monday, july 5, 2009
Badger Blather

I knew I was in for an adventurous 24 hours in deciding to travel to the Badger State games with Jan. With Jan driving! Jan who comes equipped with a half inch thick pile of MapQuest and Google map printouts, plus “Gert” the talking GPS on the dashboard and still manages to need at least one 180 turn to find the correct highway to Appleton, WI. I think the driving had me lulled into thinking the wildness was almost at an end when close to the race site we drove through a wind farm. Those big blades kept turning and turning and turning… so beautiful. I was mesmerized, not thinking that wind turbines meant wind, lots of wind, constant wind. I should have realized we were going to be in for a wild race the next day, but the blades kept turning, turning, turning…

Surprisingly we made it to Appleton in great time. The hotel does the memory of the “Crust Motel” in Ashland proud and I’m pretty much off the hook for that one.

Race morning and the forecast said “breezy.” Breezy like a Wisconsiner says the course is relatively flat. HA! The wind was steady 20 mph across the course with gusts to 30, Jana was knocked off her skates when a gust struck just as she hit a small hole in the road.

The race started well and I was moving up on the second pack. I was upwind of the main line of skaters and as such I was blocked from the strong cross wind. Once I pulled into the line, a group just a few skaters up with Ken Huss and Margo made a move and the guy in front of me didn’t answer. I pulled around in an attempt to close the gap and that’s when I noticed the wind. I must have pulled for a mile thinking only one skater was behind me. I waved him to take the lead and found I had been pulling a line of eight or more. The last thing I heard as they dropped me was “Nice pull.” Oh those fatal early mistakes.

Photo credit: Posted by gaetano4140, on InlinePlanet.com

The new Badger course includes a long climb of maybe a mile and a third. The climb however must have been the equalizer, as Margo and Ken finished only 3 minutes in front of me and I skated solo for the last 8/9 miles. First time up the hill I took it easy and totally dropped a strong skater who on the flats was putting serious hurt on me. I coasted all the way down waiting for him to catch up and that is where a pack of four women caught us. The next few miles saw me with rejuvenated legs and all seemed fine, ‘cept the women kept the heat on and I soon started fading. I forced myself to hang until the turn home then let the pack get away. I was very happy to see Jana, making up for lost time, a minute or two behind me.

Some crazy ass thought struck me as I approached the hill a second time. From a mile out the hill appears as a wall of road seemingly rising straight up into the air. All I could think was I wanted to do anything but pound out the miles against that wind. I knew that climbing would stop me from thinking about the wind and a sense of relief overcame me. Maybe it’s just time to see the head doctor or maybe it’s all those A2A miles, but I have two or three different hill strides and I just kept rotating through them ‘til the top.

It’s wasn’t until crossing the line that the race director apologized for mistakenly changing the course that morning for a total of 29.9 miles instead of the normal 26.2. Ouch, I knew it hurt, but that made the 1:49 time more palatable. The bigger surprise came when I found out that Rainbo’s own Marcy Turek took first place overall. Beating out the men at their own game – sprinting. Nice going Marcy.

Overall the Barger Games puts on a good event even if it’s not on a course a flat-lander might call relatively flat.