Trevor, Dea, and I all desperately wanted to get out of town last weekend so we headed down to beautiful Wasilla - to support kristen and Ed doing the Susitna. The Susitna is a crazy race - bikers, skiers,and runners going 100 miles nonstop on wilderness trail. You never know what the trail will be like, and what the best mode of travel will be - last year the bikers easily won in 10 hours. But this year the weather was brutal - intense winds,ground blizzard, below zero windchill. The race this year was won by a skier in 20 hours, and second was a biker - they were the only ones that had finished when we left at noon on sunday - in most years pretty much everyone would have finished by then. Unfortunately both Kristen and Ed were of the many to scratch this year, but both of them had epic 40+ mile skiis and crazy stories. Ann did the 50 K race and had a great finish - 4th skier overall! but her race was a 6 hr slog. I used to think I wanted to do this race, but I don't know anymore - I skied ~ 15 mi on the trail and was quite happy to come back and get some hot chocolate and enjoyed talking to the folks at the port mackenzie general store while waiting for them. But I really appreciate having friends crazy enough to do this kinda stuff (but sane enough to turn around when it simply isn't fun anymore!)
prerace food pack. what's the key ingredient to keep your body going for 100 miles? fritos!
a nice protected section of the trail after crossing the little su - no snow drifts in here but it's narrow and hard for skate skiing
the start - this is the skier that won (by a huge margin), blow up the picture and check out his sled design - I think he's onto something here.
Kristen taking off. (of course in pure kristen syle - she was in the portajon at the actual start so everyone is ahead of her here, what's the rush when you're going 100 miles?)
snowbiking is crazy up here - the tires just get fatter and fatter every year. this is actually the tread of the tandom bikers, and they only had medium fat tires.
Ed broke a pole ~ 40 miles out. he did manage to find an old bamboo pole at a lodge out there but he sanely choose to turn around and ski 40 miles back with the short bamboo pole rather than keep going another 60 miles with that pole. (turns out carbon fiber poles don't just break they implode - far beyond duck tape and bailing wire repair).
prerace food pack. what's the key ingredient to keep your body going for 100 miles? fritos!
a nice protected section of the trail after crossing the little su - no snow drifts in here but it's narrow and hard for skate skiing
the start - this is the skier that won (by a huge margin), blow up the picture and check out his sled design - I think he's onto something here.
Kristen taking off. (of course in pure kristen syle - she was in the portajon at the actual start so everyone is ahead of her here, what's the rush when you're going 100 miles?)
snowbiking is crazy up here - the tires just get fatter and fatter every year. this is actually the tread of the tandom bikers, and they only had medium fat tires.
Ed broke a pole ~ 40 miles out. he did manage to find an old bamboo pole at a lodge out there but he sanely choose to turn around and ski 40 miles back with the short bamboo pole rather than keep going another 60 miles with that pole. (turns out carbon fiber poles don't just break they implode - far beyond duck tape and bailing wire repair).
2 comments:
That 2nd pic with the bumpy trail - looks like an olde t-bar track - :)
Fritos just give me heartburn! :)
Hey,
I don't think I told you that I have a link on my front blog page to your blog - I did that with someone else and they didn't like that - if you don't like that - PLEASE leave me a comment. I will take it off. :) Sorry if that offended you. I just put it there so I can find you again and leave you comments. :) I'm signing off now and you may delete this note if you'd like.
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