Jeremy Wright North American Snowshoe Championships - Beaver Creek Colorado

By MATT CARPENTER
www.skyrunner.com

Matt Carpenter reports:
Distance: 10K
Goal: Win and pick up a quick $1,250
Results: Lost (2nd by 19 seconds) and got a not so quick $600
Website (results): http://www.gohighline.com/bcsnowshoe/event4_06_overall.pdf

General Summary:
I jumped into this race at the spur of the moment to put the “hobby books” back in balance. I have developed a nasty little addiction to flying R/C airplanes. Well, the flying is not the nasty part, it is the crashing that is costing all the money.

At any rate, it turns out just jumping into things can be a bad idea. I got schooled and paid for my indiscretion. Well, actually I was paid to get schooled but someone else got paid twice as much to be the teacher.

Things Done Right:
1) Despite some rather comical falls in the singletrack section I did not give up and at least kept the winner in the same zip code.

2) I wore shorts and I think I was the only one who did. It was a great day and I was getting hot with tights just in my warm-up so I can’t imagine what it would have been like to race in tights and jackets like everyone else.

Things Done Wrong:
1) I fell six times to the winner’s one with three of them being in the singletrack. That put me way back although I worked back to about 10 seconds. But then I fell again and got stuck in the snow with about 300 yards to go. Chalk that up to being the first time my snowshoes have seen snow since the last time I did this race in 2001. Five years is too long and I paid for my lack of practice on the skill side of the race. I should have at least thrown on my snowshoes for a couple of training runs. However, in a strange kind of way it was awesome to watch the winner pull away as I enjoy watching people with that kind of skill do their thing. In this race it certainly wasn’t me. I would get up, go another switchback, and fall... Race over:-(

2) I did not read the race rules or lack thereof. I just assumed it was like in 2001 when pretty much every snowshoe race had a 25” snowshoe rule which is what I was running in. Well not any more — no rules! The winner and many others were in what appeared to be 20” shoes. This is not sour grapes on my part as I freely admit it was stupid to give myself such a handicap. But heck their snowshoes looked like kid’s snowshoes next to mine and that is what irks me the most in that I had Kyla’s 16” snowshoes with me for her to play with which since they had no rules I guess I could have worn. Well I guess in theory since they had no rules I could have run in my running shoes as that would have been the fastest on this hardpacked course...

3) I did not take the competition seriously enough. Bottom line, I thought this would be easy money (literally) and because I was not prepared (see #1) and stupid (see #2) the competition creamed me. I tried to console myself in that I did pretty well considering #1 & #2 but in the end I lost and I don’t like to lose. I shall just have to train harder because after all was said and done I only lost by 7 hundredths of a percent!

Any Other Stuff:
The course was hardpacked and all and all it was pointless to be wearing snowshoes other than the fact that it was snowshoe race. In one downhill section they had singletrack packed down in some deep snow. It was like a bobsled run. It would go like 20 yards and switchback and go another 20 yards and switchback for what seemed like about 8 switchbacks. It was fun and frustrating at the same time. I caught myself laughing after one of my falls at the thought of someone else laughing when the set the course just knowing that they were going to take out a lot of people just like they took out me. Kinda reminded me of the way Larry Miller goes about setting the cross country series:-)