The crew at DTR did a tremendous job of dealing with 6-8 inches of new snow and blustery winds Saturday morning, grooming right up until race time and providing the best conditions anybody could have asked for. What looked like a tricky day for service worked out well for us thanks to lots of advance information from Chris Phenicie. Chris has been testing various paraffins and observing the uncharacteristically moist snowpack at DTR for the past couple of weeks, and he took a BNS test fleet up Friday morning and got us some timely and accurate information.
We applied LF Graphite and Matrix Blue on Friday afternoon in Boulder, based on Chris's phoned-in test results. Saturday morning Eric and Nathan confirmed Friday's powder test result and picked Mid 08 powder. We also ran a handful of optimizers and chose Mid 08 block. The BNS assembly line cranked out 18 or 20 pairs with powder and fluoroblock shortly before the race. Thanks to Dave Wickum for pitching in and brushing skis for his hour long warm-up!
It was a classic day for fluoroblock optimizers. The Mid 08 powder was a bit better than the Matrix blue, but the parrafin alone was beating the lesser fluoro powders (C105, for example, was not quite in the mix). The really big difference came from the cold application of fluoroblock. A couple of guys felt that the block ran out of steam in the second lap and the skis slowed down from "stellar" to "good". My theory is that Pepper got to their fluoroblock application toward the end and his arms were worn out from corking. I wisely chose to apply my own fluoroblock, and my skis just got faster as the day went on. Lesson: cork those cold applications HARD! The snow was really new and not abrasive and it's possible that a little more corking, especially of a hard fluoroblock like Mid 08 (maybe one of the hardest fluoros to work with in block form), might have made a significant difference. We're generally really confident in getting 15K out of a fluoroblock application, and we'll take that advantage for the first half of a 30K. If we get more, it's a good bonus.
On the whole we had fantastic skis. The only guy with tough luck on skis with Phenicie. Cruel irony, after his great testing contribution. We know it wasn't the wax. He was on a CV0, and plenty of those were out there doing really well. So we're taking another look at his skis this week to see what we can learn.
Big congratulations to Nathan and Lenka on their strong performances (did I mention that I beat Lenka?). Nathan's secret training plan seems to be on track, and as long as Glenn Randall, or anybody else fast, doesn't show up at the big target event (which is also secret), then it's almost sure to maybe work. I don't think Lenka needs any secrets. Based on her performance she's going to give a hard time to anybody who shows up at any race she enters. By the way, I beat her. By plently. Like, maybe, two minutes. Extra big thanks to Eric Pepper for organizing everything, waxing skis until his arms fell off, and then hanging out with Gunnar while I raced. It was a fun event, and great to see so many BNS suits and skis out on the trails!