Hoigaards/Breadsmith race

The new venue for the Hoigaards race is nice—no more waking up at 5:15 for the race at 6:45—but … well it sure would be nice if MPRB had made a bit more snow. What they've made is very good. Firm, packed, and fast. But it's barely a kilometer long! It's all hills, with some fast and fun downhills and anything else being a pretty good up, but, come on, you can't get 2.5k made in a week in a half with four guns and temperatures generally in the teens or below? Someone really needs to get a lesson from Weston. I talked to John who said he'd be out moving guns around because the parks workers are content to have one blowing at a time. And they have five guns! They really need to work on this.

In any case, I took a couple Macalester skiers, and I skied the first and last legs. A couple fun intervals, and I jumped right in to lactate threshold, getting that race feel. For all of eight minutes around the course twice. It'll be fun to head over there once the snow is in more as the classic track looks solid, and the rest of the course skiable (I might try it out later this afternoon for 20k or so). With decent natural snow, however, the manmade section is not particularly necessary.

I can only get to two trails at most, on a good day! Check out all the trail reports at skinnyski.com

Hoigaards/Breadsmith race

I am not a morning person. I'll start with that. Especially for racing. It's a miracle that I can get up and ski the Birkie in any shape since it goes off before 9:00. By 10 I am usually more lucid, but never really good if I have to get up wicked early.

So the ungodly start time for Hoigaards was not pleasing to me. Jakob wanted a race partner, and he billed the race as a good interval workout. Quite. And surprisingly, none of the Macalester skiers, in the midst of finals, wanted to wake up at 5-something for a race. I wonder why.

The new snow was nice for the race, but I wasn't feeling it. Jakob went hard and came back with the lead, and I quickly relinquished it. I felt, uh, pretty bad, but it was before 7 a.m., so there. The second lap was slightly better, and after the race we skied up and down the hill a few times, went to see the high school kids crash (and none did!) and then made for home. There was a raffle which we stayed around for for all of three minutes. In which time I won a free scraper. Which was great for scraping my car windows.

With the race and gravity skiing soon to open, the lot was filled with people, with SUVs (gravity skiers) circling. I wanted to sell off our spot for $5 (to avoid having to take the shuttle from overflow) but Jakob objected. Oh, Spotscout, how we need ye (if ye hadn't been so poorly managed).

Results: http://skinnyski.com/racing/results/2008/hoigaardsrelays.pdf My times are not a thing of beauty. Then again, I'm not a morning sprinter.