If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Black Mt Mayhem! --30k classic race report
Well, we had the one of last big races of the season for Michigan
yesterday. The inaugural Black Mt Classic 30k: New race, new course, new challenge. The event, which is located in the NE corner of the state, south of Cheboygan, was hosted by local top racer Dennis Paul who worked his butt off. It was snowy then warm and rainy then FROZEN. He had to get the DNR state crew to do the right grooming and was worried they might not respond, not having ever groomed a race before, or in such challenging weather. It was a real nail biter! This is Denny's home turf and one of the highest regarded classic trails---with rolling medium but challenging hills. Well, the DNR pulled thru and groomed the course exactly on the tactical time they'd agreed on in light of the weather: all night long, just before the race. Denny told them to pull the tracks on the steep downhills and corners, but he ended up getting something a little different. They groomed most of the downhills smooth...and most of the uphills as well. Both of these surfaces turned into ice-skating rinks. Getting interesting? That was only the half of it. Whenever the machine was laying down track, it threw up ICEBERGS everywhere, from 2"-12" in size, which froze into the trail everywhere but in the tracks, and sometimes there as well. Getting out of the tracks was scary. Staying in the tracks was tough. Quite often the tracks were what Mike Seaman called "gutters"---just a half-cylinder shape. Oh yeah! About 75 racers showed up. But over a dozen didn't start after they saw the trail. ...The rest of the crazies were ready for anything. I stayed the night with pals at the trailhead in the nice Chateau motel. We got up early and tested wax. Purple klister was the ticket. After testing and everyone else's ski prep we ran out of purple so I ended up with Swix on one ski and Toko on the other. Cute. 45F the day before. 25F race morning temp. The race was a rocket rollercoaster with danger everywhere. Don Camp described it perfectly: It was like the old days. Mayhem everywhere. A challenge to stay upright and on course. A technical skier's delight, perhaps. The start was wild, with all the icebergs. A certain Mike bobbled in front of me, as usual. Then Bob Smith, a true mayhem kind of skier, did a buttplant in a big iced-over, but not quite, water puddle just as we entered the course from the start area (which was the road and parking lot). Splash. First big downhill saw guys tumbling like bowling pins. Dodging was hilarious, due to the icebergs and disappearing, reappearing tracks. But I kept my superspeed rolling. Then came a wild highspeed descent and trail-split. I was going so fast on the big bend to the left that I could not have taken the lefthand trail and just flew wide onto the righthand trail. Thankfully I saw a little "Race this way" sign flash by pointing the way I went. Half of the lead group, which was just ahead of me, sadly, oh so sadly, went the wrong way. And oh so sadly this group included one oh-so-observant high-tech skier whose name starts with "Mike." : ) I yelled at them and they turned around. I was with another guy and yelled, laughing "Let's go man! We got a gap!" ..."Uh, I hope we're not the ones who are lost..." Sure enough finally we saw another race sign and put the hammer down. Now that's a Backyard advantage for ya! Paying attention to NAVIGATION pays off! Well, I guess I just have to thank centrifugal force really. Except I did verify the course direction. Hilarious. After awhile we all regroup and Mike and I ski together some and for the next half hour I was on the heels of the leaders. But Mike had better grip for the hills and got away. Sheesh. It was a hellacious thing that first half. The hills were quite big and slick and hard as a skating rink. Dell Todd reported coming over the CREST of a hill and being thrown on his butt then sliding down the whole next downhill that way. Our eager new NSR team racer wild guy, Ryan Robinson (NCAA track), really had his hands full. Reports came in of him going down on a hill, getting up then getting creamed time and time again before he could get out of there. I had grip in a track but on those slicks uphills I had NOTHING. I was ****ED. I went to herringbone and the dang edges had nothing to bite into. I slid out a few times on the ups. I finally left the trail on one hill and tried skiing on the natural crust alongside. Still sucked. Man, I was SO READY for charging the hills. It woulda been REAL EASY to give up on this course, I tell ya! But I got determined to not have a bad day and to get some kick. I figured out that if I was real gentle and put one ski in a tiny depression that part of the groomer left that I could get a little