The Director's Cup

The Director's Cup

Since it's founding five years ago, HURT has been a large presence on the Nordic scene: 4 NYSSRA Club Championships, dozens of individual winners, countless podium trips; the list goes on and on. About the only thing holding the team back from reaching even greater heights is a weekly race series. Well, you can scratch that off the list too. 

Beginning this week HURT skiers of all ages and abilities will have a chance to compete in the Director's Cup, a weekly series of races with a sometimes unusual format that will get you skiing faster, and, more importantly, having fun. If that's not enough, the overall winner of the series will get to take home the The Director's Cup.

The cup was hand-crafted by the Director himself some time ago. (Note: By Director I mean the original Director, the George Washington of HURT Nordic.) It took quite a lot of convincing to get the Director's mother to agree to let this masterpiece go, as you might imagine, but she has finally relented. If you win the cup, however, you won't get to keep it forever. It will be a revolving trophy that will pass from winner to winner each year. 

The Director is still working on the complex point system for determining the overall winner and format for the events, but the first event has been set. It is this Wednesday, January 8, at 6 p.m. at the Queensbury school trail. It's called the New Year's Resolution Race. As a HURT skier, you resolve to ski faster, and that's what you'll try to do. Ski a loop around the proposed snow-making course and take your time (all timing for these events is self timing). Now, ski it again and try to go faster. Keep this up for 40 minutes, always trying to ski faster (better pace yourself). Count one point for the first lap and each lap you ski faster than the one before. Go slower one time? That's OK. Make that your new starting time. Try to go faster the next time. At the end of the event, you'll put one token for each point you earn into the cup. The Director, or his next of kin, will then pull a random token from the cup. That will be the race winner. The Director will continue pulling tokens until everyone who competes earns a place. The more laps you negative split, the more tokens you have in the cup. 

So you see, anyone can win. You can even do one forty-minute lap and still have a chance. The Director expects to see you at Queensbury this Wednesday.