Toko: City of Lakes Report and More

City of Lakes Loppet: Report from the Winner

The race was held completely on the Man-made snow loop at Theodore Wirth. Thousands of people (and a few dogs) had skied before the start of our race on Sunday at 12:30. With warm weather and transformed snow the course became a mix of mashed potatoes and ice. It was still very skiable but tricky and at times exhausting for sure!

Brian and I raced on HF Moly with a layer of crayoned on HF Blue. We topcoated it with Jetstream Powder with Jetstream Red Bloc rotocorked over. My skis were rockets and I felt great the whole way.

Caitlin Gregg, Winner of the Freestyle Loppet

It isn’t everyday that you can roller ski from your house to the start of a ski race. The man made loop is the only white in Theodore Wirth Park so warming up required being creative. Sunday’s race went out fast and I went out hard to try to make fitness play a big role in the results. The course had broken down to sugar on top of ice with temperatures right around 32 degrees. I had the perfect skis for the day with a medium flex Salomon with soft tips. Matt Liebsch and I were able to break away from the field going into the second of five laps. The 3.1 km loop meant there was a lot of traffic on the course, but it made for an exciting race because you were always in a pack. Jason Cork came down to test wax and skis for us which made a huge difference. My skis were the fastest in the race which was good as I could run up on Matt on the downhills. Matt is a good friend and training partner of mine who is skiing really fast right now and I was happy to be so close to him. I made a move with one lap to go to try to break away from Matt but was unable to get rid of him before the sprint. We had a good battle to the line but he had the final kick to cross the line first.

Brian Gregg, 2nd place Freestyle Loppet

Eastern Cup UVM Carnival Report

For Saturday’s classic race, Toko provided some great kick wax.

During the week it snowed and then rained.  Trapps wisely kept off the snow till it dried out and froze up.  Then, when they groomed it, it turned into a nice sugar snow.  On Friday I skied around trying various wax combos.  Despite the transformed snow, stick wax worked, and the best that I tried was a layering of Base Green Stick and Red Stick.

Overnight on Friday we had a little bit of light fluffy power fall.  However, it was tilled into the old snow and the track was hard and icy.  In the morning I tried Blue klister covered with Blue stick and also the layered Red and Green.  On the hard ice, the klister was a little better.  Fortunately, I waited to call the wax for our team, because with everyone warming up, they broke up the ice and the tracks became sugary again.  Now, the layered Green and Red stick worked well.  The hard part was getting it applied properly because it needed to be thicker than a normal stick wax job.  Our girls raced on it with good success.

For the men’s race it warmed up, but I skied the course just before their start and the wax was still excellent. The most interesting part was seeing many of the college men having terrible races with no kick. A friend chatted with some of the coaches and their problem was this:  They used a very narrow-range wax that worked 45 minutes before the race, but with the slight change in temperature the wax slipped horribly.  My Red and Green combo has a very wide range so it worked all afternoon and our men had good skis and good races.  On a day with changing weather having a broad-range wax is really important, especially with a big team to wax.

Rob Bradlee, Cambridge Sports Union 

Scraping Technique

Nobody talks about scraping technique, but it is an important aspect to finishing skis in a decent manner.

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