COSMIC
Randoneé Race at Loveland Ski Area 
I’d been itching to give this Euro-centric sport a try for a number of years. Lack of gear, confidence, fitness, and convenience had always held me back until this year. Spurred on by my friend Hamish Gowans, I got a light randoneé (aka Alpine Touring) setup. This is ski gear that allows you to free your heel while skinning up a slope, like backcountry tele-gear, but then allows you to lock down your heel to come down just as if you were on alpine downhill gear. This is a nice feature for us tele-challenged skiers. Also, if you get the race specific gear, an AT setup is extremely light – much lighter than a typical telemark setup.
Anyway, I tried one of these races in January at Sunlight, 24 hours after receiving the gear in the mail. I didn’t write a report on that race because it was a depressing disaster. I arrived late, didn’t know how to use the gear, wore the wrong clothes, missed the start, froze my butt off, had a catastrophic skin failure (they wouldn’t stay on the skis), and, for the first time in my life, I DNFed! (Did Not Finish). It was horrible. Let’s move on to today’s race, shall we?
I still hadn’t practiced much with the gear and am still a completely klutz when trying to put on the super light and super cool, but incredibly difficult to put on, Dynafit bindings. I tried getting into and out of the bindings a few times in my living room the night before, but it’s tougher in the middle of a race, on slippery snow, with snow packed into the boot holds, on an angle, etc.
I drove up to Loveland early on
Saturday morning, a full 70 minutes before the start of the race. While checking
into the race, I was surprised to have
This race was third in the COSMIC AT Race
Series, which consists of five races all over
When the starting gun sounded we all ran into the tunnel that cuts under
I-70. Everyone was required to carry their skis through the tunnel. On the
other side we threw them down and put them on, like
a
After entering the tunnel it was so clogged up that all but the front runners were forced to start walking. Further back racers were standing waiting for their turn to enter the tunnel. The problem was that on the other side, skiers threw down their skis and blocked racers from exiting the tunnel. I moved well up the path and off to the side as a curtsey to other racers, but most didn’t. I’m sure all the elite guys think they are so fast that it doesn’t matter, but it does. Even if you it takes you only 15 seconds to put on your skis, for that time other racers are just standing and waiting for you. They can’t move by, because they are stuck in the tunnel. This was a poor decision for the race start, but in the end it didn’t matter much.
I fumbled with my dang bindings and by the time I was off, many racers had gone by me. I saw my friend Hamish up ahead of me and set my sights on reeling him in. My heart rate was immediately over 160 bpm. I knew it would be a long race and I needed to pace myself for it. This race was about learning and finishing more than going all out. I probably took things a bit too easy during this race. My heart rate never reached 165 bpm. I averaged only 157 bpm for the race. That sounds pretty low, but that includes all the descending (over 3600 feet of it) where my heart rate dropped to 127 bpm at one point and the entire race took place between 11,000 and 13,000 feet. It is much tougher to get your heart rate up at high altitude because there isn’t enough fuel (oxygen) to burn.
I passed Hamish about ten minutes into the race. This lower section is a bit frustrating since I was held back from going my own pace a bit. There was really only one track for ascending for most of the entire race. Passing either required the skier if front of you stepping off the track, which did happen at least a three times for me, or you had to go out into the unpacked snow. If the person was much slower, this wasn’t a problem, but after 10-15 minutes of the race you’re with racers that are nearly your own speed. I usually just stayed behind the racer rather than force a pass. Though this was a tad bit frustrating, it might have helped my race by forcing me to take things out a bit slower.
The leaders just hammer right from the start. They go all-out, start to finish, and are incredibly fit and fast. I was initially hoping that this sport would be obscure enough and small enough so that I might do well, but that wasn’t the case. Though the field isn’t large, the talent level is very high and quite deep. In fact, the talent level is closer to bike racing than running, with the exception that all categories are racing together.
Conditions at the start of race were quite cold. The skies were a beautiful blue, but the winds were howling. A number of racers got very cold in this race. I fared well, though, because I bundled up. I wore two long-sleeve shirts, a cycling jacket, and a wind shell (unzipped). You’d think I was have over heated massively on the ascents, but the cold, wind, and my meager power output kept me quite comfortable for both ascending and descending. I was only cold for about 15 minutes and it was only the right side of my face, which got continually blasted near the top of the first climb. That side of my face actually went numb and didn’t feel normal until hours after the race, but I received no frost nip damage at all.
Once we broke out of the trees and were completely above timberline, I tried to count the number of racers ahead of me. I guessed I was somewhere between 20-25th place. I set a goal to finish in the top 20. I didn’t get a good feel for how many racers started. The last race I did had about 40-50, I think. This race was bigger, maybe 60 or more. That would only put me in the top third of the race. Dang.
