Shoe'n in the Dark - Seymour Night race

Well, The Yeti has hit a new high with it's first ever night race. This event was a last minute replacement for the cancelled Whistler event and to paraphrase most of the partcicpants "Thank God the Whistler race was cancelled because this event was awesome fun!".
The snow had been falling for a while and the event had to be delayed for a half hour to allow for the traffic conjestion on the road. The course was a 3km loop instead of the traditional 5km loop and this made for some interesting late race lapping issues. Essentially we ran downhill from the start on a broad groomed trail and then entered tight, twisty singletrack that looped around the lower portion of Mt Seymour until we found ourselves climbing back up the groomed runs to the line. Three times up the final climb prooved to be the biggest challenge of the race, but also keeping it smooth on the soft singletrack sections helped keep the speed up.
A fast crowd showed up for this one and unlike the previous Mt Seymour race our whole SnowRunning.com team was present and looking for a win. This prooved to be the tightest and most competitive race yet with the top athletes only seconds apart from each other. Andrew Clarke looked to have a lock on first going into the final lap, but being the first runner had its problems getting by the lapped traffic and he soon found young Shaun Stephens-Whale on his tail. This junior elite runner took advantage of the situation and attacked Andrew juat before the final climb. Andrew held tough but couldn't bring back the youngster and finished second at 9 seconds back. Justin Mark won a battle with Team Yeti runner Ryan Ervin for fourth and Dave Cressman lost a race long battle with Olympian and Team Yeti member Andreas Hestler with "Dre" getting away on the final climb to the finish. Dom Repta came in close behind for eighth place and the girls of Team SnowRunning.com dominated again with Carey Sather taking the strong win and Krista Royle coming in just behind her for second.
Needless to say that with these strong performances Team SnowRunning.com easily won the team competition again.
The Night race was a huge success and loads of fun. Thanks to Marc Campbell and his team for another outstanding event and to Dave Howels for a wicked fun course.
See you all at Cypress on March 17th!
Dave out.

SnowRunning.com Loses for the first time!

For the first time since it's inception two years ago Team SnowRunning.com failed to win the Team competition in the Yeti #2 held on Mt. Seymour today. The loss came by default and not a lack of performance on behalf of the members that raced. Andrew Clarke won the Men's race and Krista Royle won the Women's while Dave Cressman had a great day to finish second to Andrew, but alas these were the only team members racing and rules require a minimum of 5 athletes to count for the team competition. So hats off to Club Smart Ass who deserved the win with their great team spirit and performances.

The 6 race wins in a row were bound to come to an end for Team SnowRunning.com, but it was unfortunate that the loss came due to some extenuating circumstances and illness and not from straight out racing. The news came from the Ferry at Departure Bay that Cary and Justin had missed the 7am Ferry and would miss the race, bummer as Cary has won 90% of the races she has entered and would have been a great help in the team competition. Justin is building his fitness and surely would have been on the podium today. Dom has been ill for the past week and couldn't risk getting worse with his Western States preperations underway. So we had 3 and with 3 we did the best we could with first and second in the Mens and first in the Womens races.

The Seymour course is clearly the longest and probably the toughest of the Yeti routes with loads of climbing and usually interesting snow conditions. Today was no exception...the weather was almost perfect with near 0 degree temperatures and no precipitation. The course was fast with no new snow to speak of and a well used trail system packing it out. Besides the sugary corn on some well groomed and used areas most of the course offered good footing and made the run a little easier.

This looked to be the largest event in the Yeti's history with over 150 snowrunners in the 2 events and a few new faces to boot. As usual Andrew wnet hard from the gun and a few boys took the bait and tried to follow can you say "Mistake". They all realized before th 3km mark that they had made a fatal error in pacing. Dave and perenial strongman Rob Lang ended up locked in a battle for second about 3 minutes behind Andrew and it was only settled on the final descent to the line with Dave taking a 50 metre advantage over Rob at the finish. Krista had a easier time of things and was never challanged for the lead and was happy to celebrate her first Snowshoe victory.

All in all it was a great day and the only blemish was that we missed our friends Carey and Justin at the line with us.