5@5 actually went!

The 5@5 went without a hitch! Actually it went with several hitches but we made it happen anyway!

First, the 52 degree weather on Monday and Tuesday had seriously deteriorated the trails. We actually had to walk one section getting to the trail where we would race.

Christi, Joe and Kelly arrived early and did some shoveling to make the race possible. In fact Christi had to shovel a whole strip of snow across a section that basically had no snow. The strip of snow was marked with two rows of glow sticks. As long as you stayed between them you were good if not you needed to hope the snow gods were merciful!

Despite the glow sticks and shoveling it was still a pretty interesting course with sniper rocks, stumps, dirt patches and other obstacles. More like Nordic Cross than actual racing.

We started race about 5pm and it was about a 1.8km loop, we'll know the exact distance once Nicholai has reported back with his GPS Heart monitor, that was done twice.

Brian came flying around the first loop in the lead by about 10 seconds. He may have been able to hold this lead but he took a wrong turn right at the start/finish, possibly he thought he only had one loop to do! The rest of the field went flying by as he turned around and started again. He was closely followed by Jacob, Kinner and Fitz , the race was on!

Gwynn lead the pack of girls but the twins were in hot pursuit as was Patrick who was racing without poles and Marie was hanging on. Our sole brave non UW participant, Ken, was right in the mix as well. Mae brought up the rear because it really takes her about 5km to really get moving!

After a very few minutes 5:41 to be exact, who should appear out of the pitch dark into the light from the lanterns (provided by Bern after some trouble getting them started) but Fitz! Fitz had not only skied fast but had managed to stay on his feet, which was more than the other guys could say! Extremely fast skiing and huge crashes by Jacob, Kinner and Brian helped Fitz to a stunning victory. Ken had the most amazing second lap of the day and managed catch the back of the men's pack.

Katie, Liz and Patrick managed to overtake Gwynn (possible fall there?) who was closely followed by Marie and Mae, joining Ken with the only other faster second lap in the race. If we would have done 5 more loops my money would have been on Mae for the win!

The results can be found at http://www.uwyo.edu/ski/results_2008/5_5.htm

On the whole a great time was had by all. No one broke poles, skis or persons, and most of them felt a lot better at the end than the beginning.

Thanks to this wonderful race we are now ready to go for the NRL series races this weekend.

Go Pokes!