"All or Nothing" says Todd

I've caught the skate skiing bug. It's awesome, and I'de rather be outside than in the basement. Here is a recent story from my old friend Dave Knoop. He used to crush me on the mountain bike.

"Greetings nordic skiers and nordic ski enthuisiast's too! This week's story brings us to the storied Methow Valley and the Methow Pursuit a two day race format with a 15k Classic/ Diagnol Stride race on Saturday and a 26k Skate race on Sunday. Winthrop, Washington is a little town nestled in the hills just below the craggy snowy North Cascade Mtn range. Fly fishin', ranching, climbing and wandering abound here. In fact one of the more influential oranizations here is called the MVSTA or Methow Valley Sports Trail Association with heavy emphasis on Sports and Trails. In winter that means cross country skiing and lots of it. Like 200k of it as they will proudly tell you. Back in the 70's or 80's somebody wanted to put in a mega alpine ski resort here and they were promptly run out of town and told never to return. In fact you won't find any strip malls and or franchise chain stores like Starbucks in Winthrop and they like it that way just fine thank you. The area can best be described by the local artist who loves this place as his passion, check out www.seanmccabestudio.com Meanwhile back out on the road, driving across central Washington from Spokane, Nordic Dave encountered the huge Grand Coulee Dam situated on the Columbia river. It is a perfect description of power in many ways. The gigantic powerlines stretching out to far off major cities hungry for power, the Columbia it's massive body of water trapped and harnessed from raw power into electric power, Grand Coulee is engineering Power with a capital P. This weekend 'Ol Nordic" hoped to harness power into Elan and Panache. Everyone knows his classic/diagnol stride skills are well..... not good, not good at all, in fact they suck. Nordic reasons the only way to get better is to do more classic races. Hence The Methow Pursuit race format catches nordic's attention. One day classic the next day a skate race. The accumulated time of both days events counts towards the overall results. Nordic hopefully reasoned that he would somehow fake it and get by on Saturday's classic race then apply elan and panache on Sunday.The plan is immediately shown for all it's fallacies when nordic arrives in Winthrop and walks into the Nordic Ultratune ski shop (a shop of mythical purportions much like when the Griswolds finally make it to "Wallyworld" ) and is informed by Mark Waecther, owner, key employee, and "official wax tech of the Slovinian Ski team", that tomorow is indeed a KLISTER wax day. A klister wax day is a day nordic usually just skips all together as not worth the time and frustration on sugary snow and iced up classic groves. Grand Coulee indeed, how to harness power into elan is something to behold on these race days. On race day #1, 53 minutes later nordic has double poled much of the race course, rarely attempting to stride and lose anymore time. Nordic has given up 6 minutes to the race leaders, 3 minutes to his racing buddy Dan Packman (aka Stein Lager) and the ultimate slap to the face, 2 minutes to the leaders in his own "old guys" age group. In fact nordic is in 18th place overall at the end of the day and 4th in his age group. Yes nordic has dug himself quite A HOLE! Much like the feeling of wanting to kick the windshield out on Division St. in Spokane (aka.. a strip mall hell that stretches for 6 miles, nordic is left to stew for the rest of the day and night. Day two, the day dawns warm and generally gloppy, Nordic can successfully report to anyone about the best application of the occaisionally debated MVX grind pattern on skis that yes it in fact works very well in the valley of it's name sake and conditions like this. This morning, the start is all business & you are starting in the order of yesterday's finish and time. Watching the leaders start something like a year before nordic was tedious to watch, watching skiers in nordic's own age group start minutes ahead only made his nostrils flare. It felt damn good for "old nordic" to fire out of that hole with skiers ahead of him, skiers to ski down. Smooth strong, high cadence skiing alone was the order of the day. Catching/passing slower skiers quickly, giving them no chance to latch on was working well, every skier passed another pelt to hang on the fence. Elan and Panache flowing freely, working the hills with a V2 uptempo cadence eyeing the prize of another skier up ahead toiling away up a head in V1 mode. 7k into the race, passing the skier in 2nd place in nordic's age group, he puts up a fight not wanting nordic to pass only made nordic think about the next skier somewhere up ahead. Nordic was in a hurry to ski down as many skiers as he could before he ran out of time and distance. Far off in the distance on flat fields nordic eyes the next two skiers, they are hundreds of meters away. It takes focused effort to bring them in. Once passing them it is an empty void with nothing but ranches and trees to look at in the flat light. A furious effort with 10k to go nobody even in sight just skiing alone against time and an hour and 14 minutes later it is over. A cathartic effort working out the demons from yesterday and it felt real guud. The skate was the 9th fastest overall on the day unfortunately only good enough for 12th overall in the final two day results. Stein Lager has moved up to 6th from 9th overall the previous day yet he seems pensive as if it wasn't good enough. Stein is built to hammer hills he raced the flats this weekend and ponderous of his next events. Meanwhile Nordic takes the 1st in the old guy age group overall, a consolation prize for spotting them 2 minutes at the start and hunting them down imagining that they gave 'ol nordic smug looks yesterday and nordic must have retribution today. Actually they were really good guys but nordic was feeling a bit like Adam Sandler in the movie "The Waterboy". Nordic ponders this whole stride and glide thing as an exercise in futility. Ahh yes, nordic is then reminded by father's persistent outlook in life.....i.e. "the beatings will continue until the morale improves!" Nordic knows he will suffer in more classic/diagnol stride races in the future yet it only makes him hunger for the "A" races in the skate mode yet to come. Stay tuned for more exciting and fascinating stories from the Nordic Dave Adventures Series."