Whitaker Woods snowshoe race

Snowshoe double – part 1

I headed up to North Conway for the second annual Whitaker woods snowshoe race on Saturday.  It was the kick-off to the snowshoe season and the start of a long weekend of driving and racing.

It was 9 degrees when I arrived at the race site.  I met up with race director and teammate Kevin Tilton and we headed out on the course.  We ran the 4 miles putting the final touches on course markings to make sure everyone stayed on course this year.  The loop was very fast groomed snow with a little single-track that was also well packed.  It would be a good day for the fast guys.

At the start everyone bolted like it was a sprint.  I was hurting and in 5^th place in the first 200 meters.  I slowly caught up to Chris Dunn and passed him about ½ mile in, then got Danny F on the first climb.  At the same time Jim Johnson broke away from Judson Cake.  I caught Judson on the second climb and felt pretty good, but JJ was out of site now except on the long straights.  I gapped Judson but he came back on the descent and caught me with about 1 mile to go.  He really took off in the last mile and I didn’t have another gear.  I worked as hard as possible and was rewarded with a third place finish and over a minute improvement on my time from last year.

After a quick change I headed back out to clear the course.  JJ & Judson joined me which helped the time go by and made picking up the flagging a lot easier.  I was fully in “bonk” during the final mile of clearing the course and was glad when we were done (and JJ gave me a coffee before I collapsed).  12 miles on snowshoes was a heck of a way to start out the racing season!

Place     Time     Name                Gend     Age       Club                  Points

1          27:27    Jim Johnson       M          34         CMS                  100.00

2          28:25    Judson Cake      M          34         Acidotic             96.60

3          28:40    Dave Dunham    M          47         CMS                  95.76

4          29:49    Danny Ferreira   M          29         Acidotic             92.06

5          30:33    Chris Jasparro    M          44         TNT                  89.85

6          31:06    Chris Dunn         M          43         Acidotic             88.26

7          31:52    Ryan Welts        M          31         Acidotic             86.14

8          33:44    Dan Hayden       M          25                                 81.37

9          33:53    Scott Mason      M          54         TNT                  81.01

10        34:22    Jason Massa      M          44         Acidotic             79.87