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First time using zeros…

By March 9, 2011 No Comments

Holy cow, I’m never going to be a wax tech. Nope, never. Because today, with warm temperatures and new snow falling, our wax techs were up BEFORE the crack of dawn, working so hard to ensure that the Midwest team was on the best kicking classic skis possible. And you know what? I think they nailed it!

The OJ girls pack about 1.5km into it. (photo from skinnyski)

We ended up on zeros, and although I’d never raced on them before and had only actually skied on them once, they were awesome and worked perfectly today with some really good glide from our coaches. (Zeros are skis without kickwax; the kick pocket is just sand-papered and roughed up to grab the snow when temps are at 32 F and nothing else works).

The races were all mass start classic, but the distances differed by age class. The J2s did 5km, the J1 and OJ girls did a 10km and the J1 and OJ boys did a 15km. The course at Wirth was a strider’s course; there were lots of gradual climbs with some kickers that were straight herringbone hills.

One of the gradual climbs around 3.5km (photo from skinnyski)

Because of the slinky-effect (stop and go) that the steep hills created, it was super advantageous to be at the front of the pack from the start. So right from the gun I tried to stay in the top 3 and take the first lap chill. But on a flatter section I started to pull ahead and when a coach told me I had a 5 second gap, I decided to take it and run and started to up my pace. It was super cool to have so many friends out cheering and especially my Mom – I might have slapped on a huge dorky grin and sped up a little every time I passed her. Cuz seriously, who doesn’t want to impress their Mom?

Tonight we had the mid-week award ceremony and ice cream social. It was great to see so many excited smiles up on the podium. Looking forward to the rest of the week!

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