A Lesson in Perseverance, 2/28/2010
As the Boreal Lopppet organizers cancelled the the 103 km main event, I opted to drive to Lake Placid on the afternoon of Thursday, 25 February. A friend of a friend offered me the use of his place. "There might be snow in the driveway, you should bring a shovel," he warned. No problem; along with the toys, I packed a shovel into the Subie. I got out of New Jersey before the worst of a nor’easter hit.
Arriving in town at twenty minutes to midnight, I found a 50-yard driveway obliterated by snow, with just enough space to get my car off the road. I broke out the shovel and got three or four car lengths dug out, plus a path up to his house. I hauled my stuff up to the house and went to bed. On Friday morning, I spend another hour or so digging 18 inches of wet, heavy snow, clearing another 5 car lengths before setting off to ski.
With 3 to 4 feet of new snow covering the north country, Mount van Hoevenberg was closed until noon, so I drove a couple of extra miles to Cascade Ski Center. Cascade connects with the Three Trails Loop at Mount van Ho; but I'd only skied there once. It was a wicked cold January Saturday, perhaps 12 years ago, so cold that the pipes in the van Ho lodge had frozen. The Saint Lawrence Ski Carnival was that weekend; much to the relief of the athletes, the day's races were cancelled. You should have heard the kids cheering in the lodge! My wife and I skied over to Cascade to fill our water bottles. It's a nice enough place, featuring much easier terrain than van Ho on narrow, old school trails. But I digress.... Returning to my crash pad on Friday afternoon, I spent a couple more hours shoveling and got the driveway into decent shape. It was the least I could do.
On Saturday morning, I returned to Mt van Ho. Porter Mountain, Perimeter and Three Trails were still not open at 9 AM Saturday. The grooming crew was still working at the huge chore of clearing blowdown and grooming the trails. From the time I clipped into my skis, I was tired. Moving all that wet, heavy snow was workout in itself, in addition to skiing. But I wanted to replace, as much as possible, the Boreal Loppet.
Focusing on technique and smoothness, I looped twice over Russian Hill on to Ladies 5k; then I took a break to go to the biathlon side before returning to the hills. Then a quick lunch, followed by another tour of the biathlon side and the hilly stuff. After a little over four hours, I owned up: Mt van Ho is my daddy. It was great to ski and see snow hanging heavy on the trees, so much snow that even on Sunday, the place wasn’t completely open. But being as beat as I was, it wasn’t exactly fun. I can’t recall the last time I watched the clock on a long, easy day. Recently, I read the following: A marathon is about how fast you can go before your body breaks down; an ultramarathon is about how fast you can go after your body starts breaking down. How to keep going when you're hurting and tired. It's something we all have to do in the middle of a race, and it hasn't always been one of my strong suits. It was a valuable lesson.