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It had been way too long.

America and the entire world are now a full year into the Covid-19 pandemic. Although I've missed in-person races and running events as much as anyone, most organizers that opted to cancel events out of precaution made the right call and I respect race directors' decisions to do what they think is best. Given all that's been going on, some races that did take place weren't events I was comfortable running. And of those I was comfortable with, some went off just fine at a time I was in no shape to run them (i.e. 2020 Cayuga Trails) due to the cumulative stress of trying to train while stay-at-home parenting twin babies. All the local sub-marathon races I may have considered running were cancelled, leaving me no organized in-person race since the Beast of Burden Winter 100 in early February 2020. 

Almost a year to the day since my last race of any kind, I made it up to Hammond Hill State Forest for the Finger Lakes Runners Club's Super Frosty Loomis Snowshoe Race. With a field limited to 40 runners across two distances, separate start times for each distance, mask and social distance requirements, and a bare minimum of volunteers and spectators, the club determined it

Snowshoe Racing Debutante

Wintertime in Upstate New York can be conducive to a number of outdoor activities. Cross-country and downhill skiing are abound, along with winter hiking. With the volume of snow dumped across the region this winter, one thing that became difficult is trail running. With that in mind, I signed up to race in snowshoes for the first time.

The Finger Lakes Runners Club holds a snowshoe race on Hammond Hill annually, always the day before the Super Bowl. The Super Frosty Loomis Snowshoe Race 10k course is essentially the FLRC's Thom B course run in reverse, minus a 1.5-ish mile section of red-blazed singletrack on the forest's southeast side. The event has a 5k race concurrently with the 10k. At 1,700 to 2,100 feet elevation, Hammond Hill always has more snow than the surrounding valley at this time of year.

I was originally hoping to run Goose AR's Cast-a-Shadow 6-Hour race on this day instead, thinking there might be little enough snow west of Rochester that it would become a trail race sans snowshoes. (As it was when I ran Cast-a-Shadow in 2017.) But nope—it was full-on snowshoe season this year at CAS and I was unable to find a pair to rent or borrow on short notice. I instead