to the hospital with a broken back and no stabilization he suffered no spinal or internal organ damage. There was enough snow on the ground to help cushion some of his fall, but it wasn't cold enough to be dangerous for the time he was laying out there before my mom found him. He was very blessed to come out of this so well. Recovery will still be a long road though, especially since he is used to being active.

On to racing news. Last weekend was the Seeley Hills Classic. This years race field was incredibly deep. Several Olympians and Birkie winners toed the line in the 38k race. Race morning temperatures were hovering just below freezing and there was a light mist, making kick waxing a tricky business. I tried several different temperatures of wax before finding one I was confident would kick.

I got off to a good start, stayed out of trouble on the first couple big downhills, and tucked on the lead pack as the race started to sort itself out. It was only a couple more km in before I started to see a problem however. I was sitting on the back of the lead pack and not working too hard, but they were pulling away significantly on the downhill sections. I could easily stride back up to them for a couple of climbs, but soon decided it would be too tiring to yo-yo off the back so I let them go and skied by myself for about 20km after that.

At the 3/4 mark turn around I could tell the pack ahead was at least a couple minutes up on me, and there were two skiers not too far behind, one by less than a minute. This skier turned out to be Doug Debold, and he caught me with about 7km to go. He had worked hard to catch up and wasn't going to take any turns pulling. I didn't want anyone else to catch us, but I relaxed and tried not to do any more work than necessary with him sitting right on my heels.

I put in a hard surge up the final big hill and tried to push it in with about 1.5 km to go. Doug is a good skier and a fast closer and he managed to get around me and hold me off for the finish. I ended up in 14th, about 11 minutes back from the winners and about 4 minutes ahead of the lead women. Not exactly the race I was hoping for, but considering how tough the field was I'm not too disappointed with it.

As soon as my stomach would take food I gobbled down a few cookies, got in a cooldown ski, and headed to the Sawmill saloon for some post race soup. Then I ventured back out into the mist to find Nichole and join her for the last 5 miles of her 12 mile long run. She was nice enough to keep the pace slow for me, and the weather was great for being out in. My body handled the running very well considering I had just finished racing a couple hours before.

We stayed at the Porath's cabin Saturday night, Bjorn stayed with us as well. I won a game of "Hey! That's my fish" and lost every other game, although I gave Nate a run for his money in the train game. Sunday morning we met a bunch of other skiers and got in a nice 2 hour skate ski from OO up to the 9k feed station and back. The Birkie tour was going on and there were a lot of people out enjoying the beautiful weather.

Next weekend is the Balsam Vinterfest as long as snow conditions hold. Things continue to be quite warm here, so we'll see what happens. It already sounds like the City of Lakes Loppet in 2 weeks may be a lake race, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mora the weekend after is as well.

Have a great week readers, and stay safe!