Snowshoe relay

The weekend wasn’t over although the National championships were done.  Typically the event hosts a four person relay (4x2.5km) on Sunday morning.  I was VERY sore when I got up on Sunday and did an early run up and down to the Bennington War Memorial.  I wasn’t any less sore when we arrived at Prospect Mountain to sign up for the relay.

CMS had an open team and a I was on the “mixed masters team” which was mixed in terms of age groups.  Richard Bolt (40’s), Dave Lapierre (50’s), and Paul Bazanchuk (60’s) meant we covered three categories.  Funny, they wanted a bunch of categories for the relay but getting team results for the championship race was like pulling teeth.

All of the CMS gang headed out to check out the 2.5km (1.55 mile) loop that Tim Van Orden had set for us.  It seemed pretty LONG to me and it was a tough loop! There was a lot of single-track and for a loop that never really went up the mountain it had a fair amount of climbing.  My legs were sore and I was pretty tired during the warm-up.

The race started and as Richard and Dave did there loops I went out and did the course again.  After that I changed into race gear and did another mile while keeping an eye out for Paul.  The CMS open team had a good fight with the other top couple of teams with all three finishing within less than 2 minutes.  I headed out on the course all little over a minute behind a Paul Smiths college mixed team and just under a minute behind a Paul Smiths open team.

I went out as hard as I could but was not feeling great.  Before the 1 kilometer mark I passed the Smiths mixed team.  I hit the k in 5:12 (ugh).  The weather was interesting as a times the wind was howling and it was snowing heavily, at a moments notice it would suddenly be sunny and calm.  I kept working trying to reel in the other Smiths team but only saw him on the out/back section.  I hit 2k in 10:29 (5:27) a slower split that didn’t reflect the effort I felt I was putting in.  I exited the single-track and could see the Smiths runner off in the distance.  I tried to close (2:14 last .5km) but only closed the gap to 37 seconds.

We ended up taking 6^th place overall and first in our category, and also first masters team.  It was a bit of a surprise to see that 24 teams showed up for the relay.  It was a record field!  It was a weekend of records as the 10km field (237) was far and away an new record for participants at Nationals.

Paul and I headed out for one more loop of the course before calling it a day.  The 10 miles I put in was my lowest mileage in a day in the last 3 months.  It didn’t feel like an easy day!

O'all Place	Time	Team	Category	Cat Place
1	0:46:42	Bad News	Open-Mixed Age	1
2	0:47:08	South Hill Distance Project	Open-Men	1
3	0:48:35	CMS-Dion	Open-Men	2
4	0:51:03	ARE	Open-Men	3
5	0:52:43	Paul Smiths	Open-Mixed Age	2
6	0:53:20	CMS-Dion	Masters-Mixed Age	1
7	0:57:05	Snowshoe Warriors	Junior-Open	1
8	0:57:20	Paul Smiths	Open-Men	4
9	0:58:11	Paul Smiths	Open-Mixed Gend	1
10	1:00:25	ARE	Open-Mixed Gend	2
11	1:02:48	Minnesota Rocks	Veterans-Mixed Gend	1
12	1:03:43	Peace be the Journey	Open-Mixed Gend	3
13	1:05:51	Comprehensive	Veterans-Men	1
14	1:06:07	Ham Buergers	Masters-Mixed Gend	1
15	1:08:44	Comprehensive	Masters-Mixed Gend	2
16	1:16:02	Paul Smiths	Open-Women	1
17	1:16:45	Running Wolves	Veterans-Mixed Gend	2
18	1:18:36	Snowcrunchers	Veterans-Men	2
19	1:21:12	West Coast	Open-Mixed Gend	4
20	1:23:24	Los Lunaticos	Junior-Mixed	1
21	1:24:59	Saratoga Stryders	Masters-Mixed Gend	3
22	1:25:05	Osteo-Ferocious	Veterans-Mixed Gend	3
23	1:26:31	Grumpy Old men	Junior-Women	1
24	1:27:43	Sammie Sparkle	Verterans-Mixed Age	1