What a difference a day makes! In less than 24 hours we went from -10 F to 35 F and raining. What? The famed Pineapple Express started pumping in Pacific ocean moisture yesterday afternoon with a steady snow. This morning it was simple waxing with many waxes working. Kathy and arrived at 6:45 and started testing. Toko Red stick turned out to be our favorite.
The race format today was a classic sprint. That meant an individual qualifier starting at 9:00 AM. Our first male starter was at 9:30. The wax was great, but just before our last male starter at 9:57 the snow changed to rain and of course a cold stick wax went from great to useless. We slapped on some Toko yellow stick and he made it through with decent skis.
The rain continued and the snow transformed and it was time for full panic-wax mode. Just to make life extra challenging the wax trailers were placed this year about a quarter mile from the stadium area. Do you know why we have all those running workouts in the sand at Kern Camp on Cape Cod in the summer? To get ready for running through soft snow from wax trailer to the stadium. Carol and Lucian took a blue tarp from our house and rigged up a hillbilly style makeshift tent in the stadium and we moved a bench and waxes and tools up there to cut down on the running. Our crack wax team of Gunther, Eric, and Brad had prepped hard wax, klister, and zero skis. Those with zeros generally preferred those once the rain started. Meanwhile I was scrambling with Gunther to klister up test skis and send Kathy out for more testing. We ended up with Toko red and yellow klister covered with yellow stick, but then when racers needed extra kick on the rapidly icing tracks we added more red klister and some silver too. Everyone had acceptable skis given the crazy conditions.
At Sr Natls the top 30 go into heats, and then the next 30 juniors (under 20) go into another full set of heats. Perhaps it was a blessing for our skiers that none made the heats as it alternately sleeted, snowed, and poured rain all afternoon. Several of us went back to watch the heats in the afternoon, but no one made it all the way through before retreating home to sheltering roof and a cup of hot tea. Laura Appleby paced it perfectly by missing the heats by 0.01 seconds!
With the huge field each second in the results had 10 to 15 finishers. Yow!
For our guys:
Calvin Bates 148
Jackson Hardin 166
Oliver Snow 184
Will Rhatigan 241
For the gals:
Laura Appleby 100 (4th U16)
Kirsten Miller 172
Gabby Vandendries 179
Lilly Bates 186
Hannah Rieders 193
Madeline Rieders 198
Again, there were many CSU veterans competing. Of special note were Corey Stock in 37th, and Julia Kern in 23rd. Julia won her quarter final, but just missed out in her semi on the A final. She ended up 7th overall and 6th American.
Tomorrow is a rest day which we all could use. On Tuesday we have a 10K mass start classic race for the boys and a 5K classic mass start for the girls. Forecast is for snow tomorrow and Tuesday with temps in the 30s. Sounds like more fun waxing.