Craftsbury Marathon
· Feb 2, 06:52 PM
Well, Kris and Justin have already posted their version of events from Saturday, Eli doesn’t have a blog as far as I can tell, so I figure it’s time for me to throw my hat in the ring. Let’s start with the positives. The skiing was phenomenal – perfect tracks for 24.5 of the 25k loop (the top of the final hill got viciously windblown, something about which I was not happy on the second lap), waxing couldn’t have been easier, people turned out, my skis were great (and the many, many road crossings didn’t beat them up at all), and well, yeah, pretty much everything that wasn’t related to my performance was excellent. As for the race itself, well, I’ve had better.
I came in off my biggest training week since mid-November (checking in at a paltry 13 hours, that should tell you something about the state of my health and training for the last two months) and I thought I might be a bit tired. I’d been feeling my arms during the last couple days of training, but I also figured it wouldn’t be too big a deal. I knew Kris was going to be there, and I knew he didn’t want to start going really hard until about 40k. I figured I would fight it out with Justin and maybe Eli for second once that happened. Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it turned out.
I knew I was working too hard on some of the easy climbs in the first 10k, but it seemed like everyone except for Kris was too, so I wasn’t too worried. I got a little more concerned between 10 and 14 when it became apparent that I didn’t have a fast climbing gear. Even on a relatively flat course, not being able to stride fast is not good when you’re going 50k. So, somewhere around 13 or 14k Kris opened up a gap on me (I was leading Justin) on a long grinding kick double pole/striding hill. Once the gap was there, Justin sprinted around me and I had no response. Kris stopped (literally) and waited and then they were gone. They didn’t gain real fast at first, but they gained. And then they were gone.
So, I was looking at 36k of skiing by myself to the finish. In case you’re wondering, that’s plenty of time to analyze what went wrong and what I need to do to fix it. The first conclusion I came to is that I was flat. Very flat. My last intensity was the World Cup in Whistler, exactly two weeks prior. After that I had a cold for a week, flew home and then started training. Second, I’m a little out of shape. Two months of “cashing chips” and trying to get faster (see the note above on training volumes) didn’t leave a whole lot in the tank, I need to do a little bit of work to get fast for the second half of the season. Third I was a bit tired. Really, this is just a corollary to number 2, but it seemed relevant.
Anyways, it became pretty clear at about 30k that unless Justin had horribly miscalculated I was racing for third. He was going to have to fall apart for me to catch him. The fact that he had Kris as his personal pace-setter wasn’t going to help me in the slightest.
The course did enough looping that I was able to keep track of Eli for most of the second lap without having to do a lot of looking over my shoulder. He seemed to be bouncing between 45 seconds and a minute back, without ever moving a whole lot. I figured he’d stay there. He did. So I was cruising along (okay, I was going as hard as I could, just not particularly fast) until the final climb.
The climb started at about 47.5k.
At 47.8 I began to think it was going to be a long tough slog to the finish and I might have to really work to hold off Eli.
At 48 I bonked very hard (and very unexpectedly). I was now walking up the hill. Well, trying to run, but running was really hard.
At 48.6 Eli caught me. I couldn’t believe he caught me that fast. Until then I had faint notions that I might be able to hold it together enough to still be third. I told him I was probably done.
At 48.7 I commenced 400 meters of horrible uphill and flat windblown track. I wondered if maybe I should eat my emergency GU.
I did make it to the finish, about 2 minutes after Eli. He was incredibly great to me at the finish. Got me a muffin, some warm energy drink and made sure I wasn’t going to curl up in the snow and pass out. Many thanks. I was in a very bad place at that point. For me, the story of the race ended up being the bonk, which was probably the worst I’ve ever experienced. I’m used to bonking (when it happens) with fair warning. Usually I know I need to take on calories before it happens. That was not the case on Saturday. I went from fine to completely off the rails in about one minute. I hope that doesn’t happen again!
The good news is I rested all day yesterday and felt much better skiing today. Hopefully I’ll get a little training boost out of those 50k and be better off for having done them. Classic sprint on Wednesday, gotta go defend my 8th place from Nationals!
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Ha, nice! Eli really is a class act, isn’t he? See you this weekend.
— m.wynn Feb 3, 07:43 PM #
Just watched the video of the finish on fasterskier. Looked like quite the epic bonk. Nicely done!
— joran Feb 5, 04:59 PM #