about the photo

Downtown Temple,NH

Monday, February 22, 2010

Snowshoe Double (Not the one I planned on)

If you live in the Northeast, you don't need me to tell you the snow conditions have been less than ideal over the past month. A couple of the Granite State Snowshoe Series races have been shuffled around in hopes of hitting a date with actual snow on the ground. What a concept: a snowshoe race with snow....It really should not this difficult in the dead of winter in New Hampshire.

So, this weekend was supposed to be a day/night doubleheader. The Horse Hill 7k would take place in Merrimack NH at 11:30am and 6 1/2 hours later we'd have the infamous Kingman Farm Moonlight 5k in Madbury NH. Well three straight days of 40+ degree weather plus 50 degrees on race day ended that possibility. In the end, the Kingman Farm course could not maintain enough snow for a quality snowshoe event and was removed from the GSSS schedule, effectively becoming an 'snowshoe optional' race. I opted not to participate. It was a tough pill to swallow, as this race had become my favorite event over the last couple of years. I still attended, volunteering instead...guiding mostly runners (and some diehard snowshoers) across the snowless fields of Kingman Farms. Nobody complained.. It was a beautiful, star-filled moonlight night and I made sure to point it out to more than a few participants. Heck, Danny Ferreira even ran without his headlamp on, just to enjoy the awesome night.

Is there a point to this blog post? Well I didn't do the Horse Hill/Kingman double but thankfully we still have some options. I ran the Horse Hill 7k on Saturday and then headed out west for the WMAC Hallockville Orchard 3.7m race on Sunday. Stay tuned. Incredibly boring race reports to follow soon.

No comments: