Saturday I headed up to Center Sandwich with fellow acidotic RACING and GCS teammate Jerry Fitzgibbon for a weekend double at the Sidehiller Snowshoe Race (results). Ok, not a real double, more like a snowshoe series double since Sidehiller is part of the WMAC Snowshoe and Granite State Snowshoe Series. Bonus! Sidehiller would be my 4th WMAC race and 4th GSSS race.
Turned out to be a great day for a race (except for the lack of snow of course). Cold, crisp and sunny made for fast-like-you-read-about conditions. Unfortunately the snow killing rain on Monday forced a significant change to the 4 mile course. The entire race would be held on the fairgrounds and we'd get to know the course very well. The course changed to a 1.7 mile loop mostly around the perimeter of the fairgrounds and would be nearly flat (except for a small hill about 1/2 way around). Most of it would be on lightening fast groomed trails (nearly ice in some locations) with a short section of single track near the end of the loop. Oh, and we'd do the loop 3 times for roughly 5.2 miles of snowshoe speedwork. A quick preview of the course made for a no-brainer decision to swap out my deep cleats and go with the standard cleats today. I didn't want to destroy my deep cleats (again). After swapping out the cleats I took them for a test ride on the course, doing the entire loop so I had a good idea what to expect.
