Mt. Shasta Snowshoe Race

So this was a Western regional qualifier for the US snow shoeing Championships that will be held this coming March in Northwest Wisconsin, right near the Minnesota border!

This was my first time ever running in my new Crescent Moon - Gold 12 Racing snowshoes...

It was fun, my lungs are still burning 5 hours later. I wasn't sure what was gonna happen with this race, I had no clue how I would pace myself. There was fresh powder falling and it was on the side of a huge mountain. I ended up starting really slow and quickly realized that the main pack was way too slow for my liking so I just kinda took off, my legs ended up feeling like they were full of concrete pretty quickly, but the fact that I knew there were only 2 people in front of me gave me some motivation as I attempted to chase them down. I closed the gap pretty good, but my "normally devastating finishing sprint" was hampered by the approximately 200 lb snowshoes that I felt like I was wearing, I ended up with 3rd place over all, missing 2nd by probably 10 seconds and first by probably less than 20 seconds. Not sure when final results will be up somewhere, but I will link them when they are.

There weren't as many people in the race as I thought there would be, I think the fact that tire chains were required to get to the race site might have scared a few people away, but I like snow shoe running, and I did qualify for the National Championships so I might make an attempt to get back home for that.