Northeast Championships 5k Snowshoe Race
Northeast Championships 10k Snowshoe Race
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Wrapped up a mostly unsatisfying snowshoe season with not one but two races today at Prospect Nordic in VT. I was able to do both races because the lousy snow conditions forced the RD to abandon his original 10k route that would have climbed up and up and up and up and go with a "gentler" route that still had snow when he first started prepping it early last week. Of course what's gentle for Tim Van Orden still involves me working my tail off to get to the end, and today was complicated by the fact that much of the snow had given way to ice by today (and what was still snow was frozen fairly solid.) Add in temperatures in the single digits and a brisk wind on parts of the course that kept me cold even through multiple layers and you have perfect conditions for me to (1) consider bailing after the 5k to just head home and go for a run on some nice frozen-dirt trails (obviously I didn't) and (2) walk most of the 2nd loop of the 10k when my feet started complaining about my "snowshoeing" on a surface with the consistency of concrete for 6+ miles (with three more to go.)
Can't say my times were anything to write home about (a number of the 10k front runners finished before I even made it around the 1st lap of that race) but I did gut it out and make it to the end despite a number of opportunities to say "screw it" and drop out. And by being one of only three runners in the 5k I managed to be first male to finish (it was actually a near thing... if there hadn't been a couple of short but steep climbs in the last mile the guy behind me probably would have finished ahead of me, since he took the lead for much of the 2nd mile) for the first time (and likely the last time) in my racing career.
Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that we don't get much snow on Tuesday... I'd really like to put the snowshoes away until next December.
JMH
2017 Event Totals
Run 42.0 mi, 11 hr 20 min
Bike 0 mi, 0 hr 0 min
Snowshoe 30.0 mi, 10 hr 16 min
Kayak 0 mi, 0 hr 0 min
states visited: CT, MA, NY, VT
