Tahoe to Truckee Great Ski Race

Field size: About 1000
Team Riders: 2 (me and J Laine)

They started us in waves and I went in the 4th wave, about 400 back.
J Laine went in the 1st wave with the olympians. I felt really good
off the start and immediately started working my way to the front of
the pack. Felt very much like the start of a mountain bike race where
you get up toward the front until you find a group that is going your
speed. There wasn't much room for passing though so it took a while
to move through the group.


My trek toward the front was going pretty well until someone stepped
on me and made me fall. Doh. Then a few minutes later someone
stepped on my pole and it came it apart. Doh. After I got that
fixed, I started moving again toward the front but had lost a lot of
places and a little steam.


We started to hit the big sustained climbs and people began to slow
down and it became even more difficult to pass. I came upon a 5k
marker and thought "crap, we've only gone 5k". We had another 5k of
climbing. After so much climbing, I started to cramp. After all,
this was only 6th time doing this and it was a month since the last
time I tried it. I really started to lose ground to my competitors
when I cramped, and those muscles were cooked for the rest of the race
even after we crested the climb at 10k.


Since I was just in this race for "fun", I took a moment or two to
stop at the check points for a frozen snickers and a couple of
drinks. Probably lost about 5 minutes in all, but who cares when
you're so far of the back anyway.


Things got a lot easier physically after the summit, but also a lot
dicier and mentally demanding as we were descending icy slopes. I
fell three more times, losing ground to people I had labored to pass
each time I fell. Doh, doh, doh.


I finished in 1:51 which I guess is good for a rookie, but J Laine was
1:23 so lots of room for improvement and the winning time was a
seemingly physically impossible 1:06.


Ok, that's the end of my cross country skiiing adventure with the
Tahoe-to-Truckee Great Race. Now back to our regularly scheduled
programming (bike racing).