The first climb gained about 1400 vertical feet and 38 minutes (all vertical gain information is from my altimeter watch and is approximate). The first descent was steep, ungroomed and short. Before the start of the race I overhead a race official giving advice to one of the female racers. He told her to leave her skins on for the first descent, since it was so short. Taking skins off is fast and easy, but putting them back on requires taking your skis off and putting them back on (slow for me). Also, once skins are removed and your skis get cold and wet, they are more difficult to re-attach. The fear that my skins wouldn’t stick a second time prompted me to carry the extra pairs, but digging them out of the pack after a failed attempt with the first pair would waste more time. The total time required to remove skins at the top and then put them back on at the bottom had to be 2-3 minutes for the fastest racers and probably 4-5 minutes for me. I decided to leave the skins on and hoped they stayed on the skis.
The descent was slower and trickier with the skins on my skis, but the skins remained fixed to my skis and the descent taken me less than four minutes. I was passed a couple of skiers at the top of the descent as they took off their skins. They passed me back on the descent, but I passed them again, and others that I hadn’t seen at the top, as I started back up the next climb. This pattern would repeat itself throughout the race as I used this strategy throughout the race. So paranoid was I about my slow, unpracticed transitions that I made a mid-race strategy decision to do almost the entire race with my skins on. This worked out very well.
The second climb was short, only two hundred vertical feet, and the next descent, while longer, was all on a groomed blue/green run. It dropped 700 vertical feet and I kept the skins on again. I was with a group of guys that I would be with for the remainder of the race. Our positions would change at the transitions, when I’d go by, but these guys were faster on the descents because they had no skins on and faster on the ascent because they were fitter than I. Yet my strategy allowed me to keep up. My biggest weakness was my transitions and I turned that into my biggest strength by eliminating them completely. I’m sure I had the lowest overall transition time in this race. The only thing I had to do at the transitions was either free my heel or lock it down.
The third climb was the second longest at 1200 feet and took us to the race highpoint at around 13,000 feet. We were now on the Continental Divide. The course went up and down along the ridge. The climbs were tiny, 15 feet or so, but it was enough for me to skin past others who had to herringbone. After a bit we started down a double-black diamond run and there was fresh snow (wind blown) on it. I skied it reasonably well with my skins on. Normally skins give you a very jerky motion, but these skins skied smoothly, albeit slowly.
The next climb was extremely short, just 100-200 feet. The next descent was cool, as it went down a bumpy run in the trees with soft snow. I forgot to lock down my heel and was paranoid about breaking my binding/books. AT gear is not designed for free-heel descending. I kept my heel down and snowplowed when I needed to lose speed. The descent was 500 vertical feet and we started the last climb of the day. Here I passed a racer with a larger pack and I assumed he was in the recreational division, as he was much slower than the rest of us. This climb was really neat, weaving up through the trees on a single track. I stepped to side to let one racer by so that he wouldn’t have to brave the powder snow, where he likely couldn’t have passed me anyway.
The last climb gained 400-500 vertical feet and put us at the top of the
eastern end of
Normally, I’d think that I could best nearly anyone on a double-black mogul descent in a randoneé race, but by now my legs were complete noodles. I skated hard along the top before we dropped in and edged just ahead of my competitor. The start of this run was very steep and dropping in I wondered if my legs would cramp or not. I knew I should have downed some liquid and some GU’s in this race, but that is difficult to do while going so hard and with gloved hands and a frozen water bottle.
I tore down the upper part of the run, trying to get a gap. A hundred yards down we had to cut right and my chaser wasn’t far behind. The skiing got tougher now, though, steeper with bigger moguls and some trees as obstacles. I opened up a big gap and soon he was out of sight. I figured the finish line would be at the bottom of the run, but once there signs directed me to the left. Okay, I thought, just a traverse to the finish to reduce the speed at the finish line, but no. The course turned and headed very steeply up hill for only a hundred feet to the clearly marked finishing banner. This was a brutal finish and made things look a bit silly. Instead of skiers blasting across the finish line, they were slowly herringboning up the slope. I looked over my shoulder and was glad there was no one there. If I had a chaser, it might have been faster to remove the skis and run up the slope. In fact, I’m sure it would have been faster.
I plodded slowly up the hill and crossed the line in 18th place
for the AT Race Men category with a time of 1:56:09. The winner, Ethan Passant,
finished in an impressive 1:30:01. Eric
Black (a former winner of the
Full results are here: Loveland COSMIC Race Results. If they aren't posted there, you can view this PDF file: Results PDF. You can download the free Adobe PDF reader here.
This race was well done and Pete Swenson deserves a big thank-you from all the racers for making this exciting new series happen. The Bent Gate (mountaineering store in Golden) is offering 15% off all AT race gear to anyone who enters these races. The course was really fun and well marked. Plus, Pete had volunteers at all the transition areas pointing racers in the right direction.
Next up in the winter adventure race schedule: The Rising Sun! I’m the new race director of this small, goofy race. It is a really fun time and provides opportunity for some good suffering and many laughs.
