Horse Hill Turtles

Nothing like a beer and some food after a race. After the Horse Hill SS race, we hit Martha's Exchange in Nashua. I recommend the veggie panini with sweet potato fries. As for drink, i started with the Vow of Silence Belgian Stout. It had a real homebrewed taste to it, very smooth and at 7.5%, a little bit of a kick. Sticking with the belgian style, i went for the Abbot's Habit Tripel. For a beer at 9%, it was not noticeable, very smooth going down. As you can see from the picture that Dave Principe took with his Blackberry, mine only came in a smaller glass where his S.H.A.P.E. ale could be served in a 22oz glass.
In 3 visits to Martha's, i have never been disappointed. They rotate different beers on a regular basis and the food is always good. I only wish the few brewpubs down here in RI were more like this, They basically suck in the brewpub world. You might as well head over to Wild Colonial and grab a Gansett. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Now for the race. After being cancelled once for lack of snow and the possibility of it being a trail race, we were blessed with a mid week snowstorm. Merrimack got somewhere between 6 to 8 inches of snow, but you would have never guessed it by looking at the ground on Saturday. Most of the snow was gone!

The big decision today was what to do with two SS races being held and a so called double header taking place. You got Horse Hill at 11:30 and then the Kingman Farm Moonlight race at 6 pm. Reports of lack of snow at Kingman settled the choice, Dave Principe said he was going to Horse Hill and that was it, i would be there in a support role. The more shoers your team has, the better your team places and the Turtles are in a battle for the 4-5-6 places in team competition. Dave was there with the Principe clan, Denise, Tara and SS stud DJ. I drove up with Vicki and Chris Jasparro, both SS newbies. We pulled in the parking lot to see less than 20 cars, so you had to wonder what the turnout would be like. Next in the small lot was DoubleJ in the short bus, so i knew the race would go out fast for the runners up front. Before the race, i talked to Steve Wolfe who said snow coverage was pretty good but there were some thin and bare spots out there. Steve also said the course was pretty flat......Never trust someone from New Hampshire telling you that the course is pretty flat :)  I went out for a couple of miles to warm up with Dave and DJ, Chris and Vicki went out to test their loaner Dion snowshoes. I got a chance to catch up with Jim Hansen before the start, we had a good battle last year over at Feel Good Farm. I could only watch his back today. We then headed up to the path for the 11:30 start time.

A few words before the race start by director Mike Amarello and we were off. JJ took off like a bat out of hell and the rest followed. Uphill for a quarter and then into single track. I went out easy, running with Vicki. Dave was out in the front pack and Chris was in the second pack. I was running comfortably for the first half of the race with Vicki right on my tail, but as i was hitting my aerobic capacity, i pulled to the right and let Vicki go by. Why hold up someone else? Nice thing about snowshoe races is that most everyone is aware of shoers behind them and will gladly pull over to let you by. In the end, JJ won easily, but the battle for second was close with Dave Principe edging out Sean Snow for second. Other Turtles were Chris Jasparro in 10th and his wife Vicki in 15th, not bad for two runners who never put a snowshoe on before today. I place 19th with a so-so effort and 5th Turtle was DJ Principe in 28th place. DJ and a few others took a wrong turn out on the course, so their times should have been about 2 minutes better. DJ was the youngest on the course by 6 years, he being 11 years old.

After the race i realized that i had broken a cleat on my Dions. That was nothing compared to DJ who had his rear strap slip up above his shoes and dig into his achilles. Steve Wolfe was running on busted up snowshoes too. Lousy snow conditions can really do some damage.

It seems there is snow/rain in the forecast for this week. Lets hope it is more snow than rain in Exeter, NH. Next week is the Hullaballoo and i really want to run it.

Photos courtesy of Denise Principe

                                                                                    Race Results Here

                                                                                    DoubleJ race blog
                                                                                    Jim Hansen blog
                                                                                    Steve Wolfe blog