Iowa Games

On Saturday morning Robin and I drove up to Dubuque for the Iowa Winter Games cross country ski race. They were at the Mines of Spain State Park. The classic race was in the morning, and it was about 9.5k. The skate race was held in the afternoon, and it was about 12k. The extremely cheap entry fee of fifteen dollars signed you up for both races, so I more or less felt obligated to do both.

For the classic race my only goal was to not start too fast and to ski fairly hard and consistently. When the gun went off, which was really a loud "go," I found myself in about 11th or 12th place out of maybe 30 or so skiers. A lead group of four or so got off the front rather quickly, and the rest of us were strung out behind them. I followed a guy for half of the first lap before I felt that I wanted to go a little bit faster and came around him on one of the many short steep climbs. From there I just kept skiing as smooth as I could and slowly passed a few other skiers and ended up in 6th place. My time was 44 minutes and change, and each of my laps were right around 11 minutes.

Here are a few pictures that my photographer and support crew snapped of me.

Here I am getting ready to pass a guy who apparently thinks that Robin is taking his picture.

And here I am all by myself.

The race was tiring but very worth it. After it was over I got changed and we went into town to eat at a tasty little coffee shop called Jitterz. I really like the city of Dubuque and look forward to going back. But on Saturday we really didn't have much time to sight see and had to get right back to the Mines of Spain for the day's second race.

The skate race was much more intimidating. For one, I was exhausted. My arms felt like jelly and my body had no pep in it. And for another thing, there were a lot of fresh skiers that did not race that morning and also looked like they had been doing the skate ski thing for many more years than I have. My goals for this race became to not crash and to not get last.

At the start I lined up in the back third of the pack. In hindsight, this was not a great move. It turns out that I am a little bit better on skate skis than I thought. But in the end it worked out. Despite crashing twice on the first lap, I was able to pass a bunch of people in the first two laps and then ski the final two laps with someone in front of me that was close enough to keep chasing after but just far enough away that I could not actually catch him. I ended up in 12th place and it took me 53 minutes. Again my lap times were very consistent, so I was happy with that. I suppose it made up for the crashes a little bit.

Here is a picture of me skating.

And here is a picture that suggests skating is easy. It is not, and there was actually a big headwind on this section.

Sunday I went out to Ashton for some easy recovery skiing. It was a beautifully sunny morning and I was worried about Monday's meltdown temperatures, so I felt I could not pass up the opportunity. I met Steve out at the course. He had ridden his bike out there earlier and was having a good old time. We skied around for awhile. Then I skied with Bart, creator of the new IowaSki site. And after that I just skied by myself. It was a very enjoyable ski. Today though, my body is really tired; so I will just be relaxing for a day or two and hoping for more snow.