It is rollerski race season! Much like Scandinavia which holds big rollerski race events throughout the late summer/early fall such as the Blink Festival, Holmenkollen Ski Show, and Toppidrettsveka, NENSA now has a series of high-quality rollerski race events.
We’re talking hillclimbs just like the famous Lysebotn Opp in Norway, sprint races, and distance events on several rollerski tracks that New England is fortunate to be home to. These events feature live results and chip timing from Bullitt Timing, prizes from Cabot Cheese, and an all-around professional approach. What you have is basically an Eastern Cup on rollerskis.
FREEFALL
On the 18th MNC helped host the FreeFall race in Jericho, which featured a field of over 100 racers from the club to the collegiate, pro, and US Ski Team level. The 15k distance was one of the longest races for our U18 and U20 skiers, but having that distance come in a rollerski race before the season starts means less pressure and a good way to experience that type of event…as well as ski right alongside NCAA athletes.
Women’s podium, including 2 Olympians
In the 6km race we had a lot of Juniors also competing, highlighted by Taylor and Brady going 1-2 for the men and Kate taking 2nd for the women.
The event wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of help from MNC volunteers: thanks for making the day a success!
You can find a full recap and more photos from the event at this Fasterskier article!
CASTLE CONQUEST
Our Juniors headed over to Lake Placid this past weekend to compete in another rollerski race event: the Castle Conquest. This is a combination of two events: Saturday featured a freestyle sprint, and Sunday featured the famous Climb to the Castle uphill climb.
For Saturday’s sprint the action was done in “court format” which means everyone does the solo qualifying round, but instead of just 30 making it into the heats, everyone advances. What’s more, nobody gets knocked-out after their heats…they only move up, neutral, or down in a bracket system.
This is ideal for early season and, in particular, Junior racing because it means lots of head-to-head racing experience and practice with the format of a sprint day. The combined men’s and women’s field was also really fun because there was overlap and everyone was ending up in heats with racers of similar competitive speed.
Just your usual cuts and scrapes…ironically most of these came from warmup/cooldown and not the races themselves…
Anders and Emma were our top qualifiers, and Emma went on to win the whole women’s race in a pretty convincing fashion. She took home a check for some prize money, but just as importantly she won a coveted inflatable Cabot Cheese penguin. In the U16 race we had some great competition and some podium (and raffle) prize representation by Niko and Aaron, who experienced his first sprint rounds ever!
It was a sunny warm day, and everyone did a great job having fun and supporting each other. Almost the whole course on Lake Placid’s new rollerski track can be seen from the stadium area, so watching tactics and technique play out was very interesting.
After lunch and some study hall time inside the new lodge to get schoolwork done, we also got to run outside and cheer on Pat who was competing in the afternoon biathlon race on the loop. Then a quick run in the team’s matching T-shirts which were given to them by the organizers.
Sunday morning brought some early alarms and a departure under a beautiful pink sunrise to the base of Whiteface Mountain, where racers took off on this epic and memorable 5-mile (or new 5k option this year) mass start skate race.
It’s no secret that we’ve trained really hard this year, but nothing puts your fitness on display like an all-uphill race. We had several returning athletes who competed last year, and the improvements were absolutely wild. Anders and Rosie took 3 minutes off their times from 2021, while Geo snagged 6th overall with a 6 minute improvement. And breaking off solo from the rest of the women’s field was Emma, who won the race by almost 2.5 minutes en route to a 7 minute improvement over 2021! Another big check was headed her way, AND to complement her inflatable Cabot penguin she received the also-coveted Cabot inflatable cow. There is now a cheese-themed inflatable zoo at the Page household.
First-time castle racers included Elsa, Aaron, Pat, Niko, and Kai, and MNC alum/SMC skier Charles Martell also got to hang out with us and throw down a solid race!
Emma bringing home the bacon!
Pat, Niko and Aaron raced the short course, which was new for this year, and swept the podium! They clearly coordinated on their podium appearance with matching Bliz glasses and a game to see just how long they could stand up there until the crowd and announcers got uncomfortable…but I won’t turn down the PR!
This year featured an actual view!
For now we’ll take a little break from rollerski racing, but who knows if we’ll make a journey down to Mass on November 6th for the Mt Greylock Hillclimb…could be fun!
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