Technical Difficulties

This past Saturday, I skied in the first ever Mount Washington Marathon at Bretton Woods. It was a 50k classic style race consisting of 2, 25 km laps. Being the first time for this event, and due to the timing compared to NCAA's, and two larger marathons straddling it (Rangeley and Sugarloaf), it was not particularly well attended by the faster skiers in the east. However, the course and day were near perfect: bluebird sky and hard, frozen granular tracks.

I pulled in to Bretton Woods with a little over an hour to race time. Being a classic day, this didn't leave a ton of time to figure out the wax, so I moseyed over to the Swix tent to talk with Mike Innis. One of the great things about cross country ski racing is the quality of the folks that make up its community. Mike Innis is one of the nicest guys you will meet and a super helpful technician. I have known Mike since he helped out with the Lenox (MA) ski team when I was in high school. He now is a wax rep for Swix traveling to many races throughout New England, in addition to teaching up at one of the schools nearby Bretton Woods. Mike offered to help me out with waxing, so I took him up on it. This enabled me to go register, change, use the restrooms etc. This was certainly a luxury that I don't often get!

Even with Mike helping me with the wax, I was cutting it close for the start of the race. This was exacerbated by the fact that the start was a few hundred meters away from the nordic center (I only realized this with about 5 minutes to go). My warm up consisted of running to and from my car to drop off my gear and skiing to the line. In fact, Mike finished my skis with maybe 6 or 7 minutes to spare, so I didn't even get to try the wax. Needless to say, I would have been screwed if I were waxing myself.

The race started out well. There were a number of young college bucks that spread things out pretty quickly. There were some familiar faces in the group I was skiing with, so I was feeling pretty comfortable. Somehow at km 4 I managed to break a pole. I think I may have whacked it against a tree, but regardless, I had to ski with one pole (or one normal pole and one stub) for what turned out to be 6 more km. I finally found a spectator willing to give up their pole, but this turned out to be about 20 cm too short and a circa 1991 T grip to boot. I quickly ditched this pole and found Marty Hall's wife with a decent pole. THis pole ended up having a wacky strap that I could not get tight without twisting my hand around the strap. I ended up switching poles with Mike Innis at the lap. Once again, Mike bailed me out.

The remainder of the first lap was spent trying to make something of the race. I probably should have cooled it a bit after getting the pole back or tried to work up with someone, but I was impatient. This led to a pretty bad bonk at 30 km. I managed to recover and finish OK, but it was definitely not my best effort. Despite some rapidly warming temps, and softening tracks, the wax was superb. Really good glide and super kick all day. Thanks to Mike Innis!