Race Report

I closed up the shop saturday evening and headed home for some race prep. I had a delightful sauna, managing to get some of the soreness and tightness out of my legs. All week I felt stiff and out of joint, and I'm starting to realize the culprit was having the week break from yoga for the holidays. I've really got to start practicing that stuff at home, but that's a whole other ball of wax. Back to race prep. After the sauna, I gave my boards a couple three layers of LF 7 for my glide wax and prepped the kick zone with two coats of binder. Sarah made me a wonderful pre race meal of cheeseburgers with sprouted grain buns and french fries. I did my best to limit beer consumption and hit the rack early for a good nine hours of sleep. Yesterday morning I rolled out of bed just after seven and made some coffee along with a couple pieces of toast with peanut butter and honey. There was as light snow falling outside when I went up to the bat cave to apply my kick wax just before nine. When I came downstairs fifteen minutes later, there was a light rain falling. I've got no problem biking in the rain, but skiing in the rain really, really sucks. If I'd woken up in Marquette to the same conditions I certainly would have gone ahead and raced. I'd have the drive time, money for the hotel, and race registration money all invested so there's little doubt I would have sucked it up and raced. I had nothing invested yesterday except for a slightly better than normal wax job, but you know what? I can still use the good wax job today or tomorrow. Sarah ran into a neighbor of ours at the grocery store yesterday, and she said that her husband had volunteered at the race. According to neighbor lady, conditions were super sketchy, attendance was low, and there were a lot of crashes (some of them resulting in facial lacerations according to her). Ouch. It looks like my decision to stay home and take care of some long neglected chores was right on the money.

It turns out that all was not lost however, and I still managed to get out skiing. We had planned on skiing at MVSC in the afternoon all along. I was on the fence about that, but JT called around noon and said he was still into it. I said I'd call Matt and James, and he said he'd call Tim. We all showed up about 1:30 and had a good couple of hours messing around in the MVSC. Conditions were not ideal, but it had stopped raining.



There was a very thin layer of breakable crust (pictured below) over about six inches or so of crusty powder. Sometimes you broke through the crust, and sometimes you didn't. Needless to say it made for some interesting skiing, but it sure beat sitting on the couch. That, and I kept my latest ski streak alive. Today will be number eight in a row, and it's supposed to stay good all week so who knows how long I can keep it up. Over and out.