HURTathon

Sunday Feb. 13th saw the second running of the HURTathon ski event. Previously the event had been cancelled from its January 9th (due to poor snow conditions....and by “poor” we mean green grass and barely frozen ground) but with copious amounts of mid-season snow organizers had high hopes for perfect conditions and an ideal race weekend. Mother nature had other plans. Tree blow down and fluctuating temps had organizers working hard on Saturday to break the hard Queensbury crust and clear trails of debris.
Hat Nerz and the HRT newsroom caught up with the organizing trio of Kvam, Yarsevich and Huneck prior to the event to ask them about the challenges.

HRT: So last year for the Tri-HURT-athon you battled a course that had almost no snow. As your solution you dragged snow on sleds from the woods to fill in the course....Did this year go any smoother?

K,Y,H: You would think with several feet of snow it would have been a breeze. But this year instead of hand-dragging the snow out to be groomed....we had to hand drag the groomer through the snow.

HRT: Wha?!!!!

K,Y,T: excellent question, Hat. Well stated. The snow under the ice crust in our field was so soft that when the sled broke through the whole snowmobile would get sunk in and stuck. Our Great Director’s solution was to have us drag it inch by inch from the end of the field back into the woods where the snow was much firmer. He considered it a good strength workout and solid pre-race workout. And all the hours of raking the trails.....that merely cleared the way for more needles to fall on the trail that night......that was our cool-down. He did however, decide to rest most of the team in order to achieve great results today. But he seems to feel that if we are going to challenge for the NYSSRA relay cup the three of us need to “kick it up a notch”. Even HE, didn’t make it out today because he wanted to watch TBS movie marathon of “Dodgeball”...I think he finds it inspiring.


HRT: Did that backfire?

K,Y,T: Yeah it did. He is out of his mind....(oh gosh, did I say that outloud?....will he read this? shoot....I’m toast!)

HRT: Overall though....how’d everything turn out.

K,Y,T: Overall, the event was a great success! Team HURT has the best race day volunteers, the best baking staff, best T-Shirts and the #1 awards-making team in the WHOLE-ENTIRE-WORLD-around-the-greater-saratoga-warren-county-area. We had a better turnout than last year’s Tri-HURTathon and and had several new skiers join us for our first ever “Pick Your Poison” try it event. You may just see these folks strapping on NYSSRA bibs in future races after the great success they had on our 5k race course. Our Kochers had a great time in the final event of the day and I think all of our 10K competitors enjoyed the challenge of choosing between double-poling on skate skis or striding the two main hills and switching their boards. It made for a unique added wrinkle to a normal ski race.
We really want to thank everyone who came out to support our event and we look forward to hosting another ski event next year. Congratulations to this years Men’s Champion: Tim Donahue from Manhattan Nordic racing and our Women’s Champion: Heidi Underwood from Team HURT.

Congrats to the many many local HURT members who came out to enjoy the race. We love having all the club support and its because of you all that we have one of the most successful local clubs in NYSSRA. HURT is nothing without skiers like you who want to get out an be part of community that just loves ski racing.

Check the results to see how our members did this year.

Please enjoy the few race photos and the short movie clip from the HRT newsroom.












P.S. We are sorry that our website, www.hurtnordicskiing.com is not working properly. There has been some difficulty with our hosting and the problem soon should be worked out very soon.