Climbing to the castle

Ch-ch-ch-check it, children. This weekend some of us raced NYSEF's rollerski race up the Whiteface Auto Road in Wilmington, NY. With a start list that read like a who's who of elite skiing, Schulzy and I lined up to ski up the 5 miles from the toll booth to the castle. We gained 3001 feet over 8k, averaging an 8% grade. According to the web, the first three miles after the toll booth are closer to a 10% grade. There are sections after 3-4 miles of climbing that I was able to V2, but for the most part it was lung-burning V1 all the way up.

Anna with a mile to go.



Anna making the pass in the final stretch.

Yours truly, leading the pack (Ben Hickory, Alex Howe, Mark Johnson).

In the overall results Duncan Douglas beat Kris Freeman by 2 minutes on crazy fast skis. Both of them supposedly V2'd most of the mountain. The next dude with Marwes was Billy Demong, 3 minutes back off of Freeman. After the race Bird skied for another 2 hours. Damn.

The day after the race we did an OD classic ski with the remaining camp participants. Starting on Forest Home Road in Saranac Lake, we skied point-to-point all the way to Franklin. It was crazy to be in such a huge pack of rollerskiers. Notables included Lars Flora, Chris Cook, Colin Rodgers, Ben True, Mikey Sinnott, Garrot Kuzzy, and the UVM men. At one point Vordenberg pulled up alongside me while I was skiing next to Flora and gave me technique advice hanging out of the van. It was a dream come true. Here are some pics from that workout:

Pack of boys.

Harvard girls.

That's all for now - peep teamtoday.org for more sick pics.

-- O