I left the BKL Festival early last weekend so I could get back to do the Stowe Derby. I’d never done it before so I decided to do the Meister (both to enable a better starting position and because it’s more hard-core). Luckily I had a wonderful mentor in Linda who explained all the considerably confusing logistics of trying to do the Derby Meister. I would have been completely lost without her!
Here’s the basic run down of the day:
Get up early, drive to Stowe and park at the Church (finish line). Leave bag of dry clothes hanging from a tree. Get a ride to the high school from Troy and Kimberly. Stand in line to sign the waiver (don’t look at the small print), pick up bibs and cool orange t-shirts. Ran into a friend from Gould! Chauffer Kimberly drives us up to the mountain. Take the lift up to the start. Luckily it was a beautiful, warm day so the ride was very pleasant. I was very spoiled for my first Stowe Derby experience. Start the skate race and commence “power plow!”
I'm amazed that I wasn't snow plowing this turn.
The scariest part of the course wasn’t the Toll Road as I expected, instead it was under the power lines by the Touring Center and then later at the end of the woods section there was a really icy shoot.
The flat/uphill portion of this course just keeps going and going…
There was no time to waste after the skate finish. It was back in the car for another drive up to the mountain to do it all over again. There was a lot of discussion between Meisters about what to do for classic skis. In the end there was a little bit of everything; some were on klister, others crowns, some hairies or zeros and at least one guy went on skate skis and just double-poled or herringboned the whole thing. I went with zeros, which were fast but didn’t kick well in the woods (the only place on the course where you actually could use some kick).
See that guy behind me? He had a spectatular wipeout moments after passing me a little after this photo was taken. I witnessed a lot more carnage in the classic race.
You definitely should go to here to see some awesome carnage. I wanted to put a few of the choice ones in this post but decided that wouldn’t be very nice, so you’ll have to go look for yourself.
The classic race was my favorite part. I was a little more comfortable because now it was my second time on the course and the conditions were softer. After the classic finish we were able to take our time, change and head over to the Rusty Nail for awards and carnage videos. It was a great day and I’m definitely looking forward to doing it again next year!
Changing subjects a bit, after some convincing by John Maddigan I headed over to Jericho yesterday for the last of the Thursday night biathlon races. The crew over there is super friendly and they put on a great, fun event. Even though I’ve been doing some shooting, I hadn’t done any after skiing hard so the shooting stages were interesting. I dirtied the prone (missed all five) and almost did the same for standing but I calmed myself down, determined to hit at least one. Success! I hit the last target on standing. I had a blast even with my poor shooting and now I’m just psyched to get better at it!
