January 21, 2015

Outdoor Retailer SkiMo Race

Andrea and I were able to head up to Solitude yesterday afternoon for the Outdoor Retailer / Gore-Tex "Wasatch vs the World" SkiMo race. It was a fun, lung-busting, patience testing, and humbling experience.

Since we don't have our own race setups (yet), we scrambled to borrow gear at the last minute. I was able to borrow some demo PDG skis from the Dynafit guys at the last minute, and used my regular TLT5 boots. Andrea grabbed some Wasatch Speed Girl skis from the kind folks at Voile.

The race was a four lap semi-technical (for us) course.  We were both strong on the portions that were based on pure fitness (I guarantee no one ran up the bootpack as fast as I did), but both of us lost a ridiculous amount of time on the technical parts and transitions. There's a huge learning curve in this sport. It will take lots of practice to start bridging the gap. We are looking forward to some longer races (ie. Powderkeg) that theoretically suit us better.

In any case... Andrea and I are excited about giving SkiMo competition a shot. We are definitely diving head first into the shark tank right now - but by next year we think we can be competitive (especially as a co-ed team). This is a relatively small sport at the moment, and the people who do it, do it well. Almost all of the competitors are fast, wearing lots of spandex, and are very skilled on the technical aspects of racing. And they start fast! They are also great people (Chad, for example) who are already going out of their way to give us tips and help us get started in the sport.


Race profile. This was a sprint-lap format. We like the longer climbs!

Jake in yellow, on the boot pack


Andrea figuring out how to get through chopped up snow on 150cm skinny skis!

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