The Pole(ski) Peddle Paddle is much like your traditional
triathlon but it pulls from a much different set of athletes. It brings
together professional mountain bikers, rando racers and small town elite
athletes. After a particularly bad snow year the few weeks before the race
restored some faith in this event dumping over 40inch of snow in April alone
rejuvenated the slopes and refilled the rivers.
Our 3person coed team will be pushing the limits and trying Keep up with
all of the men’s teams. The team
consists of Ryan Ognibene in his first 3P where he will pushing hard on the
ski. Heather Prentice which will be our stud biker and JR’s new fiancé, Woohoo,
you heard me right people. Lastly, we have Jeremy Rogers doing the anchor leg
in the kayak where he will hunt down anyone that has snuck past earlier in the
race.
After Checking out the conditions of the course Saturday and
fine tuning all of our gear we settled in for the night and got ready for our
not so early morning. Everyone on the team really enjoyed the 10:30am start
time which left us plenty of time to sleep in, eat a good breakfast, and get
mentally prepared to race.
At 10:30am the gun went off. Ryan Took off up the snow
packed trail for a 10min accent. Ryan moved quickly into second place pushing
hard. At the top he ripped his skins and took off down the only fun section of
skiing on the course. With fresh soft snow the downhill went very quick,
rushing through the trees and out onto the flats. On The flats Ryan pushed hard
alternating between skating and double poling down the track. Towards the end
when the snow turned in to more dirt then snow Ryan quickly switched to his
Vasque running shoes and ran out the last mile of the course. This did not
prove to be faster than his competitors but it did leave Ryan with the
satisfaction he was not literally skiing on rocks and ruining his skis on the
last mile of the race course and a faster TA time. In the TA Ryan quickly
passed on the timing chip to Heather and she took off.
Heather powered through the 15 mile mixed forest service
road and single track descent with wreckless abandon shaving 10 minutes off her
2012 split on the bike leg finishing in a solid 1 hour 9 minutes just minutes
off the lead male soloists. Her technical riding skills have really blossomed
in the last year and the packed sand couldn’t slow down the Schwalbe Racing
Ralph’s.
Jeremy took the pass off from bike to paddle and weaved his
way through record low water flows to win the paddle leg by a respectable
margin with Colorado multisport powerhouses Shane Sigle and Evan Ross close on
his heels. Never had running shoes been
so important in a paddling race! He even ran his boat over numerous stretches
that he deemed unpaddle able from scouting runs the day before. Colorado’s
snowpack is finally recovering from last years drought and this years low flows
were more reflective of conservative releases in early season than potential
runoff in the upcoming 4 weeks.
After a hard fought race we waited in suspense to hear how
we had placed. Not really knowing how the other teams had done. As awards went
on we discovered we did not take the entire race. A few 3P veterans had
finished just before us. Finally our time had come to learn our fate. We were
not 3rd, we were not 2nd, we had Won!! The announcers states
that Team Dart-nuun not only won the Coed team division but they had beaten out
all of the men’s teams also. What a great experience and race. We will
definitely be back next year to race the PPP again.
Looking back at the race we also discovered we had put the
fastest TA times up of any team or individual. This was just icing on the cake
for our great weekend.
