I returned to Winter Park this past weekend to take in the 3rd annual stagecoach classic. I had attended the 2nd edition after having missed out on the inaugural event because I was in Cartegena with Jason in January 2014 and too busy drinking Club Colombia, sitting beside rooftop pools, and riding bikes up and down giant mountain passes to think about zipping around the nordic trails.
Notable discussion at the finish line about how/why the waxing was apparently slower this time around compared to last year even though the conditions should have been faster with the warm conditions. The tracks were perhaps a little softer than the previous year, but not so soft that they were breaking down as a result of hard kicking. Following the weekend I crunched the numbers to compare finishing times of people who competed both years. On average people were about 3 minutes slower than last year with 31/44 of those competing both years being slower than last.
Also calculated as a percentage of finish time.
The wax probably wasn’t really the contributing factor. Upon review of my GPS data there were some course modifications, in particular one notable one that made the course longer. Mystery seemingly solved. I felt notably better on the long steep climb at km 8 than I did the previous year and felt notably worse in the double-poling sections than I did last year… probably due to having lived at 5000 ft long enough to have made some notable adaptations and also due to weak-ass abs. I served myself some significant double-poling intervals the next day to inflict some damage. Some core-improvement before the Birkie would really be nice, it’s too late to make a huge difference but probably worth trying.
The field near km ~17. Red line shows the longer 2016 route.
Finish descent.
Altered due to new road I think.
After Aid #1.
Different but not longer.
Overall I’m a fan of the changes, made the course closer to 30kms, it was still a bit short. There are some simple loops that could be added around km 7-8 that could add another bit of distance to the front half of the race as well without dramatically altering anything or making things too much more difficult, just padding in some extra distance.