purchase. Also the herringboners ahead of me started leaving a little chewed up dust-slush in the center. I hate boning and don't do it quick. The others looked far more comfy with it. But I bombed every downhill on full mayhem mode. As usual, my old (backyard) skis were VERY fast. There were two fast sweeping left downhills followed by bigger drops. I survived the first crazy left sweep by riding up on the righthand wall of ice. I slid out on the second and put a knee down. I had two knee-downs that day. I didn't hear of anyone skiing clean, but Don said he only had one knee-down. I worked on breathing deep and low in diaphragm and trying to relax. There were quite a few interesting obstacles along the way: a nice long jump on the fastest downhill, several large skewering sticks embedded in the trail, gentle pine boughs waisthigh over the tracks. Great fun! : ) I skied with two distinct diagonal styles. One long, low and deep with lots of heel plant. Then I finally realized that to really handle the steeper uphills I needed to do the new Pete style, more upright on balls of feet. It was hard to breath deep that way but I got grip and kept velocity up. After the big ridiculous first 10k of ice hills, nobody passed me. I kept seeing a few people not too far ahead of me. ---One was doing a nice V1 with a strider right on his tails. I heard of a good half dozen racers who skated quite a bit. A few of them told me about it. No one did any self-DQ and no DQs. I would not have let someone V1 in front of me. I saw one herringboner getting some glide but that didn't bug me. Seeing the V1 marks in the moderate uphills bugged me. The race was about a third DP with plenty of KDP. I did that at first with textbook forward lean, but then I realized that if I stood up that I could just keep popping it and glide better and really scoot along. I did a very upright KDP and flew. It was kind of humorous. Like a scooter more than a skier. But I did whatever it took to keep the breeze feeling fast. I rotated between the two diag styles and could keep good mo going with both of them. It warmed as the race went on and I gripped better and the hills got more moderate. I really reeled in the two guys ahead on one big long medium uphill. I do think my uphill diag is darn nice. I just love doing it and would LOVE to get a chance to really do so someday. This race was OK but the first half was just too insane. The guys left me with their DP. Oh well! I noticed that I didn't ski very well when I was with others. I'd tense up and start slipping those ultra-tricky uphills. By myself I was going better. So, I had the good fortune to finish 8th overall and 3rd agegroup. What fun! Jay T's sig-line is true indeed: several of our big dogs were overseas at the World's. But this also made the race more like the old days, with a smaller more "mortal" field. In the old days we also would have 2 races each weekend day and so not all the dogs would be at every race. So I think that Backyard made a pretty nice REMATCH after all! Yet, again, Mike beat me by a good bit and had a great race himself, with 6th overall, 1:59. Winner was 1:52? Mike said he came in 2:20 ahead of me, but the results said 4:00. I'll go by 2:20. : ) Anyway, I closed the gap %-wise by a hefty chunk. I didn't blow up. I had a 180 ave HR: good redline. We both moved up on the leaders, I think. The Backyard approach of training in crappy conditions, with lots of ducking and weaving of obstacles, came thru with flying colors in this event. A whole buncha people who'd been whuppin me didn't do so this time. And I heard some good noise made for "go backyard" and "go retro!" Some fast Germans liked the outfit. The winner used no-wax skis! Oh, and it was DENNY PAUL! How about that? Run your first race and win it. Good job, Denny! It was one for the books. : ) I did screw up with the eyewear: make sure your eyewear is suitable for ski racing. The darn topframe of the shop-glasses I grabbed on the way out of the house obscured my view so I had to crane my head up a bit the whole time and this was killing me and starting a terrible snowball of neck and upper shoulder stress. The coaches are right: keep your neck in line with your upper spine, neutral and relaxed or you'll be hurting. But due to the crazy eye-watering downhills, glasses were good to have so I didn't toss em. I had all my wax when I finished. I ironed in green klister binder. My pal had scraped his skis of some bad Universal we'd tested. He'd had green klister on under the Uni and just plastic scraped and put purple on. I didn't see him do this. He lost all his wax promptly. He thought he still had enough green on after a modest plastic scrape. Not. Anything like purple klister worked. Anything else FAILED. Except for waxless. Crazy! -- Jeff Potter **** *Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com publisher of do-it-yourself culture ... bikes, skis, boats & more! ... ... offering Vordenberg's XC ski tales in "Momentum"! ... ... "The Recumbent Bicycle": the only book about these bikes! ... ... Rudloe's "Potluck": true-life story of workingclass smuggling! ... ... with radical novels coming up via LiteraryRevolution.com! ... ... music! ... articles! ... travel forums! ... WOW! 800-763-6923 |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Black Mt Mayhem! --30k classic race report
