Lake Tahoe Fresh Tracks 5k Snowshoe Race

I wanted to baby my sore right calf today but Slowrunner77 invited me to cheerlead (called me out) so I rented some snowshoes and got my mind right for the Lake Tahoe Fresh Tracks 5k Snowshoe Race. Turi (I ain't got a nickname for him yet) kindly drove and Team Library Dork (TLD) headed uphill to Tahoe to run in the snow. I broke one of my few rules about racing and ran with untested equipment. I never in my life wore snowshoes and really struggled to try them on @ Eclipse Running (Reno's Awesome Running Store!). I spent a restless night worrying about snowshoeing.





We got up to Camp Richardson and it ended up raining instead of snowing so I figured to put in a hard day at the office. After the normal pre-race lollygaggin', the race started. Snowshoe starts differ from other races because of the spray of snow from everyone taking off but after a hunerd meters everything settled into a normal race experience. Snowshoeing expends more energy but you put one foot in front of the other and go to the finish. The effort seemed weird because the distances felt off based on the workload. I really felt the effort during the second mile but finished in 37:38. They measured the course long but my GPS measured short but I know my famous "run the tangents" "strateegery" saved me several steps.

Slowrunner77 took the overall win; Turi finished top-five and second in his age-group and I took third in my age-group; so the TLD made the Washoe County Library System look good. I hate SnowLep missed the race but she can borrow my award until she wins next year.