Rendezvous Pass

Rubbing in some J-stream before the start!

Busride from Mazama to Cub Creek.

It was my first XC race of the season and my expectations were pretty low. I didn't start skiing this year until CX season ended, mid-December, and I'm also not living over there in the snow this year and so I'm just not skiing as much. The previous few winters it was ridiculous how much skiing I did. I'd get out for a ski at least once a day, nearly, and I did a lot of long skis about 3-4 hours long. Two years ago I tracked it and know that I had over 150-hours of nordic skiing that winter, and thats pretty substantial. This year I'll probably be lucky to crack 75, and that will be skiing every weekend and Wednesday night possible.

But you know me: I want to push myself when I race, and so I was secretly hoping that I would get seeded in the first or second row again this year, but I was given a start number of 9 which is the third row, definitely what I deserved for not even racing yet this year. A couple guys that I usually finish around were flying this year and they were starting in row two, and I fully expected them to ski away from me right from the start of the race.

The course up over Rendezvous is a logging road, so its one car-width wide, not enough for a mass start event and so they send rows of 4 racers off in waves 30-seconds apart. The hope is that you'll ski off with racers just a little bit better than you so you can ski above your ability and maybe catch a skier or two up ahead, but the first two waves are stacked with the best, so its not as easy as you might think to jump across a 30-second gap. It was a perfect day in the Methow: crisp and cold, and so the snow was probably on the slow side. At the start I did some rubber-necking and noticed 9 out of 10 racers skiing the MVX grind, and I'd decided to use my skis with the 615B grind and was regretting my choice. What the hell did I know? Not much, and I was sure that most of them did. And wax? I rubbed in some warmish condition Jetstream over a bit of HF, but in these cold conditions I definitely wasn't on the primo stuff.

A local named Chad led the early charge in my group and we could see all 8 skiers up ahead of us in the respective group of 4 as they snaked out the early flats and then started up the long, grueling first climb about 2-km from the start. I tucked into 2nd and remember thinking "this is too fast for me, I'll never make it over the hill with this group". Maybe a minute after the road started up Chad moved over and so I took over the lead, and not wanting to slow anyone down and wanted to keep the pace fairly high. After about a minute with my head down, drool starting to come, I glanced back and was shocked to see that I had a decent gap over my comrades. "Oops, this is stupid, I'm going to fast, I'm going to crack, slow down" were all thoughts of mine. But on further inspection I realized that I felt pretty good so I kept on cranking away, focusing on not over-doing it, not exploding out there and going from third wave to thirtieth. From V-2 I transitioned into a V-1 but found that my HR was skyrocketing because of the high turnover, and gradually after going back and forth, I found myself skiing a technique I don't think I'd tried before: I seemed to be doing a modified V-2 Alternate, and I'm not sure right now I can even describe what I was doing. But it was comfy. I could take bigger steps and reduce my turnover, and my emphasis was on my transfer of body weight and I could even feel the efficiency in my stroke. Halfway up the first climb I passed the 4th dude from wave 2, and I could see that I was moving up on everyone, and I was definitely within 1-minute of the lead group, and at this point I realized that I was the virtual leader "on the road".

This wouldn't last long. I kept up my pace, I felt great, but the lead group must have punched it because closer to the first top-out at Cow Creek they were gone. I need to make a note here: I was suffering like a dog at this point. I remember just wanting to give up, to slow down and hit an easy cruise control, but I had been gaining on Jon and Sean and desperately wanted to catch them because to do so would be a major coup. I surged and caught them, and slid on past just to say "hi" and help out with the pace-making, but I past by them and had another gap. This time I couldn't believe it. But then I looked up ahead and could see Leslie skiing along up the next long pitch and I thought, this is the end of my passing racers, only 4 out ahead, so just hold this spot and it will be an amazing result.

The next 30+ minutes I skied alone, suffering hard but really checking out the Rendezvous and somehow (in retrospect only, I'm sure) I managed to enjoy myself and my surroundings. There were more steep pitches and I could always see Leslie up ahead jamming her V-1 and killing me up those climbs while I tried to prevent a meltdown but skiing "efficiently". But I was really running scared because I knew there were several guys behind coming hard and I preferred not to get caught even thought it meant severe discomfort. Again I tried to V-1 but my HR was sent into the stratosphere, and at one point I had a side cramp so bad that I had to slow it way down. And I remember my head hurting too: it was super cold up there, and the 30-kph descents froze my skin, my fingers and my toes, but I had a seriously huge grin from the sweet descents. I let my skis run fast!

Leslie was out of sight at this point and I was alone out there, but then after what seemed like forever I caught a glimpse of Leslie just out in front of me. The road straightened out and in the distance I could see another climb coming up, and there she was but I had to get on that, now! I V-2ed down the descent and managed to catch her just as the next climb started: I pulled up behind, slowly, already in the V-1, and I watched as my long shadow from the blazing sun moved up towards her and under her legs... she never looked back but there was no mistaking that she knew I was there. This next climb was epic, and though I didn't know it at the time its referred to by the locals as "Sick Joke Hill", and yeah, it was a pretty sick joke after over an hour of hard racing already. She slayed me up that thing! I settled in right behind her, rolled my eyes back into my head, turned on the slobber machine, and just tried to match her pace. I slinkied backwards once or twice but fought back, but there was one time too many when I finally just said "F-it! I can't do this anymore", but just as I'd let about 10-meters open up I could see what looked like a summit, or at least a false summit, and that was enough to give me some willpower to close back the gap. Sweeeeet! Just goes to show you how mental this damn endurance sporting is.

We bombed the hills and I was loving it being tucked in behind a local: she knew every nook and cranny. About 8-km out I noticed another rider out there, a lone dude who was coming back to us and there was still time to reel him in. I could see that we were going to do it in those final ups and downs on the tight trails of the MCT leading into Mazama. When he saw us coming it was too late. We all three burst out of the trees less than 2-km from the line and this was my time to lead things out: I jumped into the tracks to double-pole past Leslie and she hollered for me to get back, a sportswomanly thing to do because even skiing next to her I was 30-seconds up, so she wouldn't have anything to gain by drag racing me to the line. I hopped back, stumbled a bit, caught myself and then started to jam on the V-2. I caught the number three guy and passed as he was double-poling, and I decided to give it everything that I had because I had no idea how far number 1 and 2 were ahead and I would have been bummed to lose a spot because I didn't kill it to the finish: for all I knew I had a shot at winning this thing. I came across the line in 3rd, over 3 minutes behind the winner. That was a damn fine result for me and a huge surprise.

I'm pretty proud of that result, but only because I left everything that I had out there. Thats why we race, afterall, and it doesn't always come together like that. Fitness, mental state at the time, technique, and strategy all has to conspire for the perfect race to transpire, and even afterwards I feel like I could not have gone any faster, and it was because of the rabbits and demons that I was out there racing against.

The next two days we just skied: nice, slow, awesome skiing under blue sunny skies with good friends! THATS what its all about!

My final kick 200-meters to the line!

Out on a long classic ski with Joe Brown and Scott Waichler (40+kms):
Cow Beach at Goat Wall, Mazama.

Kickin with Kiki: Wolf Ridge Warming Hut.