Great Bear Chase . . . well, really Great Snow Chase

No snow in Madison. Rain in the forecast. Let's go NORTH! The Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is one of my fave places and I plan to spend some serious time there one day (if I can ever afford to retire). I'm always game for a reason to go there and the Great Bear Chase is an excellent reason.

Plus after my Birkie race being less than stellar I had to do one more ski event. Although it is a 6.5 drive and you enter the eastern time zone and it was day light savings weekend I love the Keweenaw Peninsula enough that even those things were not a deterrant.

To ensure that my Birkie experience was not repeated I decided to sign up for the 26k classic race. The thing with me and classic skiing is that I only know how to double pole and how to stride up steep hills. I stride very poorly most of the time and I don't like to herringbone. I also don't get out classic skiing that often. I did do the City of Lakes classic race though and I did get out the weekend after the Birkie to classic ski in Wausau (which was to ensure that I still knew how).

Sunday morning came super early given that we had to set our clocks back 2 hours (for the time zone thing and the daylight savings thing). I'm not a morning person AT ALL so my love of skiing and ski events must be huge because I got up at 6:45am which felt like 4:45am to do this race. I was way too tired to be nervous like I was at City of Lakes though so I ate a big breakfast with no problem and stumbled through getting ready and getting checked out of the hotel.

I probably should have gotten up a bit earlier as Dave and I didn't really have a lot of excess time but thanks to Shannon dropping off our clothing bag we made our start. I lined up in the back like I always do and I couldn't hear the pre-race talk or the announcer say we were about to start. Out of nowhere a gun sounds and we're off.

I'm trying to throw down some good double poling but the back of the group is congested and I'm finding it hard to maneuver around the people in front of me. I keep thinking I can get around on the left . . . no on the right. No, I'm still stuck behind everyone. Finally I get an opening and I'm able to move up a little bit. The race has a fairly flat start until you get out to the actual ski trails where you have to go up the sledding hill (a cruelly steep but thankfully short hill). I flounder like a wobbly duckling up the hill with my poor herringbone but manage to stay in front of most of the people I had passed double poling.

Once up the hill you have 8k of trail that trends downhill (as you head in the direction of Lake Superior). There are some little uphills but this is a pretty fast section. I always have trouble in classic races knowing exactly where to ski. Track or the skate lane?? Of course this is exacerbated by being a poor strider and a strong double poler. I find that I'm frequently catching people when we're double poling but as soon as the terrain is better suited to striding people are pulling away from me or I'm holding them up.

The first 8k I'm in a group and we're going along nicely. I'm doing what I do well and they're doing what they do well but it all evens out to be about the same speed. Before long we're at the 8k aid station where the thing that always happens to me happens. That is that everyone kind of cruises through grabbing what they need on the move and I just stop. Yes, I stop. I sometimes tell myself that I will be like everyone else but I never am. I can't seem to stop myself from stopping.

I just cruise in and find my Gu. Open it, eat is slowly, get some water. I just generally am not in a big hurry to leave. A this point I am dropped from the group. It never bothers me enough to speed me up though and it happens at every race I do. Many times the day before the race I tell myself that I will not linger so long in the aid stations but come race day I still do. I'm not sure I have a great racer mentality.

At this point although my group has dropped me I'm still quite happy as the leaders of the skate race haven't caught me yet. The first group catches me at about 10k into the race. The second group catches me on a sharp downhill with a tight left. That was a bit exciting but I took my turn as tight as possible and everyone made it around smoothly.

From here on in I skied with very few other classic skiers and had lots of skaters coming by. On the upside I got to see quite a few people that I know which was fun. On the downside I quickly turned into a bit of a "classic ski grouch" as I hated on skaters who were skiing on the tracks or knocking the little ice chunks on the trail into the tracks. One woman who was skiing in a big group planted her ski pole in the tracks and I skied over it. I sort of felt bad but not totally since she was totally not paying any attention to me.

A number of skaters passed me and said "nice job". At the time I found it somewhat annoying as in sounded to me a little like they were really saying "keep it up you poor classic skier who is moving along so slowly." However, in retrospect I was likely thinking they were saying that because I thought I was so far back that they felt bad for me. In reality they may have actually just meant "nice job" since I finished 9th overall in the women's race. Luckily I didn't say anything snarky back to them like "Nice job to you too." Apparently I need to be less sensitive but after my Birkie you might also think that the "nice job" statements had some sinister subtext.

Anyway, what else can I say about this race? I double poled and double poled and then double poled some more. On occassion I would stride but it would always feel so slow that I would double pole some more. Once in a great while I would throw out a little kick double pole. On the hills I mostly had to herringbone. Although I acutally like to stride up steeper hills I chose the wrong kick wax for the day so it was pretty tough to do anything but herringbone.

What went wrong with the wax? Well, I went with hard wax (Toko base binder ironed in with Toko Blue and Toko White, if you must know). Those are great waxes for the temperatures we had. However, the tracks were glazed and so I needed to go with klister. I didn't really want to apply klister in our hotel room so I talked myself into believing that hard wax would be fine. Luckily it wasn't a huge deal. It would have been nice to have the right kick wax but I wasn't overly bothered during the race.

Anyway, later in the race I caught up to a couple of guys. We went back and forth a bit with me double poling by them and them striding by me. With only a few k to go a guy caught me and passed me going up the last substantial climb of the race. It was long and kind of off camber and I was kind of tired of herringboning at this point.

Of course, I catch up to him after we go over the top. However, he pulled away from me on the long downhill (and I thought my skis were fast but his were faster). As we head up the long straight trail towards town I can see him and one other guy and as I'm double poling I'm slowly reeling them in. The first guy I catch actually gets out of the tracks and lets me by. That took me by surprise as I was planning to jump out to get by him.

Finally I pull up behind the guy who passed me and I'm right on him. I couldn't decide if I should pull out and pass or not. Finally I do. Of course, as soon as I pull out, pass him and get back in the tracks we hit a couple tiny little uphills into town and I feel instantly like I might be holding him up. (Truthfully I think getting passed by a girl made him speed up his double poling). Finally I see we're about to round the corner into downtown and I start double poling like I'm a sprint racer in a SuperTour race. I totally felt fast at that point and was throwing down with the best double pole form I've got. And with that I sprinted across the line to finish my last race of the season with a big smile on my face.

Totally fun day and just an all around excellent race. After the race you can use the showers at the high school which is a bonus. Then they serve a huge lunch complete with UP pasties (and they have vegetarian) along with a huge array of donuts and cookies. After all that they hand out the awards. At first when I saw that I had won my age group I assumed I was the only woman 30-39 but there actually were 3 of us. And the coolest part was that I won a sweet little wooden ski that they made as trophies for all the classic race age group winners.

And with that came to the end of a very long season of racing when you consider that cyclocross is just over when ski racing begins and before cyclocross there was mountain bike races and trail runs. Now it's my off season and I look forward to doing a little more skiing, starting up with some running and getting out on the bike and some swim lessons. However, no races for awhile and definitely no structure . . . just fun.