the Way of the Turtle

Qualified Turtle
Wednesday, January 19, 2011

It's ironic, really... last year when US Snowshoe Nationals were near Syracuse, I had to go to Vermont to qualify. In the end that worked out OK, because I ended up at a fun race on a cool course and met some really nice folks in the process... even won two bottles of wine in the post-race raffle (more irony, since I don't drink!)

This year, Nationals are in Cable, Wisconsin. While I think it would be very cool to go and run, I really can't justify spending $500 or more to go run a 10k snowshoe race. As Bill Glendon put it last weekend, that doesn't seem like much bang for my buck!

So naturally I qualified no problem at last weekend's Mendon Winterfest race.

(Actually, that's not surprising at all... my guess is only a small number of the runners this year were trying to qualify, given that Nationals are a significant distance away... while last year, everyone and his brother had signed up to try to qualify, and I got bumped down the list by sheer numbers.)

On the plus side, the Granite State Snowshoe Championships are that same weekend at Great Glen Trails Outdoor Center (where I ran a trail race this last June) and I can drive there for a heck of a lot less than the trip to Wisconsin will cost. Maybe I can even convince Ann to come along and we can do some XC skiing there afterwards...

JMH