Somebody from Ruby's Inn resort at Bryce Canyon took the picture from which I cropped this composition in photoshop and sharpened it.   Someone should really teach those amateur photogs how to shoot action!  I would have liked a much tighter composition with much more sun on my face and shot from somewhere in front of me!

March 18, 2001. The race: The California Gold Rush at Royal Gorge, Soda Springs, California. 30 km. The course consisted of a 15 km loop, skiied twice for my group and 3x plus an extra small loop for those going the full 50k. The elite skiers (Subaru Factory Team, etc) in the 50k event lapped me. I came in ahead of about 20% of the 30k skiers. I feel very fortunate to have had enough residual fitness (from doing something) to even finish. I skiied easily until the two thirds point, when all of a sudden I didn't feel bad, but my quads wanted to cramp. I found that some 60 year old guys can ski fast! I finished in 1 hr 56 min--one of them finished twenty minutes before me. (My rate of travel:  3 minutes 50 seconds per km and 9 miles per hour) I knew I could break 2.5 hours, but didn't entirely believe that I could finish under 2 hours, so my time pleasantly surprised me.

The ski shop in nearby Norden, Calif flex-tested my skiis and declared them too stiff and long for me, but I resisted buying new skiis. I didn't believe they would make me go faster--nothing but a good conditioning program will help me out. Maybe next year I can do as well as some of those "over 50" guys.

If I had used my heart rate monitor, I might have seen my pulse go to as high as 100% of Max heart rate--not a race for Dick Cheney and his pacemaker/defibrillator!