Last night was the first official Wednesday Night Race Series (http://wednesdayskiseries.blogspot.com/) here in Laramie, Wyoming and boy was it fun! While there are many options for fun in this race the most exciting for Rachel and I was the fact that we didn't have to time the race! We actually got a chance to race in Laramie for the first time since 1999! It was a kick in the pants.
There were nearly 30 people in attendance and we all started after dark with our headlamps. We all started with our headlamps but shortly after the start Joe was annoyed by his and threw it off and Zhenya's died. Despite the extremely dark night Joe knows the trails well enough that he was able to negotiate the course with very little trouble. Zhenya was not so lucky. After skiing in front of Joe for about 1k and having Joe shout, "Left, Right, Left" Zhenya went for what he thought was a trail and went up to his knees in the powder. While Zhenya floundered in the snow Joe saw his chance to take the lead and took off. He kept expecting Zhenya to pass him but it seems Zhenya was bound and determined to ski most of the trails at Happy Jack, after skiing the wrong way several more times, hitting an extremely large rock with both his ski and his leg he finally wandered into the finish. Zhenya probably skied 6-7km for a 4km race! We truly wish we could have had a camera on this race, with Joe trying to find the trail in the dark and the russian rocket flying here and there, in the powder, hitting rocks!
The race went a little more reasonably for the rest of the crew, those who had batteries and kept their headlamps on their heads! Gwynn struggled with a sore back, Grigory missed part of the trail, Fitz skied easy and relaxed and amazingly fast, Rachel succeeded in her mission to catch a woman who was being a pain in the race and Christi caught Rachel on the uphills and lost her on the downs, despite having factory matched skis and the same wax! (Turned out she also has huge rills from testing last week and that they weren't fast at Zero and fresh snow!)
It was a great fun workout and we thank Nat for setting is up!
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