6 PM
Run 13:16 [1] 1.3 mi (10:12 / mi) +13m 9:54 / mi
Traffic looked miserable, so I strapped my skis to my Birkie Backpack and slalomed through the BU Rotary over to Brookline Village on a Hubway. Dropped the bike, train came in 4 minutes, out to Riverside. Only a 10 minute jog over to the ski track, pretty okay sidewalks on Grove Street and then roads from there. It would be nice to have a groomed trail to Riverside, of course!
Hour door-to-door, so marginally slower than driving but way less cursing and no need to worry about a parking space getting home (rarely an issue, and I shoveled out an extra space so I have parking space karma), and then John gave me a ride home.
Ski 52:35 [1] 8.5 mi (6:11 / mi) +119m 5:56 / mi
After changing and the bathroom, only a lap and a half to warm up. Unfortunately it was soft enough in places I didn't want my hard skis (also my soft skis still had Birkie fluoros) but we didn't go out on the flats where my soft skis would have been stellar. Oh, well.
Then after the race, several cool down laps with John and Brendan and then another with John, who gave me a ride home. He was late. Traffic.
Ski 17:16 [3] 4.0 mi (4:19 / mi) +58m 4:08 / mi
So I've been nursing a light cold all week. Mostly a chest thing, so my wheezy hacky cough has been in and out, and I've been a bit dehydrated. Great recipe for a ski race in dry, cold weather, right?
Started out in the mass start and Rob almost got tangled with someone and I said eff it I'm burning matches I don't want any part of that and hung on with John and Mark for a couple of laps, with Jimmy joining us. We gapped a chase group but pretty quickly my lungs gave up and I went right back through the chase group to No Man's Land and finished there. No need to sprint the finish with no one around until the chase-chase group almost caught me. So not a great race, but good skis at least. And I'd rather be sick for Worlds than the Birkie.