As the NBNRT member living in the Ottawa area, I decided to take advantage of my location and enter a local race hosted by the Skinouk Club. Competition was fairly select and fierce in the older age groups (i.e. juvenile boys/girls and older), while the majority of racers were entered in the younger age categories (ie. 14 years and younger). This made for a long day as we older folks had to wait for all the younger categories to start before beginning our own races. However, the enthusiasm and sheer numbers of the younger crowd made for some entertaining racing to watch. Read On...

Saturday was a perfectly stunning day with conditions creeping onto the warm side. Luckily, I was able to finish my race before conditions warmed to the point were my grip-wax job became obsolete. By the end of the afternoon, my thermometer at home was reading +8^oC! Overall, the race went well. I was able to compare my performance this year to last year’s performance on a very similar course and it looks like my training may be paying off this year! However, I’m sad to say that I am still losing WAY too much time on the double-poling section. This was easily observed during this mass start race as I would make up a lot of time in the hills and lose it all and more on the flats (note: of the 2-lap 7.5 km course, at least 4 kms were pure double-poling!!!). On the same course the next day, however, things were a bit different: not so many worries about double-poling during a skating race! During a biting wind-chill, a bit of an organizational faux pas occurred at the start. Somehow, it was perfectly timed that when the men, who had started 10 minutes before, were rounding the lap lane for their second lap, the women started. This made for an interesting first kilometer, as a meshing of categories on a fairly narrow trail didn’t allow for much movement or grace. Not too mention the few tourists out there as well……. However, I was again able to improve on last year’s performance. Again, my climbing helped immensely and with a last minute pass with 200 meters to go, I was able to open a three second for second place (note: the competition was a little less fierce on the second day, with several women opting not to race both days; but I’ll take what I can get!).