We are going to move to Kensington for a change of pace for our Team NordicSkiRacer.com Run/ Rollerski Duathlon. In fact, we're turning the Duathlon into a Pursuit! I'm looking at 3 dates right now....Sunday, September 24th, October 22nd and November 19th.
Although its both a run and a rollerski, you don't need to do both. Don't run? Just rollerski. Don't rollerski? Just run!
New Running Course
The new run course is almost finalized, but look to finish climbing up the sledding hill! The run starts and ends just across the from the boat rental parking lot. We'll run up from the main road, down the toboggan run, across the park road to the Springs Hills parking lot, then into the woods on some hidden single track and onto park ski trails.
The route will take a hard right (see the blue line below) before crossing back over the park road at the hilltop lookout and into a set of ups and downs that include the sledding hills, before heading back to the finish.
This is a pretty hilly course - 315 vertical feet if you follow the red line (2.85 miles). The additional distance indicated by the blue line will put us closer to 5K and add just a little bit of vertical.
Although the course is hilly, just remember - this is training session, not a real race! Walking the hills this early in the fall is entirely OK!
Rollerski Course
The rollerski will start from the boat rental parking lot and either go east or west along the bike path and return to the paddleboat parking lot to finish. This should eliminate that sometimes cool ski back to the car we had at Island Lake. The ski will start with the last runner about 15 minutes after the run finish.
The mostly likely course will be to head from the boat rental past Maple Beach, up the brand new pavement to the Possum Hollow soccer fields, down the path to the Possum Hollow road crossing, then hand a hard right onto the Possum Hollow road. We'll ski to the end of the road, go around the turnaround, then retrace our steps back to the start. We have to measure the distance of this course, but it's probably around 5K.
The alternative is to head the other direction down the path, then turn left on the road that heads out on the peninsula. We'd go all the way to the end then turn around to ski the same route back. This course is around 4 miles.
Pursuit Format
The new venue will also bring a new format. After the last racer finishes the run, we will have maybe 15mins until the start of the ski, which we will start in reverse order of the run finish at some sort of time interval (every 30secs or real time behind the fastest runner? Or stage by ski speed?).
Start Time
See you Sunday...let me know if anyone is interested in a preview of the run course one night this week...you may be recruited to help mark the course