The dust has settled on the Rossignol Free Fall, the rollerski race that never happened. One of those common tropes of leadership is the whole “it’s not how you handle the successes, it’s how you handle the failures”…or something like that. Meaning that the true test came not with the cancellation, but where we go now.
I had a pretty good handle on the race not happening around 2pm on Thursday, but Pennie Rand and I still had a mission to try and convince the Guard one last time to move their live-fire drill to a different range. It was likely going to be futile, so that meant going through an entire training session with the knowledge of cancelling but trying not to let that come across just yet. Of course, the session was based around pre-race intensity and getting a handle on all of the course’s downhills and speedy sections, adding insult to injury.
Sure enough, our efforts for the Guard to reconsider were in vain, and they planned to carry-on with a shooting exercise on the penalty loop. It was moved from a different part of the base due to construction, and with the military at the space our event was superseded.
Luckily this information got to us on Thursday, enabling us to let teams and competitors know in advance and avoid any chaos closer to the weekend. But it strikes a huge blow because it shows just how unreliable the venue can be for putting anything together. After a fall season full of “will we/won’t we” access issues, things were squared-away and we were happy to be back training the rollerski loops last week. So this made the blow hit even harder.
So the answer for “what now” lies in preparation for the remainder of the races to come. As you can imagine we will be re-creating the race as a timetrial this Tuesday when we are back up at the Range. Then it’s the Trapp Invitational up next for some, XC running for others, and an eye on the forecast for everyone as we await the first snowfall. There’s so much going on that we can’t take too much time to dwell on the result here, as there’s only more hard training and racing to come. This group is ready for more than it’s ever been and one way or another we’ll get our chance to show just how hard we’ve worked!
On the subject of events…some upcoming ones to check out:
Cochran’s Trivia Night October 25th
MNC Annual Meeting November 3rd
Waiting on some bad news…but it won’t slow us down!
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