The great plan for the race within a race
Mon, Dec 16, 2024 - By Mike Muha
You saw the 2024 Forbush Time Trial results, but the real story has yet to be told! It was not only the season opening race the the 2024-2025 Michigan Cup: It was my first race of the season and I was determined to beat my training partner, Tony Percha. This is the story of my grand plan to bring Tony down!
It all started at 5:40 am. The weather report warned of icy roads from southeast Michigan all the way to Forbush Corner. I was to drive, picking up Tony and Zbigny Zlobicki at Tony's house. The roads were not that bad, but I did slip a bit in my two-wheel drive Honda Odyssey minivan. Arriving, I mentioned I was a little worried about the drive since the ice was supposed to be worse up the road. Tony fell for my ploy and suggested his four-wheel drive might better handle the conditions. After a little discussion, I "accepted" his offer. Little did he know how this played into my hands!
We took off and headed to Flint where we picked up Doug Cornell, slipping and sliding on the back roads to I-75. Once Doug was safely on board, we continued our journey, driving as slow as 45 on the highway when conditions were bad. It wasn't until Roscommon that we found only wet road thanks to the superior road crews up north. I took us an extra 45 minutes to make the drive north. Tony admitted that it was white knuckle driving. His stress levels were high!
After getting our bibs, we tested skis and warmed up. Our first set of skis were equally fast. For me, this pair felt a little squirrelly. The second pair felt more stable, but maybe a tad slower. Since I have good balance, I choose faster over more stable. Tony chose what he thought were his more stable skis.
When I registered, I choose Wave 2. I figured the more skiers on the course, the more the warm top layer of snow would mix with the colder layers underneath, resulting in slower conditions. An early wave meant fewer skiers in the way.
When I registered, I immediately sent Tony a message with my Wave, figuring he'd want to ski in the same wave. But no! He had already registered for Wave 5 and hadn't told me! It was part of his plan to keep me in the dark. It came back to haunt him because I was quickly out of sight and out of mind. He wasn't going to get the opportunity to use me as a rabbit.
My heart rate graph for the race
My job was to ski as smart and as fast as I could. That meant
- Finding the fastest line and snow. I discovered early on that the classic tracks where very fast. I marathon skated around inside corners where I could to take advantage of the shorter distance and faster snow. I jumped in the tracks on downhills and tucked, often catching skiers who had passed me on uphills. I always looked for the fastest line.
- Keeping my heart rate down for the first half of the race. That mostly worked until I found myself near my max hear rate while climbing a hill a third of the way into the race. I quickly slowed down to gain control and took it "easy" for a kilometer before starting to push the pace again.
- Paying attention to technique are trying to ski as efficiently as possible.
I averaged 94.5% of my max heart rate for the race, and hitting my max heart rate just before the finish.
Finish line! Now the wait. The seconds ticked by. No Tony. A minute passed. Since Tony started a minute behind me, that meant I had beat him! But by how much? Another 45 seconds goes by and Tony finally finishes. Victory was mine! The icing on the cake was I beat everyone in Tony's car on the way up, including Doug Cornell!
For someone who trained and raced less that 200 hours in 2024, I was pretty happy. Getting a fifth in my age class against skiers who trained two or three times more hours made it even better.
Tony? He struggled keeping his technique together. "I picked the wrong skis, and I was stressed from the drive!" Ya ya ya....
It was a great season opening race! Let's see what happens at Hanson Hills' Winter Wolf 2x5k Skiathlon in January! I'm sure Tony's looking for paybacks...