PS: After the race dinner and awards, Team NSR repaired to the newly-built
Casa Kaltz in Gaylord to celebrate with a season-finale potluck. Captain Mike feted his loyal followers with a majestic bottle of top-shelf single malt Scotch---making a perfect blending of "other interests" in with skiing! A few of us polished off the whole thing. See? There are perks to NSR membership! Our boss takes good care of us. Except that on the way up north, another team boss plied us with other strong drink. Decisions, decisions! Can't we just join all the teams? PPS: Jeff K---I found out halfway thru the debauch that we were in your neighborhood! Except there was no phone and all cells were on their chargers. When they were ready to use we'd just killed the bottle and the chili was getting cold and things looked a little less appealing for inviting people over (with Mike hooting and hollering and practicing V2 on the hardwood floor in his socks with VERY sloppy technique). Rats! We were going to call you and invite you over, man. So close! PPPS: I went for a walk today on snowless local trails in a nearby park and looked for some wax that I'd lost while out grooming. Sure enough there it was! My only VF40 And another, too---old Extra Blue. Cool! What luck! (I remember losing the VF40 the day before Primoz was posting about it being the superduper blue and being sad for losing it.) -- Jeff Potter **** *Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com publisher of do-it-yourself culture ... bikes, skis, boats & more! ... ... offering Vordenberg's XC ski tales in "Momentum"! ... ... "The Recumbent Bicycle": the only book about these bikes! ... ... Rudloe's "Potluck": true-life story of workingclass smuggling! ... ... with radical novels coming up via LiteraryRevolution.com! ... ... music! ... articles! ... travel forums! ... WOW! 800-763-6923 |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Black Mt Mayhem! --30k classic race report
I have stress just reading that report. YIKES But, sounded like a
sadistic sort of fun? Yes, I am about one mile away from where you were for your "after the race party" Jeff. In fact, I was probably in the middle of a run ! I gave up on skiing and started running already this spring... but will make a quick return to it next weekend. I am off to the GREAT UP (eh) for my grandfather's 90th birthday bash. It is over near Ironwood (actually Bergland) and I will make an obligatory trip to ABR for a last ski bash of 2 hours of skating followed by 2 hours of classic... I cannot wait. ABR rocks. JK "Jeff Potter" wrote in message .. . Well, we had the one of last big races of the season for Michigan yesterday. The inaugural Black Mt Classic 30k: New race, new course, new challenge. The event, which is located in the NE corner of the state, south of Cheboygan, was hosted by local top racer Dennis Paul who worked his butt off. It was snowy then warm and rainy then FROZEN. He had to get the DNR state crew to do the right grooming and was worried they might not respond, not having ever groomed a race before, or in such challenging weather. It was a real nail biter! This is Denny's home turf and one of the highest regarded classic trails---with rolling medium but challenging hills. Well, the DNR pulled thru and groomed the course exactly on the tactical time they'd agreed on in light of the weather: all night long, just before the race. Denny told them to pull the tracks on the steep downhills and corners, but he ended up getting something a little different. They groomed most of the downhills smooth...and most of the uphills as well. Both of these surfaces turned into ice-skating rinks. Getting interesting? That was only the half of it. Whenever the machine was laying down track, it threw up ICEBERGS everywhere, from 2"-12" in size, which froze into the trail everywhere but in the tracks, and sometimes there as well. Getting out of the tracks was scary. Staying in the tracks was tough. Quite often the tracks were what Mike Seaman called "gutters"---just a half-cylinder shape. Oh yeah! About 75 racers showed up. But over a dozen didn't start after they saw the trail. ...The rest of the crazies were ready for anything. I stayed the night with pals at the trailhead in the nice Chateau motel. We got up early and tested wax. Purple klister was the ticket. After testing and everyone else's ski prep we ran out of purple so I ended up with Swix on one ski and Toko on the other. Cute. 45F the day before. 