While drinking coffee and eating our post-workout scones in the warm-up hut today, we learned that Bad Bob Baker will be in Fairbanks for the 36th Denali State Bank Sonot Kkaazoot. Thus, our first skate LOD of the season meant that a SCUM redemption for our failure to finish the 50 km course at the 35th Sonot Kkaazoot would be witnessed by Bad Bob, who dreamed up the new 50 km course with 1,689 m of total climb.

Today’s SCUM workout was 30% of the Sonot Kkaazoot distance but only involved 21% of the climb. We skied Flat Black to get our bodies warmed up. We finished with the Competition Loop and Tommy Knocker Extension so that we could climb that evil hill at the end of the Comp loop twice. Bill’s smile shows how we felt conquering that hill:

Skiing the White Bear had time for heroics as Norma and Bill decided to doublepole from the Sonot Junction to the top of Hilltop, while the rest of us skated that 1.3 km section of gradual uphill. Then Norma and Bill got serious, and we skied without rest breaks until we reached the top of Heart Rate Hill, where we rang the bell that Chris Broda (of LOL) has hung on the White Bear map sign:

Skiing is great in spite of our meager snowfall so far this winter. Thanks to our NSCF groomers, and all the volunteer brushing work done this fall, we have a better skate ski base this year than we did last year. Maybe with three more months of training, the 60+- and 70+- year-old SCUM can finish the 36th Sonot Kkaazoot 50 km course. That’s our goal.