Williams College Nordic Ski Team: First Carnival Weekend and the First "Real" Carnival Weekend

Monday, January 22, 2018

First Carnival Weekend and the First "Real" Carnival Weekend

Well I think that the entire team can agree that it has been quite an interesting start to the Carnival season this year. Our first weekend of racing took place last week in Waterville, ME. In the days leading up to the carnival, the course was in great shape and we were all looking forward to the new improvements that were made to the trail systems at Quarry Rd. Unfortunately that all went to waste when nearly 2 inches of rain fell overnight wiping out pretty much the entire trail system. When Jay and I made it up to the race site Saturday morning it was a grim sight! The stadium where they planned to have the start and finish was under about a foot of standing water. The race officials and coaches all agreed that it would not be feasible to run an event that day and ended up cancelling the race.

Day 2 comes around and you can guess what happens when a lot of rain falls and then temperatures drop to single digits the next day. The race crew pulled off a miracle and managed to put together a race in as good of conditions as you could possibly expect. While the course was an ice rink, it was a safe race and ended up being a great day of racing! While our crew had some difficulties staying on two feet, there were some great results from the entire team. Performance of the day would probably go to Jack Consenstein who had his first top 20 carnival finish and scored points for the first time in his short career at Williams College.

All things considered, the organizing crew at Quarry Rd. put on a great event! Mother nature sure knows how to throw a wrench in the system. Our athletes pushed through adversity from the strange event, and I am sure that they all learned something valuable from the weekend. Check out the pictures further below from Sunday's skate race!

After the first carnival, we were definitely all ready for the first "real" carnival weekend where we had 2 full races. Due to cancelling a race at the Colby Carnival, the EISA decided to switch the relay event to the classic individual start race that was missed on the previous weekend to make sure all the NCAA qualifier races happen in the season.

The venue at Sleepy Hollow was also hit hard by the rain event from the week prior and their course took some damage. They had to shorten the classic course from the proposed 5km loop to an easier 2.4 km loop. The loop had very little climbing, which lead to the debate of what technique to use, striding or double pole? The conditions for the mens race were very fast, but have kick wax was not so significant that it could not be used. While most of the field decided to forgo kick wax and double pole, there were still some that decided to stride and used it to great success. Congrats to Nick on taking his first top 10 of the season double poling his way to a 10th place finish. Standout performance from the mens team was Henry McGrew striding his way up to 30th in the college field.

While the conditions for the mens race were fairly straight forward, mother nature again decided to test the womens field. The temperature rose only a couple degrees between the mens and womens races, but it was just enough to change the wax from hardwax to klister. The issue with moving from hardwax to klister is that it made the kick wax option a bit slower in comparison to double poling. Our early starters definitely got the short end of the stick while Jay and I were racing to find a suitable option to kick on. Our first started (Carmen) got a very quick klister job applied to her skis with very little testing. She made the most of it, but ended up having to double pole most of the race. Jay and I were still struggling to find a good klister option for Ingrid who decided to use her skate skis and double pole (with great success!). After Ingrid, we started to get a handle on the situation and our later starters ended up having great races on the klister combination we went with. I am personally really proud of Ingrid for having the courage to tell me she was double poling when I offered her klister skis (roughly 45 seconds before she started!). Ingrid finished with a PB 14th place and was within striking distance of the top 10!

The second day of the St. Mikes carnival was also very exciting. They were able to patch together a 5km loop for the interval start skate race, and while it was pretty thin cover, it was a much more difficult course than the day before. Warm conditions led to slower skiing and it was a hard day for the atheltes making their way up the 2-3km long sustained climb from the bottom to the top of the course. We had more great finishes today including a trip into the top 10 for Carmen Bango finishing in 10th place!

Great work to all of the Purple Cows out there! We are all looking forward to the next set of races this weekend at the SuperTour in Craftsbury.