Hartford Cross

What a great day for a cross race. Last night we had torrential rains that made for an extremely tough race. I got down to the course at 7am to make sure the course was in order after last night's rain. We set up most of the course yesterday. This was a smart move as it made it a whole lot easier to focus on registration.
As of last night we had 78 people preregistered. We ended up with about 180 people racing today.
The course turned out to be a good blend of muddy sections to grind (literally) through and fast smooth. It turned out that the rain did little to the course.
For the first cross race of the year for me, I felt OK. Especially since I got home at 11am yesterday after flying all night Friday to get home from Mexico in time to set up the course.
I will post some pics as soon as I get them.

Hike in the Whites

This past weekend Mel and Lars and I were up in Maine for a wedding. The day before the wedding I had the chance to do a hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with a couple of college friends, Pete and Greg.

We started in Gorham at the Appalachia trailhead and headed up the Airline trail. As it turns out the Whites were true to their name and it had snowed a couple of days before. This made for slow going. There was just enough snow to make it slippery and not enough for crampons or the like.

We covered Mt. Adams and Jefferson and then came back along Randolph Path.

With the snow walking downhill was even more treacherous that up. We put on our Yaktraks for the decent. These are a great tool in these conditions. We were all wishing that we put them on earlier in the day. However the rocky trails were not kind to them. I ruined mine and so did Pete. Luckily for Pete, he had just purchased his so he would be able to return them.

All in all we returned to the trailhead 9 hours later tired and happy.

Hartford Cross

Come check out or race at the Hartford Cross race this Sunday. For more info go to:

http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=8721