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Old February 17th 04, 08:10 PM
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Default Keski 25k Classic. View from the back.

Again sorry to have missed you, Ken, and John and Sharon over the weekend.
I must say that after Pete's ominous sounding phrase, I feared that maybe
you had forgotten your windbriefs, and that thawing experience was
an agony which women cannot (and would not want to) share. It happened
to me 42 years ago after an outdoor hockey game, and the memory
is still vivid. Congratulations to all three of you on your races.

As a paid-up member of RSN, my duty is to report on the 50 classic,
as possibly no one else here did that one. (For those who find this
kind of report tedious, there's nothing else below.)

We got to Ottawa Thursday noon, so I did about 17K up around the Burma
trail partly to GPS it (see an earlier report on that stuff), and
also to remind myself just how bad that new second climb is. It
seemed a lot worse then after climbing up from Camp Fortune than it
did in the race.

Late Friday afternoon I also did a 10K skate down near the CEGEP before
picking up the race kit. Probably a bit too much for a 50 Sat., but
it seems stupid to go all that way and not ski much. Had an enjoyable
meeting with Pete Hickey, who I had only met briefly last year as he
passed me in the skate 50K.

We had perfect classic weather for the classic races. There was a
brief snow blizzard for 10 or 15 minutes early in the race, with
unhelpful wind, but I was in behind a very good skier doing just
the speed I wanted. That was the beginning of a day that seemed to
go very well for me, probably thwe second best 50 classic for me
ever. I managed to avoid any senile moments in the hours before
the race. I did alternate some short light layers of VF50 with
my VF40, after testing a bit at 7:30, and my wax was just fine
all day. Even Mont Bleu at the end (named after sacre bleu?) was
fine for grip, just out of the track very briefly.

Halfway between the first two feeds, I started to feel guilty and
he was slowing down, so I pulled out and said it was time for me to
break the wind, but the fellow referred to above didn't follow.
After Penguin (on #1) I had another piece of good luck, catching
a top female skier who knew how to carry her momentum into the
uphills, so that was another 3 or 4 km of help.

Everything seemed to be going very well the whole time, so, except
for a period near the end on the parkway when I realized how slow my time would be, I really enjoyed it all. It just didn't seem that slow to me,
following the track that the big boys had made, often out
of the set track up high on the parkway sections. My only time waster
had been fiddling with that GPS a couple of times, and a really
silly fall on the level when I stepped out of the track into the
5cm of fresh snow and forgot there was a second set track under there
which no one had used. So it seemed surprising at the time that I'd
be well over 4 hours, but seeing all the big boys 30 minutes slower
than usual later cheered me up. At just over 4:15, I was, in my
age category, 5th, 3rd canuck, but only 75 seconds out of 3rd
place. I can think of lots of ways I should have got that 75 seconds
back, but I'm sure the guy in 3rd can think of lots of places where
he could have saved time. Having the timing chips allows some
amusing analysis (for former non-propeller-heads!) : e.g. he took
5 minutes out of me going up the hill in the first 25km or so, but
I got almost 4 back over the second half. By looking at percentages
of total time and comparing to known good skiers, it appears that
he went out too fast and I went out too slow, by a couple of minutes
over 2.5 hours in each case. I hope we're in the same wave next year.


So it was a very enjoyable race for me, and I think core strength
work and plenty of classic rollerskiing on Jay T.'s former rskis
did a lot of good. Recovery seemed pretty fast for a 62 year old,
so I'll likely do the 50 skate at Hardwood in 2 1/2 weeks,
with shorter skate races the next two weekends. It's a relief
that my shoulder has done so well, after messing it up a bit
last year doing both 50's at Keskinada in the cold.

I did skate around Sunday cheering you guys towards the end, but
I hadn't memorized any bib numbers. Would have been the last
5K or so, me in a purple Waterloo Region Nordic vest, in case
Ken or John remember. I wouldn't after 45 km on a cold day like
that!

Best, Peter




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