Perkinstown Snowshoe Race

This was my first race on the "Blue Bus." A group of 9 of us travelled to Perkinstown, Wisconsin for the annual snowshoe race. It was a beautiful day for the drive. I hadn't been on a school bus for a couple of years. This bus was converted to be able to fit a number of racers in for a comfortable ride. It provided a warm changing area, a place to stand indoors, and a place to store a lot of gear. It was a fun time. Prior to starting the race, I felt like my legs were full of lead. I didn't have a lot of get up and go today. Last year's second place finisher, John Brylski was there. His son, Ken, came this year and took off like a jack rabbit from the start. I kept pace with Ken and Ken eventually fell back into the group. A beautiful picture was snapped on the first hill by Image by Faud, a photographer out of Depere, Wisconsin. I couldn't pass up buying a great picture like that. What beautiful timing. After leading the first mile, I was caught by John Brylski and Mike Quednow. Brylski passed me and I let someone else do the pacing for a while. Later in the singletrack, I stepped arond Brylski and got around him followed closely by Quednow. I kept the lead until 3 miles, when Quednow then gained an advantage over me. I let my guard down and gave up too big a lead over the next mile. In the final 2.2 miles I was not able to close the gap enough due to the weaving in and out of all the 3 mile snowshoe racers which made it difficult to run smoothly and in a straight line. Quednow won by 34.7 seconds. My time of 53:46.3 was faster than last year's time, but not good enough for the win this year. The highlight of the day had to be the 3-legged snowshoe race. Someone had constructed a set of snowshoes which would allow for two people to snowshoe together much like a 3-legged running race was done. My partner was Mark Bittner. A great competitor, Mark and I were expected to go far in the 16 team, single elimination competition. At stake was a 12 pack of Schlitz beer (so maybe there wasn't a lot of emphasis to work hard after all. . .now if it was Leine's that might be another story). In any case, after I did a few pushups prior to the race, one individual put $20 down on us to go all the way. Mark and I had a bye in our first round, as the racers who were supposed to race against us had either left, didn't hear the announcement for the race, or were in the beer tent. In any case, an easy victory. Our next opponents were a couple of women who did not look coordinated at all. We should have taken this competition easily as well, but Mark and I could not coordinate our leg speed. Our goal was if we stayed upright, we knew we had an excellent chance to win. Mark tripped not once, but twice (he says to this day that I tripped him. . .I don't think so, Mark). In any case, that sunk our chances and we lost that round. We still finished the race and walked to the finish line, defeated in our attempt to earn the covetted Schlitz beer. Fellow snowshoes Shannon Gindt and Brian Arnold made it to the semifinals with several rounds of flawless snowshoeing. They got knocked out in the second to last round by the team that eventually won it all. It was fun to try the ride on the bus and I am sure there will be more excursions in the future for the bus.