Today’s continuing ‘heatwave’ failed to deter Helen and me from a little adventure onto the sloppy snow.
We chose the Loppet warm-up loop, from P2 car park, where tomorrow (Saturday) some of the world’s finest athletes, and Ken, will hare off down the 51km course, hoping to finish in a little over two hours.
Today it took Helen and me nearly an hour and a half to ski the 9km warm up loop. We were passed several times by two friendly chaps, pictured above, who were setting signs for the various Loppets taking place over the weekend. The 51km version is the longest; there’s also a 31km route.
The sun shone, as usual on this trip, and the scenery was delightful. Here’s Helen swooping down trail 5. To her right is the corner at the junction with trail 26 that I failed to negotiate a few days ago.
Back near P2, an international medley of finely honed athletes was involved in a recce in advance of tomorrow’s exertions. They all looked very fit. I hope Ken doesn’t get mown down in the melee. Nor Susan and Roy, who are starting with Ken in ‘Wave C’, for that matter.
The Loppets start in five ‘Waves’ – A to E, in the latter of which the duffers are set loose, 8 minutes after the elite group. That means the duffers have 8 minutes less in which to reach the aggressively timed cut off point after 24km.
Oh dear!
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