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Report from Australia
Included below is a report sent in by my clubmate, Bob Hamel. He's a
Masters racer now living in the Marshall Islands. Pretty good result for someone who has been on a tropical island for 16 months. Rob Bradlee Sunday, 29 August, 2004; Howman's Gap, Victoria, Australia Hoppetize me! I stayed on New Zealand's snow until the last possible day, Thursday; and then made my way to Falls Creek, Australia for the Kangaroo Hoppet. I travelled by van from Snow Farm to Queenstown and then by plane from Queenstown to Christchurch to Sydney and finally to Albury. After renting a car in Alsbury, I proceeded on the wrong side of the road to Mount Beauty where I rented the requisite tire chains. After a 30 km climbing the switch backs up a river valley, I arrived at Howman's Gap recreation camp where I'd be staying. This is a mountainous region. There are extremely deep valleys lined with gum trees and exotic looking ferns. Reservoirs, dams and hydro-electric plants exploit the runoff from the mountains. Howman's Gap was built to house the construction crews working on the hydro system. Today it's called a "recreation camp." The accomodations consist of a few buildings of bunk rooms, shared bathrooms, laundry room, drying room and a cafeteria style chow hall. The lodging is basic but comfortable. The food is also basic with wholesome choices and portions large enough for active guests. There is also a terrific detached waxing building with about ten benches, ski racks, good overhead lighting and ventilation. The prices including meals are very reasonable. The staff is friendly and helpful. Those qualities appear to be common down under except perhaps in the Sydney airport. It's as if there's no reason to be unpleasant when there's fun to be had. It's a seductive attitude. Comfortable beds, hot showers, good food and great wax building made it a great place to stay for the Hoppet. The winter in Falls Creek had been great with more than 2 meters of snow on the ground and cold temperatures. The temperatures had risen to above freezing the week before my arrival. Early reports from skiers suggested that a tough slog was awaiting us the next day. Choosing to beat the rush I waxed before checking out the trails. After two hours of ritual fussing over skis I had Cera-F on MB2 with the deepest rills I could arrange. I took the shuttle bus to the race course at Falls Creek 4 km up the road from Howman's Gap. A short test ski suggested that things weren't as bad as reported earlier. Temperatures were reported to be 12 above zero C, and the top layer of snow was soft, but a season's worth of grooming had created a very firm foundation. There was hope that race day conditions wouldn't be too bad, and my skis were running well. Things looked even better the next morning. Night time temperatures had dropped below freezing and the race course had refrozen. It would certainly degrade with the day's rising temperatures, but the predicted ankle deep slop wouldn't materialize. My Rosi's turned out to be very fast. The Hoppet course is laid out like the Marino Muster with 7, 14 and 21 km loops. The Kangaroo Hoppet racers would do all three loops in that order. The Australian Birkebeiner skiers would ski the first 2 loops for a 21 km course, and the Joey Hoppet skiers would do just the 7 km loop. The start would be staged with the Birkebeiners starting 10 minutes after the Hoppet racers and the Joey group 10 minutes after that. There were about 1000 entrants total. I'm still not feeling race ready so I decided to conserve energy in the first half, making speed where I could do it efficiently, and to put the hammer down in the second half if the motor could manage it. The course would be getting slower as the day progressed, and it was tempting to get past as many k's as possible before the snow started melting. Nevertheless I thought that saving energy for the last half would be the best strategy. After the national anthem, theirs not ours, the start was signaled by men in kilts firing a cannon. I had been granted a low bib number and was hence toward the front of the starting pack. That turned out to be a great boon. We poled over the starting line to the end of the no skate zone and skated off. I picked up a number of lycra clad wind shields and tried to remember the plan even though race day excitement was drumming a nearly irresistable call to arms. We shot on the first hill and down into the following valley. A skier behind me stumbled and fell on the down hill. In a near perfect Birkie reenactment the following pack piled up in a colorful and nightmarish chain reaction crash. With my low bib number I continued on with the front runners while curses and were probably darkening the air behind and top quality racing gear was painfully untangled. Conditions were great for a quick circuit around the 7 km Joey loop. We traversed the top of the dam blocking the reservoir's outlet and continued clockwise along the shore for a few k's. We would be repeating that ground in the oposite direction in the race's final few km. We turned left and away from the shore, and after about 10 km came to "The Paralyzer." It's really just a single track 5 km long steady and moderate incline. I was determined not to go under and settled into an easy V1 behind a pace line. I concentrated on applying technique lessons learned from Trond and Peter the previous week. Two amazing phenomena were observed on that climb. When I concentrated on coordinating upper and lower body motions and thereby efficiently converting lower body power to upper body momentum and potential energy and that to speed on the gliding ski it was hard not to run over the skiers in front even while taking it easy (technique works). I actually had to dumb down my skating to stay off the skis in front. It was also instructive to observe just how much energy skiers threw away while passing the pace line on the incline. Several rabbits flailed ahead, and I swear that I easily passed every one of them at the end of the climb (strategy works). We crossed a field, made a few shorter climbs, and then came to the "Blade Runner." I haven't seen the movie by that title, but if it involves screaming twisting downhills among hardwood gum trees with panicked flailing of arms and spectacular crashes, this was appropriately named. Most of the skiers near me paid the price of timidity on those hills, while I milked them for all the speed I could get. I had gained several places before coming back down to the flats around thereservoir. A bit of V2'ing across the dam finished off my first 21 km. The second half started after cruising near the start/finish and then proceeding counterclockwise along the shore to the far side of the reservoir. The final half encircled the reservoir and had its own assortment of climbs and descents a bit more challenging than those of the first half. Maintaining my speed was becoming difficult as fatigue set in. I tried to maintain good technique, work the downhills and work with other skiers. They didn't mind having me in their draft, but had no interest in drafting me when I eased past them, race strategy again. Coming down from the hills and back near the reservoir shore with about 7 km to go I set my attention on a few skiers ahead who might be catchable with a final push. I turned up the power a notch and and trotted out my best V2 on the flat path around the remainder of the shore. I was gaining on them, but it looked like there weren't enough k's left to catch up. At the dam crossing for the end of the lap it looked like they might be just within reach. Tapping into my last energy reserve I passed one halfway across and another near the end of the dam. That left one more. I eased into his draft on the last 50 meters of the dam crossing. He turned around, saw me and the race was on. Coming off the dam, turning right and onto a short climb I down shifted to a very high cadence V1 and pulled ahead. It was my race then. Hammering up the final hill, I resisted the temptation to look back at him. The final 100 meters turned out to be a fairly steep and straight downhill. No one had passed me on downhills that day, and they weren't going to in the final one. Dropping into a tight tuck I crossed the finish line without skating another stride. I had finished in front of everyone I knew except Allistair, the Brit who had finished 3 minutes ahead of me in both races. It had taken only 2:12 to get around the 42 km course. I finished 61 out of 315 and second in age group. The day had been filled with great skiing and competition, but the technique and strategy lessons were the most satisfying. I had always considered skiing the Hoppet thinking that Australia was very far away and incredible exotic. After the clock had started it hadn't been very different from Craftsbury, Sugarloaf, Lake Placid or any of the other special places, except for the kangaroos that is. ===== Rob Bradlee Java, C++, Perl, XML, OOAD, Linux, and Unix Training |
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