Placid Post

(Alyssa Leading The Way!)

It was a big weekend of racing for the R.N.R gang as we made the trip north to the Olympic village of Lake Placid. The senior team set up base camp at the “JR” where we were joined by Amy, Stefan and Rob. We kicked off the weekend with the infamous coin game. I thought I was in prime position to secure one of the double beds as I won the preliminary round securing my position as the last one to throw in the money round, but as luck would have it the last two qualifiers came up big when the pressure was on and ended up with the two bigger beds!! Marty and I were relegated to the two single beds for the weekend while Steve and Chad got to enjoy the luxury that the queen beds provided!

The morning of the Skate race we should have known we were in for it as we pulled out of the driveway headed for the venue and got a classic North Country welcome from one of the locals. Marty may have taken his time as he pulled out of the driveway but we had plenty of time to get in to our lane and get on our way, apparently the guy in the pickup coming the other way did not think so and made sure to roll down the window and get his hand out to throw us the bird!!

As we arrived at the venue the A1 cluster F%$#@ was already in full swing! The cold temps overnight had everyone running around switching wax and trying to find more clothes. By the time the first starter was off the sun was out and it was a picture perfect day. The juniors had a big day as they looked to lock of there position on this years JO team. Reed led the way for the boy’s while Alyssa and Amy threw it down in the girl’s races! The senior team did not ski up to expectation and it was decided that to make up for it we would ski the first ½ of the Loppet course in preparation for the upcoming race. Since we really had no idea where we were headed we recruited Jacked Up to give us a tour of his stomping ground. It seemed like we went up a lot of big hills so I’m not really sure if he took us on the real loppet course or his own loppet course! It was a good ski and we even found a few surprises out on the trail. Jacked Up was getting hungry and as usual decided to prey upon the weak!! Law of the jungle baby!

(Only the strong survive)

When we returned to the "JR" we were treated to a first class meal prepared by Amy, Stefan, and Rob. After dinner we had a bunch of visitors stop over and it was great to catch up with everyone. I caught a little grief for not keeping up with the blog but i'm not going to mention any names (Gabby)!

Sunday was the 15k mass start classic race. It was a quality suffer-fest for most. There was an early move by the boys from Craftsbury and the rest of us were forced to give chase. We had a good chase pack of 8-10 unfortunately Chad and I fell of the back on the second lap. I’m not exactly sure how everyone ended up overall as the results have not been posted on-line. Post race reports were mostly positive except for Adam who decided he would try out his wax-less skis. Needless to say it was not a good day for that!

As usual the NYSEF crew put on a great event and it was hard to leave and make the trip south. What was even worse than leaving Lake Placid was what I awoke to this morning 55 degrees and pouring rain, needless to say the skiing in Rochester at the moment is questionable at best. Not good.

(Some were more tired than others on the trip home "Big Baby a.k.a Coin Game Winner")

The Mark of The Beast !?!?

The snow has finally arrived here in Western NY and as usual the race season has arrived with it. This past weekend most of the crew made the trip to Glens Falls for the second JO Qualifier of the year. There were over 500 racers that took part in the festivities. Yea you read that correctly over 500!! That is a big race in any neck of the woods but for NY thats HUGE!!

I could not think of a better place for this race to be either! With that many racers you really want to be sure to have narrow trails, and one big steep hill !!!! It adds to the excitement and to the memories for sure! I do have to give to the entire Underwood family and all of the volunteers big props for pulling the race off and to Reliable Racing who supplied some great gifts to the winners!!

As for the race it went well for everyone. We really had some good results. In the J2 girls race Alyssa continued her excellent season with a solid 2nd place finish just 8 seconds back. In the J1 girls race Amy also had an excellent race finishing 5th. Not to be out done the boy's went off in the J1 race and all finished in the top 10 with Reed leading the way in 4th, Adam in 5th, and Stefan in 10th.

With all the talking that has been taking place on the NYSSRA Blog I decided it was time for Chad, Marty and I to strap on the skis and get after it as well. I'm not going to lie we had one mission and that was to go 1,2,3 and sweep the podium. The plan did not play out as I had hoped but we were able to go 2,3,6 so it was not a total loss. Thankfully we brought along Steve as he provided our only victory on the day winning the M5 race!!!

Congratulations to Charlie Bencze and Carly Wynn for taking home the J1/OJ boys and girls races!!

On a interesting side note R.N.R is now in 3rd place in the 2009-2010 NYSSRA Club Championship Series. I'm not exactly sure how this whole point thing works but it seems as though it is based on participants not actual results. Meaning if your team has 100 skiers and mine has 10 even if we go 1-10 we still lose?!?! Interesting? Even more interesting is that face that R.N.R current point total is 666.

Beware of the BEAST!!! We are after you all!!!!!