Brief replies to a couple of Jeff's essays:

Did the Fischer "50" at Hardwood yesterday, in conditions somewhat
similar to what he describes, except that the groomers did a really
heroic job of making it very skiable.

But first, note that the adult races had about 100 men to 25 women,
which is pretty reasonable, if my memory of other races in
S. Ontario recently is correct.

We'd had those tropical rains as well, and probably worse, in that
the temp was still about 5C (41F) at 11PM Friday night. On the
other hand, it was a skating race. The course is a figure 8 (pair
of loops), done once for the 25, twice for the longer event. It's
more like 2 X 23km if done as planned, but was shortened and called
a 20K/40K. They delayed the start an hour and went around the shorter
loop again with the groomer, as the temp had dropped below freezing.
That loop was great, the whole course was fast, and the only
difficulties on the longer loop were unavoidable (unless they had
delayed much longer, which no one wanted): some of those little
icebergs, but not frozen in; and a tendency for racing baskets
to submarine. I'd brought an inferior pair of poles with bigger
baskets, but made the mistake of only warming up on the shorter
loop. So the racing baskets caused me a few problems, such as my
only fall--forward into the snow on a steep uphill when a pole
plunged about 40cm in and wouldn't release. So there was lots
of diagonal skate (aka herringbone skate, an unfortunate terminology
I think!) after that. I discovered that blueberry bagels from
Tim Horton's are a mistake for me for raceday breakfast, but
that tummy trouble probably only cost me a few minutes, and you
have to try new things occasionally, better on a not-too-serious
race. The little icebergs and fast conditions made some of the
downhill turns more challenging than usual, so that faster step
turns had to be skids instead (put a ski down on top of one of
those icebergs and you might end up in the next county!)

Anyway, Hardwood deserve lots of credit for putting on a really
good race under difficult conditions. I hope it becomes an annual
event and highly recommend it.

I ended up 1st in my geriatric age class, but also last, since my
usual two nemeses, both Can. Masters medalists, couldn't make it
to this race. As Jay T. says, ......

But I also got a cool little wood imitation ski for outright winning
a ski race. Actually I won by a huge margin, not seconds, not minutes,
no, in fact I won by 3 years at least! It was the "oldest skier" award
for the longer event. To me, this is hilarious, though it's a nice
little prize. (I'd sooner win the "sexiest male" skier award, though
that's not going to happen soon!) Actually, a couple of 70 yr. olds
did the shorter race, so it hardly seems fair.

So five weekends consecutively of racing, including a 50 classic and
a shortened 50 skate for me. It's time to take two weeks away from
racing, hopefully do the 25 classic at Duntroon then and be done
for the year. Conditions at those two places, Highlands and Hardwood,
and also possibly Horseshoe, are still really good,
despite that week of tropical weather.
I remember early in the season saying here, in explaining
the difference between total snow and base to someone who questioned it,
that we pretty much never get over 40 cm. base. But Highlands Nordic
was up to 45 at one point with all that lake effect, and still have
way more than half that, so it's been a great season.

Not such a short reply, was it!

Best, Peter