Snowshoe racing is fun!

Snowshoe racing is fun! OK, so snowshoe racing may be one of the most difficult racing disciplines I have undertaken but very…very fun. Fun because one is blazing along in the crisp winter air throwing up an albino rooster tail of fine powder and screaming down a 40 percent grade with a 90 degree turn at the bottom, all the time convincing yourself, “you’re on snow, it won’t hurt when you fall”! Ah…a moment of pure blissful disillusionment. Like being a 3 year old again, before you recognized the equation; fall = damage. In truth; the whole race course is your older waiting to whitewash you when you let your guard down to see if the School bus is coming. Difficult because well…when your running through snow it’s hard, and when you step there’s no guarantee that your foot will be where intuition lays it. Terra firma my ass, running over a parfait is more like it. At times I like to drift into a world where I’m running through the silky white sand beaches of the Caribbean. Often the Pixes lyrics on autoplayback in my brain, “I was swimming in the Caribbean…with your feet in the air and your head on the ground. Try this trick, and spin it. But your head will collapse but there’s nothing in it- and you’ll ask yourself; Where is my mind”. Check your head at the door folks, we are doing a snowshoe race. Where you run as hard as you can and 85% of your energy is dissipated horizontally and vertically as thousands of little snowflakes (no two exactly alike I must add) play the steamroller game over each other. Last weekend I did my third snowshoe race. The Empire State Games Championships 5k in Lake Placid. I didn’t fall once. I ran hard, hard enough that my stomach was shambled for the rest of the afternoon and I had a smile on my face well into the evening.