That was one heck of a fun training session! This evening we got together with skiers from GMVS, St Mikes and the UVM Club Team for a sprint showdown under the lights of the Range. The light was fading during qualification and by the time quarterfinals rolled around it was pure darkness aside from the trail of lights winding up and down the hill loop of the course.
Materials for the race: leaf blower, clipboard, cones, waterbelt full of chalk (not pictured: semi-functional cap gun)
With some creative heat structures many athletes were able to race against each other, and each racer got to do a qualifier and three full heats (a quarterfinal, semifinal and final). With four to a heat on the rollerski loop things got close at times, but that’s what makes races like these such good prep. Amazingly, no broken equipment or falls!
MNC represented well with Will Solow tying for a win in the qualifier alongside Torin LaLiberte from SMC. In the A-Final, Will took the victory ahead of another SMC skier, Matt Doyle. Will’s time in the final was the fastest individual lap of the day in any heat or qualifier, so to be able to ski that fast at the END of the race is certainly a great sign of fitness! Gotta also give a shoutout to Charlie Cobb who double-poled the whole thing…qualifier and every heat. Charlie is working around shin splints and has no choice but to get his DP on and the progress and strength gains have been huge.
At the end of the race we celebrated with some pizza in the Walker building! Very fun session and great to have some new faces out to hammer with…each of the coaches even got at least one lap of racing in (or in Katrina’s case, the whole event!). Gary Solow was taking some high quality photos and I will update this post with them (and a link to more, maybe) as they come online. For now here is a link to the results and some video Kai shot from the qualifier. It wasn’t quite dark yet but you can tell from the grainy footage that it was getting there. In the video description (click to visit it on Youtube) you’ll find a start list to see who is who!
VIDEO:
Sprint races give you a lot of results to sort through, that’s for sure!
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