The Thundertrek snowshoe race (and both the downhill and nordic ski races) scheduled for this weekend (Sunday 3/5) is cancelled due to lack of snow.
The town of Adams will still have their winter festival on Saturday – details can be found here.
Stay tuned for updates regarding our final series race of the 2017-17 season, the Northeast Snowshoe Championships at Prospect Nordic in Woodford, VT.
We had lots of our regulars head out to Saranac Lake this past weekend for the World Snowshoe Championships. After weeks of race organizers posting updates regarding all the snow they had – Mother Nature had the last laugh and spent a week melting it all with record warm temperatures and rain. But they would not be beaten, and volunteers spent days shoveling snow trucked in to build a 4k course.
There are photos, videos, articles, and all sorts of coverage out there, and as soon as I get a chance I’ll compile a bunch of it and post it here. But in the meantime, congratulations to everyone who ran this weekend. Regardless of whether or not you won an award, you ran in the first World Championship to be held in the USA – no one else will ever be able to say that.
… and need a ride or looking for a rider? Our Facebook page has a post where folks looking to carpool can leave a comment to that effect and perhaps find someone to share to trip out to Saranac Lake. Good luck!
Based on statements made at the start of last year’s Brave the Blizzard (which featured cooler, cloudy weather and mud, mud, and more mud) today would be the 13th running of this race, which has roughly a 50% success rate for being held on snow. Two storms in the last week and a half dropped 18″-24″ of snow on the Albany area, and Tawasentha Park maintained its snow cover incredibly well – less than 10 miles away my small backyard was more bare ground than snow on Sunday morning.
Ask a dozen snowshoe runners what perfect conditions are for snowshoeing and you’ll probably get a dozen different answers. The snow cover today wasn’t perfect – there were a few patches of nearly bare ground and some very wet spots – but for me there’s something about running through the snow on snowshoes on a gorgeous sunny day with temperatures nearing 50 degrees that made today, if not perfect, pretty darn enjoyable, albeit about as far from actually braving a blizzard as you could get.
The 5k runners split off from the 5.5 milers a couple of tenths of a mile from the finish line, with the 5k men’s and women’s races won by Shaun Donegan and Megan Boyak respectively. Tim Van Orden not only finished 1st in the 5.5 mile race, he did so roughly 15 minutes faster than the 2nd place finisher, women’s winner Jamie Woolsey. The results from both races are available on here; note that the 5k results have been combined with the 5k splits to allow long course runners to earn series points for both distances. Results with only the 5k runners can be found on the AREEP’s site.
Huge thanks to the ARE and their abundant volunteers for not only organizing another excellent race but also for providing plentiful pancakes and refreshments afterwards.