25F race morning temp. The race was a rocket rollercoaster with danger everywhere. Don Camp described it perfectly: It was like the old days. Mayhem everywhere. A challenge to stay upright and on course. A technical skier's delight, perhaps. The start was wild, with all the icebergs. A certain Mike bobbled in front of me, as usual. Then Bob Smith, a true mayhem kind of skier, did a buttplant in a big iced-over, but not quite, water puddle just as we entered the course from the start area (which was the road and parking lot). Splash. First big downhill saw guys tumbling like bowling pins. Dodging was hilarious, due to the icebergs and disappearing, reappearing tracks. But I kept my superspeed rolling. Then came a wild highspeed descent and trail-split. I was going so fast on the big bend to the left that I could not have taken the lefthand trail and just flew wide onto the righthand trail. Thankfully I saw a little "Race this way" sign flash by pointing the way I went. Half of the lead group, which was just ahead of me, sadly, oh so sadly, went the wrong way. And oh so sadly this group included one oh-so-observant high-tech skier whose name starts with "Mike." : ) I yelled at them and they turned around. I was with another guy and yelled, laughing "Let's go man! We got a gap!" ..."Uh, I hope we're not the ones who are lost..." Sure enough finally we saw another race sign and put the hammer down. Now that's a Backyard advantage for ya! Paying attention to NAVIGATION pays off! Well, I guess I just have to thank centrifugal force really. Except I did verify the course direction. Hilarious. After awhile we all regroup and Mike and I ski together some and for the next half hour I was on the heels of the leaders. But Mike had better grip for the hills and got away. Sheesh. It was a hellacious thing that first half. The hills were quite big and slick and hard as a skating rink. Dell Todd reported coming over the CREST of a hill and being thrown on his butt then sliding down the whole next downhill that way. Our eager new NSR team racer wild guy, Ryan Robinson (NCAA track), really had his hands full. Reports came in of him going down on a hill, getting up then getting creamed time and time again before he could get out of there. I had grip in a track but on those slicks uphills I had NOTHING. I was ****ED. I went to herringbone and the dang edges had nothing to bite into. I slid out a few times on the ups. I finally left the trail on one hill and tried skiing on the natural crust alongside. Still sucked. Man, I was SO READY for charging the hills. It woulda been REAL EASY to give up on this course, I tell ya! But I got determined to not have a bad day and to get some kick. I figured out that if I was real gentle and put one ski in a tiny depression that part of the groomer left that I could get a little purchase. Also the herringboners ahead of me started leaving a little chewed up dust-slush in the center. I hate boning and don't do it quick. The others looked far more comfy with it. But I bombed every downhill on full mayhem mode. As usual, my old (backyard) skis were VERY fast. There were two fast sweeping left downhills followed by bigger drops. I survived the first crazy left sweep by riding up on the righthand wall of ice. I slid out on the second and put a knee down. I had two knee-downs that day. I didn't hear of anyone skiing clean, but Don said he only had one knee-down. I worked on breathing deep and low in diaphragm and trying to relax. There were quite a few interesting obstacles along the way: a nice long jump on the fastest downhill, several large skewering sticks embedded in the trail, gentle pine boughs waisthigh over the tracks. Great fun! : ) I skied with two distinct diagonal styles. One long, low and deep with lots of heel plant. Then I finally realized that to really handle the steeper uphills I needed to do the new Pete style, more upright on balls of feet. It was hard to breath deep that way but I got grip and kept velocity up. After the big ridiculous first 10k of ice hills, nobody passed me. I kept seeing a few people not too far ahead of me. ---One was doing a nice V1 with a strider right on his tails. I heard of a good half dozen racers who skated quite a bit. A few of them told me about it. No one did any self-DQ and no DQs. I would not have let someone V1 in front of me. I saw one herringboner getting some glide but that didn't bug me. Seeing the V1 marks in the moderate uphills bugged me. The race was about a third DP with plenty of KDP. I did that at first with textbook forward lean, but then I realized that if I stood up that I could just