Camp Saratoga 8k Snowshoe Race
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Earlier this week RD Laura was really hoping for snow for this race, even after finding enough snow on the trails when they did the preliminary course marking on Wednesday. The good news is, we did get more snow at the end of the week. The bad news is, it was preceded by ice and accompanied by extremely high winds, which brought down trees and limbs all over the place. Yesterday when they went out to finish marking the course they found many of the trails blocked, and this morning there was no electricity in the cabin or restrooms (which meant the restrooms weren't usable - good thing they didn't remove the outhouses when they built the modern facilities a few years ago!) The course had to be modified to only use the trails closest to the cabin - essentially a 0.85 mile loop with a separate leg to start the race and a short leg to the finish - so we ended up going around that loop multiple times to make the distance work. No question that the Saratoga Stryders know how to make lemonade when they're handed a bunch of lemons!
I'll be curious to see the results because I think there was some confusion as to how many loops to run - I was convinced Matt called for 5 loops total (which I did, and ended up with a final distance of 5.1 miles, pretty amazingly close to an 8k) but I also think many of the runners (and possibly the course marshalls) thought they were supposed to do 4 loops (which would give 4.3 miles.) Not that it really matters all that much - I needed the distance, and would have gone back out on some of the other trails afterwards if my legs hadn't still been tired from Thursday's run.
One thing I really regret is leaving my cameras at home, because the scenery was gorgeous - much of the time bright and sunny and everything coated with snow.
Next up should be Tuesday at Gore, and then the very intimidating Frigus 15k next Saturday - I think I need to plan to hike most of that and conserve energy if I'm going to have any hope of finishing, between the distance (9-10 miles) and elevation change.
2020 Event TotalsRun 23.8 mi, 5 hr 52 min
Bike 0 mi, 0 hr 0 min
Snowshoe 19.9 mi, 6 hr 1 min
Kayak 0 mi, 0 hr 0 min
states visited: MA, NY
