Ski to Sea

I cannot believe that I have not posted anything about Memorial Weekend! This year was the second annual Knight/Bruffy participation in the Ski to Sea race in Bellingham, Washington. The Ski to Sea is a relay race made up of seven relays and eight team members. The race begins at Mount Baker and ends in Fairhaven, Wa (just south of Bellingham). There were about 440 teams this year. Here are the legs and our 2008 team members:

X-Country Ski: 4 miles: Jule Gust (my neighbor) completed in 41 minutes: 196th place
Downhill Ski/Snowboard: 2.5 miles: Mike Kord (my brother-in-law's boss) completed in 28 minutes: 62nd place
Run: 8 miles: Dave Cram (my brother-in-law's brother-in-law) completed in 54 minutes: 197th place
Road Bike: 36 miles: Steve Rutz (my brother-in-law's brother-in-law) completed in 1 hr 40 minutes: 126th place
Canoe: 18 miles: Steve Bruffy and Joe the Intern (my brother-in-law's father-in-law and co-worker) default time of 2 hours: no place
Mountain Bike: 9 miles: Joshua Knight (my hubby) completed in 37 minutes: 125th place
Sea Kayak: 5 miles: Christian Knight (my brother-in-law) completed in 36 minutes: 38th place

This year the team did awesome. Each leg improved times from last year and we calculated that they placed about 120th out of 440 teams. I say WE calculated because there were some screwed up times this year. About one hour before the canoe leg was going to start the race officials cancelled the canoe leg. The Nooksack River was just too high for the large amount of recreational canoers about to boat. So, since there were going to be no canoers handing off the timing chip to the mountain bikers, the officials came up with the marvelous idea that all mountain bikers could start two hours after the road biker came in. Unfortunately, that plan did not work so well.

Instead of using the timing chips that were calibrated for each team to track when the road biker came in, the race officials decided that they would have somebody hand write the team numbers of the road bikers as they came in to the canoe start area. Of course, lots of team numbers were transposed, written down wrong, or flat not written down. That is what happened to our team.

So after these people wrote down what road bikers had finished, they called the race officials at the start of the mountain bike leg. They then told them over the phone the team numbers and when they could go. This person then told a completely new set of people who would then write the team members numbers on a huge board as to when the mountain bikers could leave.

Since Josh was doing the mountain bike leg, that is where I was. It was utter chaos at the start of the mountain bike leg! Anyway, to make a very long story short, our team numbers was one of the ones that got missed in that first writing down of numbers. Apparently the person did not see our road biker come in! So Josh started the mountain bike leg more than three hours after our road biker got in. He should have started two hours later.

At the Ski to Sea website our team is ranked in the low 400's, but after re-calculating with the correct time of 2 hours for the canoe leg, they are around 120th. As you can see from their times and rank, everyone was AWESOME!

Next year we are putting together two teams; a mens and womens teams!

Here are some pictures from this years festivities:

Josh, Jule, and I camped out on the lawn at my brothers house. This was the view at 5:30 in the morning. We had to get Jule up the mountain to start the race at 8:30.

This is part of the X-Country ski course. Jule and I drove up the day before the race and skied around.

Here are all the canoes lined up at the Nooksack river waiting for the road bikers to come in. Poor guys, after all the work of setting up gear, they did not get to paddle.

Some teams totally get into the race! Here is a picture of one team where all eight members dressed up as Chewbacca.

Here is Josh getting ready to cross his finish line and hand off to Christian. Josh is on the left. He totally kicked that other guys butt.

Here is Christian in line waiting for Josh. He is the one in blue, standing akimbo. (shout out to CK for the vocab lesson)
And finally, here is Christian paddling away. He kicked that yellow guys butt too.