10K classic, a pass and maybe a bit better

First caveat, in four tries I've never done all that well on the "3 Hills" course at Birch Hill. The combination of climbing out of Blue Loop for 3 min, a short 20 sec rest, and then 3+ min of Tower Direct, a 2 min rest, and another 2 or 2.5 min of climbing on White Bear Access, twice, for a total of 1,000 ft of vertical is just to anaerobic.

Would have been fun to do 20 or 25 years ago. For classic I prefer something like all of Tower and White Bear, like the Gundeloppet skate course.

38:01, no great shakes, when you see Dylan Watts go 29:40 and lead 5 guys under 30 min. But then again they're 25 or 30 years younger and national class skiers.

My time age graded to a 32:40s, which back in the day when these guys were toddlers or babies, this would have been a decent to good early season ski for me. So I'll take it, despite melting down both times on White Bear Access, just at the cutoff, where I was reduced to a walk. Two or three Level 3 workouts and one Level 4 just doesn't cut it. Best news is that the knee held up and two days later still feels pretty good.

It was a great racing weekend, and the kids all did fantastic. Kuba and Erich dominated the J2s on Friday and Saturday, and Mikko put together two nice races to put himself on West Valley's Varsity and was 5th J2 both days. And on Saturday the three J3s all showed strong effort and placing in the 2K, with a 2nd, 4th, and 5th.

Now rain!? Three days of it? What's up with that?