Sunday, February 12, 2017

TOUGH GOING
Sunday, February 12, 2017

Today's snowshoe race was particularly tough going, between the deep snow, the wind hammering us with snow whenever it could, and the hills. Yesterday's was tough too, though it helped that the snow was a little less deep. Even the Get Rec'd race back in January was more of a challenge than I expect it to be. I've mostly been blaming it on the lack of snow and thus the lack of opportunities to improve my snowshoe fitness, but then at some point today as I was either trudging up the nth hill or stumbling around on a section of singletrack, the thought occurred to me - I haven't run a "real" snowshoe race in almost two years. What I mean by a "real" race is one where I couldn't run it just as easily or even more easily in shoes with spikes. Last season the only race I ran was the Super Frosty Loomis 10k, which had 6-8" of snow on no base. The race at Gore this year was packed man-made "snow", and the Get Rec'd course had a light layer of fresh powder with a frozen base underneath. So I really am very much out of snowshoe shape, with very good reason!

Doesn't make the races any easier, but at least I feel a little bit better knowing it's not totally due to me being fat and lazy...

JMH
Posted by at