Pre-Birkie Yesterday

Okay, my website was down all morning and now I’m somewhat lacking any motivation to post. I just got back from a nice 1/2 hour walk in the woods with the dogs and feel a little bit better. I’m on a downward slope sickness-wise. I woke up yesterday feeling pretty bad and haven’t gotten any better the last 24 hours. Worse actually. And Dennis is sick now too, so I don’t think I’m just being overly paranoid. The race yesterday was a chore. I had no nervousness because I had no expectations. But things went pretty badly. I had horrible wax. Sorry Drew, but I thought it through and my skis were beyond bad. There is a section coming back to OO towards the end of the race that you go down and a pretty steep downhill and do a sharp right hand turn, that usually I have trouble negotiating because I’m going so fast. Yesterday I had to pole going around the turn. So, bad skis were a real problem. It was pretty hard keeping motivated when everyone blows by you on each and every downhill section. Plus it is a ton more work everywhere else. The second issue was I put on nylon wind pants over thin thermal underwear to start. It around 0 at the start. I was way overheated the whole race. Like so overheated, I would have taken my jersey off if I could have. I took my hat off and dropped it when I was trying to put it in my pocket. I went back and got the hat and skied the rest of the day bare headed. And I was still roasting. I could feel the sweat running down my legs into my socks and shoes. And on top of all of this, I was completely physically challenged skiing. I did start getting better and skied okay the last 8 km. But by then everyone else was pretty worn out and I was still going my slow and steady pace. I really wasn’t too tired when I finished. I’m going to write a whole thing, probably tomorrow, about cross country ski racing. Some observations from a novice or something like that. Right now I think I’m going to go over and watch the finish of a classic race held in Cable today and get a bowl of soup at the Rivers Eatery. I’m going to try to ski for a while later this afternoon when it gets a tad warmer. The complete results from the race are here at itiming. I was 106th.

The entry form for the race was the easiest entry I’ve had to fill out in recent memory.

600 people lined up on Lake Hayward.

Before the start.