Quad Prep v. 1

What is that, you ask? What those two abbreviated words mean to me is a whole lot of (fun) biking, running, x-country skiing, and snowshoeing up and down a mountain. The race is the Mt. Taylor Quadrathlon – you go up the mountain (bike, run, ski, then snowshoe) then turn around and come back down. At the summit, you’re at 11301 feet. The race starts at Grants, NM; elevation 6450. Not bad! The race course is 42 miles long, but will still take me about 6.5 hours to finish because of the elevation changes. Okay, maybe longer. I really have no clue.

I went out on Friday 1/18 to do the ski and snowshoe portion of the race with a friend who knows the course. We get extra credit for getting the Outback stuck and digging it out, twice, plus skiing an extra 2 miles. Extra credit is good for the psyche. The whole excursion took us about 4 hours.

You may think the ascent would be the hardest part. You’d be wrong. Descending on cross country skis after you’re tired from ascending on ski and snowshoe – THAT is no mean feat! Picture your legs kinda wobbly, your hands kinda cold, and then think about going down a grade that is steep enough to easily make up part of a downhill ski terrain in Wisconsin, but only 6 feet wide. Oh, and the water froze in your Camelbak tube an hour ago, even though you swear you blew it back into the reservoir. Oops. As the first cross country ski of the year, perhaps this was a little ambitious.

But I think I fell less than my friend.
:)