Last Sunday, many Ottawa area skiers braved poor driving conditions to compete in Thea’s race at Nakkertok North. This race, for those of you who don’t know, is run in a strictly "old school" fashion that is challenging (in different ways then on modern race courses), and to put it simply, is really fun. The race is classic only, with mass starts for all age groups (Atom to Masters), on a mostly single track course that twists and turns up through the woods and even includes a pond crossing. To that add almost a foot of fresh snow from the night before, which made the course too soft to double pole in many sections, and we had a truly ‘vintage’ ski race!
xcOttawa skiers Lee Hawkins, Ingrid Hagberg, Logan Potter,
and Matthias Purdon all competed, with Kyle Power and Colin Abbott standing by
as wax helpers and enthusiastic spectators. Logan won the Junior Men’s race, narrowly beating
Nakkertok’s Dominique Moncion-Groulx and Matthias took the open men’s race in a close
sprint with Nakkertok’s Stephan Lloyd. Ingrid finished in fourth spot in a competitive field and Lee, who struggled with the deep snow, was the 3rd junior.
Due to the
abundance of fresh snow, finishing sprints were done diagonal striding (not the
usual sprint technique on a flat finish) as not to have your poles sink in the
snow too much. This made for some
hilarious battles to the line with competitors basically running the final 100
meters of the race.
Thanks to all the volunteers for setting up a great course and an awesome event again this year. Your work is much appreciated! This is a great event and one I hope to do again many times in the future.
Photo credits go to Robin Krug who made the trip over
support the McGill ski team who came out in force for Thea’s this year. Thanks for passing these along! Also thanks to Colin Abbott who nailed
the wax for the day in his turn as wax tech.
A view of the stadium
Logan chasing hard up the biggest climb on the course
Lee skiing well.
"Sustaining People in Motion"