My goal for the weekend was to get good and tired, get in some good long classic skiing, and ski fast by either doing a time trial or race. I actually managed to accomplish my weekend goal on Saturday by skiing at Giant's Ridge with the Batdorfs and even doing a time trial with Bjorn Batdorf.

When Sunday morning came, I was definitely a little fatigued and questioning myself whether I actually wanted to race. Fortunately, my friend Matt Ryan gave me a call and we headed up to Boulder Lake to ski the 9.2 km skate race.

The race course was a short 2.3 km loop on the Bear Paw trail. The trail network at Boulder Lake is very nice and generally maintained quite well by money from Minnesota Power. Unfortunately, a snowmobiler had torn up most of the trails during the New Year's warm up and the Bear Paw trail was the only loop that was easily salvageable.

The temperature was near 0 when we arrived at the start, but the organizers had some nice heated tents and a fire going. Matt and I signed up and proceeded to try and get warmed up by skiing on the course. It was evident that considering the conditions, the organizers had done a great job getting the course ready for a race. We met many familiar and fast faces during our warm up and realized that a top 10 performance would be a good goal.

The race was an interval start every 30 seconds and I was number 39. I was happy to see that Andre Watt was starting a minute and a half ahead of me, so I wasn't too concerned about seeing Andre on the course. My plan was to start out conservatively and then try and power the third and fourth lap.(I always seem to have that plan, but for some reason I rarely follow it) I'm sure that my first lap was my fastest lap, but I was really happy that I felt reasonably good heading into the second and third laps. The trail was plenty wide and passing wasn't a big deal at all, either. Even though the loop had some nice rolling hills, there was very little rest time and most of the hills I actually skated down. My older skis also seemed to be working quite good in the cold temperatures thanks to some Fast Wax Teal I put on them last year.

As I glided across the finish line with a smile on my face(OK, I just realized that someone probably has a picture of me, gliding across the finish line looking like death warmed over. If that picture exists, then my smile was on the inside), I was really happy that I raced the Boulder Lake Ski Tour and plan to return when the full course is used next year. Andre Watt won the race, but I was pretty happy to finish only a little over 2 minutes behind him in sixth place overall. After almost everyone received some nice awards and doorprizes, Matt and I skied a few more loops and called it a great day.

I arrived at Capitol Square around 6 to pick up my bib and watch the NORAM races. It turned out the races were running late, so did some shopping on State Street. I returned around 8:00 to warm up. The women's NORAM finals were about to start. The race course was a 500m "out-n-back" type loop instead of the usual 1k square around the capitol. I'm sure the warm temperatures limited the snow making capabilities, so they couldn't snow-in the entire loop. At the half-way point, the course headed down a gradual hill and made a 180 degree turn. The key was to carry your speed through the turn because immediately after the turn, the course went up a 10 foot tall bridge. The snow was really icy on the bridge, so if you stalled out, you risked sliding back down the bridge.

As I was jogging around the capitol grounds for my warm up, I spotted two fellow skinnyskiers, Margie and Per Nelson. I was happy to see Margie since I wasn't too thrilled with the thought of 10 laps on the icy L-shaped course. The advanced race started late, as I had expected. The officials told us we had to count our own laps. I wasn't too sure I could count to 10 while racing.

The gun went off and everyone sprinted off the line. My strategy was to take the first lap easy, since I figured everyone would pile up at the bridge. I was right. Margie was stuck on the bridge about 5 racers ahead of me. Someone in front of her had stalled out and was having trouble getting over the top. She and a few men made it through. Then, much to my dismay, another racer stalled out and started sliding backwards. Two men tried to pass the line of us by sneaking up the side. That proved to be pointless since the bridge was only 6 feet wide or so. We finally crawled over the top of the bridge and continued the race. By that time, Margie was long gone.

My strategy for the U-turn was to slide into the corner, then, when I hit the soft snow, I would execute my turn. This worked well for the first few laps. As the race progressed, I felt like I was getting closer and closer to the edge of the snow when I tried to make my turn. I figured it was fatigue setting in. After the race, I found out I wasn't that fatigued! It turned out, one of the race officials was raking the snow OUT of the corner! His efforts were making the icy glacier on the corner larger and larger every lap. After about 7 laps, I grew weary of the sprint-slide-turn-sprint required to navigate the course. I couldn't take the corners as aggressively as I wanted to because the icy patch was now enormous and I was usually behind master skiers that were being really cautious in the corners.

I finished the race in second place, about a minute behind Margie. By the time I got my warm-ups back on, it was almost 10:00! What a night!