keep popping it and glide better and really scoot along. I did a very upright KDP and flew. It was kind of humorous. Like a scooter more than a skier. But I did whatever it took to keep the breeze feeling fast. I rotated between the two diag styles and could keep good mo going with both of them. It warmed as the race went on and I gripped better and the hills got more moderate. I really reeled in the two guys ahead on one big long medium uphill. I do think my uphill diag is darn nice. I just love doing it and would LOVE to get a chance to really do so someday. This race was OK but the first half was just too insane. The guys left me with their DP. Oh well! I noticed that I didn't ski very well when I was with others. I'd tense up and start slipping those ultra-tricky uphills. By myself I was going better. So, I had the good fortune to finish 8th overall and 3rd agegroup. What fun! Jay T's sig-line is true indeed: several of our big dogs were overseas at the World's. But this also made the race more like the old days, with a smaller more "mortal" field. In the old days we also would have 2 races each weekend day and so not all the dogs would be at every race. So I think that Backyard made a pretty nice REMATCH after all! Yet, again, Mike beat me by a good bit and had a great race himself, with 6th overall, 1:59. Winner was 1:52? Mike said he came in 2:20 ahead of me, but the results said 4:00. I'll go by 2:20. : ) Anyway, I closed the gap %-wise by a hefty chunk. I didn't blow up. I had a 180 ave HR: good redline. We both moved up on the leaders, I think. The Backyard approach of training in crappy conditions, with lots of ducking and weaving of obstacles, came thru with flying colors in this event. A whole buncha people who'd been whuppin me didn't do so this time. And I heard some good noise made for "go backyard" and "go retro!" Some fast Germans liked the outfit. The winner used no-wax skis! Oh, and it was DENNY PAUL! How about that? Run your first race and win it. Good job, Denny! It was one for the books. : ) I did screw up with the eyewear: make sure your eyewear is suitable for ski racing. The darn topframe of the shop-glasses I grabbed on the way out of the house obscured my view so I had to crane my head up a bit the whole time and this was killing me and starting a terrible snowball of neck and upper shoulder stress. The coaches are right: keep your neck in line with your upper spine, neutral and relaxed or you'll be hurting. But due to the crazy eye-watering downhills, glasses were good to have so I didn't toss em. I had all my wax when I finished. I ironed in green klister binder. My pal had scraped his skis of some bad Universal we'd tested. He'd had green klister on under the Uni and just plastic scraped and put purple on. I didn't see him do this. He lost all his wax promptly. He thought he still had enough green on after a modest plastic scrape. Not. Anything like purple klister worked. Anything else FAILED. Except for waxless. Crazy! -- Jeff Potter **** *Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com publisher of do-it-yourself culture ... bikes, skis, boats & more! ... ... offering Vordenberg's XC ski tales in "Momentum"! ... ... "The Recumbent Bicycle": the only book about these bikes! ... ... Rudloe's "Potluck": true-life story of workingclass smuggling! ... ... with radical novels coming up via LiteraryRevolution.com! ... ... music! ... articles! ... travel forums! ... WOW! 800-763-6923 |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Black Mt Mayhem! --30k classic race report
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 |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Black Mt Mayhem! --30k classic race report
Jeff Potter wrote:
[nice race story snipped] and the hills got more moderate. I really reeled in the two guys ahead on one big long medium uphill. I do think my uphill diag is darn nice. I just love doing it and would LOVE to get a chance to really do so someday. Here's an idea for you: a) Fly to Norway, get to Rena for the start of Birkebeineren b) Make sure you have some grip wax on. c) Wait for the gun d) Start skiing. The first 15 K is more or less all uphill diag. :-) Terje -- - "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching" |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Mpeg Races: Biathlon Oberhof | Janne G | Nordic Skiing | 0 | February 19th 04 06:19 AM |
Mpeg Races: Alot of new intresting races and clips | Janne G | Nordic Skiing | 5 | January 19th 04 08:40 AM |
Mpeg Races Biathlon Hochfilzen and XC Davos | Janne G | Nordic Skiing | 0 | December 17th 03 06:35 AM |
Mpeg Races: Davos XC , Hochfilzen Biathlon | Janne G | Nordic Skiing | 2 | December 16th 03 06:45 AM |
Mpeg Races: Updates, Toblach and Kontiolahti | Janne G | Nordic Skiing | 0 | December 9th 03 06:33 AM |