Snowshoe Nationals race report

March 6th was the official date of the US Powersox Snowshoe National Championships in Fabius, NY this year. It was a rough race and many folks were concerned that good old upstate NY wasn't going to have enough snow to host a national championship race in March. Mother nature complied however and dumped about 2 feet on the region a week before the actual race.
The race was really cool to be able to wake up in your own bed, drive 2 hours east and have national level competition in basically your backyard. Participants were coming from all over the US and there were some great runners present. The snow on the other hand was no so great. Because it had been particularly mild the last few days prior to the race, the sun had created a massive melt and left sugary snow which is EXTREMELY slippery and not too easy to gain traction on.
As you can see from the pic above, people were falling all over the place and it was slippery as all get out that day. Times were about 15-20 minutes slower than they should have been and I struggled to get my feet under me until I came up on a guy that was getting excellent traction about 3 miles into the race. Following directly behind him and in his footsteps was the wisest choice I made that day. We both immediately gaped the several runners in the pack behind us.
This was the only photo taken of me during the race and you get a nice shot of my backside as we trekked thru a snow covered parking lot and back into more single track. The finish of the race was most impressive and I've included a picture below. It was COMPLETELY uphill and caused your HR to sky rocket at the end of the race. Most people ended up walking this hill to the finish line as it was inevitably faster, but I made the decision to NOT walk about 3/4's of the way into this run.

To make matters worse there was a guy on the sidelines yelling at me, "there's someone RIGHT behind you, pick it up!!!" But I couldn't do anything about it. I was giving it my all and the hill was too steep...Below is a pic of Tim Ratowski hoofing it up the final climb with Ken close behind and Mort in arrears stage left. Just glad I got this one over with and a good end to the snowshoe season.

I still have to post on the Johnny's 5 miler from 3/13, but that will come up shortly. Good times and great beers were shared with friends afterwards and I have to thank Mort for bringing the tradition of Ubu to the races recently...at least I HOPE he makes it a tradition! :o) Well the sun is shining here, and I'm not wanting to be stuck inside, so I hope this post finds you all well and getting out and enjoying the roads. Cheers!