Magic Mountain randonee race report

It's been an exciting winter here on the East Coast. All 5 of my ski days have been great. Here's the rundown:
1 day pulling Cadel through 8 inches of powder in a pulk, at Weston Ski Track
2 races involving the use of skate skis, leading to serious ego bruising
2 days racing on telemark skis through the wilds of Vermont

Perhaps someday I'll go back and recap all of these experiences for y'all, but I'm just going to keep to the recent stuff for now. I wish I had some pictures, but I don't.

I trekked north on Saturday for the inaugural Magic Mountain randonee race, in Londonderry, Vermont. Magic Mountain has a touring-friendly ethos, and they were very welcoming to us racers (all 13 of us). The race organizer, Jonathan Shefftz, put together a low-key, simple, and fun event. The race course consisted of three clockwise laps of Magic Mountain, for a total of 5100' of vertical. Jonathan had originally intended to make it a bit more exciting, but snow conditions dictated that the course be scaled back.

It was a beautiful day for racing. The sky was sunny and the frozen granular surface softened up just a tiny bit during the morning. The race began with a 20 yard dash up the slope to our skis. I latched in with a minimum of fuss and got off the line in second position. I had sized up my competition based on a few bits of information. The most serious threat was Jonathan, the race organizer. He was in full rando-race getup: lycra skinsuit, nordic poles, Scarpa F1 boots with "speed holes," and he had chosen kicker skins over full-length skins for this course. Jerimy, whom I had met at the Mad River Glen randonee race in February, also had a pretty racy setup with Dynafits and F1s. He beat me by a couple of minutes at Mad River, before he got his F1s. There was one other fellow on Dynafits, a couple people on heavier AT gear, and the balance were telemarkers. My friend and former U of U chemistry grad student Greg Mercer, with whom I shared many a Wasatch adventure, was there on his Fritschis, as well as his college buddy Corey, on tele gear.

So out of the gate, I was in the "lead group," although with a field of 10 racers doing the full 3 laps, the term loses most of its meaning. With such a small group, it could easily have turned into ten individual time trials, but there proved to be some spirited competition in store for us few.

On the first climb, Jonathan, Jerimy and I traded places as we huffed our way up the green and blue trails on the climber's left periphery of the ski area. The skinning was mostly straightforward. There were just a couple of pitches where Jonathan was at the limit of his grip, but it was clear that he was saving some energy on the flatter sections. It looked as though the three of us had opened up a decent gap by the top of the first climb, but a Russian fellow on Naxos made up some time on the descent and joined us at the bottom. I chatted with him for a while on the second climb before Jonathan and Jerimy went speeding by. I was able to pick up the pace while remaining conversational, so I bade good-day to Dmitriy and shuffled on to stay within reach of the Dynafit duo. I was feeling pretty decent at this point, and used some brainpower to sneak past Jerimy, saving some distance by cutting across a grassy corner on a steep section. I caught Jonathan and we chatted for some time as we shuffled upwards, keeping a pace that was just barely conversational. My hip flexors were starting to complain, this being their second excursion of the year, but my brain was able to convince them to keep chugging along. Then, without much ado, Jonathan simply walked away from me as the slope angle slacked off near the top of the hill. Rationalizing that I had one more lap to go, and convincing myself that I had a choice in the matter, I allowed this to happen.

As I put on my skins for the final climb, it became clear that Jonathan had turned the knob to the "race" position. To my legs' chagrin, so had I. I reasoned that my best shot at making up time was on the steepest portions of the climb, where Jonathan had to spend more energy to avoid slippage and I could turn my brain off and just "lay down the power." So lay it down I did. I slowly reeled him in and was able to re-use the strategy of skiing across the grassy corner to take the lead. Shortly after I did this, Jonathan started making dramatic wheezing sounds. I could tell he was working hard to keep up, and I could tell exactly where he was. This was great until the wheezing started getting louder, and louder still. Sure enough, at the top of the hill where the angle slacked off, he wheezed his way right past me and try as I might, I couldn't make my legs shuffle any faster to keep up. Despite my best efforts at a smooth transition, he was gone and had the win unless he happened to crash in dramatic fashion, which he didn't.

So, I rolled in one minute back for second place and a bar of Swix glidewax, courtesy of the West Hill Shop in Putney. Thanks to our intense competition on the last lap, Jonathan and I had put ten minutes between us and the next finisher, but everyone came in within an hour, respectable performances all.

I'm looking forward to more rando racing next year, and I've been glad to meet those few in New England who show up to these types of events. I'll try to get one last ski day in up on Mount Washington before summer sets in.