Harry Eldridge weekend and honeymoon

This past weekend, I raced in two cross country races in Lake Placid. Saturday was a 7.5k individual start skate race and Sunday was a 15k mass start classic race. Both days had pretty stacked fields (at least for races in New York) with a lot of folks making the journey over from New England to compete. The races went ok. Saturday, I felt really good during the race, skis seemed fast, technique felt good, felt like I pushed as hard as possible. Upon review of the results sheet, it seems I'm missing a top-end gear that some of the other guys have, I honestly felt like I nailed it, but there were still guys faster. I'm defintely faster than last year, but for the first time since I started skiing again after college, I'm not A LOT faster than the previous year. Which makes sense and I knew would happen, but is still a little frustrating. There are still a lot of races to go this year, and my big goals are the two marathons in February, which will be a completely different animal compared to the races I've been doing.

Following the race on Saturday, Jason, Chad and I recruited JackedUp to give us a tour of the Lake Placid Loppet course (which we're doing in two weeks). About 500 yards into the "cool down", I snapped a pole. There must have been a hairline crack or something because I didn't crash, the pole just snapped, which was a bummer (I really liked those poles).

After grabbing another pair of poles, we went back out on course and had a fun ski on the porter and east mountain loops. I'll tell you one thing, the Loppet course is no joke, that sucker's going to hurt. I feel confident that it will hurt us all less than everyone else, but we'll see!

Sunday, was a 15k classic mass start (picture above of the start). Not much noteworthy to say, other than it was an improvement over the previous weekend, however, I still have a long way to go with my technique and general approach to classic skiing! It was a fun race though. There were some big guns in the race (including last year's NCAA champ), so it was impressive to see how those guys operate. Frenchy, Chad and Jason all had good races, including Jason going all "Petter Northrug" on last year's Section V champ (from Jason's high school) and dusting him on the final uphill.

Overall, it was a fun weekend. A lot of the RNR juniors (that Jason coaches all summer) punched their tickets to JO's with some solid performances. A few of them also cooked us dinner on Saturday in exchange for the use of our kitchenette unit at the Jack Rabbit. That's a trade I'll make any day!

Now, I have a weekend off from racing. Then it's back to back weekends in Lake Placid for the 50k Loppet on Feb 6th, followed by the NorAm Cup biathlon races the following weekend.

In other news, among all the nordic skiing updates going on with this blog recently, Nancy and I picked a spot for the honeymoon - Aruba. That's right - the one in the Caribbean - sandy beaches, sunshine, and cocktails with little straw hats in them!