Como Championships 10K Freestyle

Second race of the season, this time at Como.  Not quite the exciting course that Woodland Hills is, but another beautiful day, with a little new snow on top of a hard base at about 15 degrees and 80% humidity.  I hardly ever wax up more than one pair of skis for a race these days – it’s a lot easier to let Dan Meyer do the testing and figure out what’s going to work.  Put on Fast Wax Flite Cold over HSF Green over low-fluoro Teal (the Fast Wax Base Saver sure makes it easy to apply the pure fluoros – quick, gentle on the ski bases, and minimal waste).

Skis worked very well.  I’m still losing a little on the uphills to the guys I’m skiing with (need to ski Battle Creek more), but then catching them on the downhills and flats.  I’m counting on fast skis to help me do that.  Won my age class again and finished up 34^th overall, behind a strong crowd of college racers home for the holidays.  Kudos to Ben and his crew for a well-run race and a course in excellent condition.

Skinny Santa Solstice 20K Freestyle

Dave reports:

Not bad for the first race of the season.  Beautiful day on the beautiful Woodland Hills course in Elk River, with hard-packed but not icy snow at 10 degrees and 85% humidity.  I figured you needed fluoros with the humidity and the debris in the snow, as well as skis that weren’t going to wash out on the hard surface.  So I went right down the line with Fast Wax’s recommendation: Flite Arctic over HSF Green over low-fluoro Teal, and used medium-stiff flex Rossis with Finn Sisu’s uni grind.  At this point in my racing career, I count on fast skis to keep me in the race, and I had good ones.  What I lost in the uphills I gained back in the downhills (and there are a lot of fun downhills on that course).  Ended up winning my age class and finishing 21^st overall in a very competitive field.

The rest of the Vakava contingent had a successful day as well.

Evgeny Beletskiy 5^th

Nate Porath 7^th

Ryan Atwell 11^th

Mike Nohr 52^nd (starting his comeback after taking a break from skiing for 15 years)

Mary Beth Tuttle 4^th, age-class winner

Katy Splan 8^th, age-class winner

Anna Peterson 9<sup>th 

Here are lots of photos from the race.</sup>

Cross Training

6-31-12
Mary Beth reports:
Had an amazing day of cross training yesterday! My son, Will and I climbed half dome in Yosemite. We started by moonlight and finished about 9 1/2 hours later. I think we'll take an easy day today.

Race Season Recap

I’ve been meaning to write about my races this season for some time now but just haven’t found any time to do it, so I’m making the time now. I managed to get 5 races in, which was 2 more than I was hoping for. I started out with two short classic races, Wm. O’Brien and City of Lakes Loppet. Wm. O’Brien was fun and it felt really good to finally try to race. COLL was tough because I fell at the start and ended up going out way too hard trying to catch back up, but I pull off a decent race anyway. I wasn’t sure if I should try to do the Birkie or not given the amount of training I was doing, so I decided to try the Pre-Birkie as a test run. Conditions were very cold and slow it was a really hard race for me. It made me think that I shouldn’t do the Birkie. I couldn’t imagine going twice as far feeling like that. But I was torn since I couldn’t really imagine not doing it either. I didn’t want to stay home feeling sorry for myself either. So I tired the Inga-Lami and felt good and had a great time. That convinced me to do the Birkie and just enjoy being a part of it. I went out very easy and was careful not to put myself under. I had just started taking Tamoxifen and one of the side effects can be muscle cramps so I was concerned about that. My legs started to twitch a bit the last 5K, but no cramping. I raced as fast as I could that day and felt good about. Not my best finish at 43rd, but I was proud of myself for toughing out the race and the whole, hard winter. It was so nice to just hang with my friends on a beautiful day.

As for the cancer treatment, I’m now in maintenance/observation mode. I’ll have either a mammogram or MRI every six months and will be on Tamoxifen, which is a drug that helps prevent recurrence, for five years. I haven’t really had any side effects from the Tamoxifen, which are most commonly hot flashes and muscle cramps. So I’m feeling really good and ready to train again. My schedule is more hectic than ever and I’m not sure how I’m going to fit training in, but I’m determined to figure it out. I’m psyched to go for it!