On January 11, 2015, three Canadian masters skiers had the dubious pleasure of racing in the Rampa con i Campioni – the Citizen’s Race up Alpe Cermis on the last day of the Tour de Ski in Val de Fiemme. Andrew Hicks, Mark Duperreault and Norbert Meier had been accompanying the Tour as guests of the FIS in preparation for Ski Tour Canada 2016.
The Rampa con i Campioni is held at 10:00am on Sunday morning with the world cup skiers starting at noon (men) and 1:30pm (women). There are time deadlines along the way so that the citizen racers do not interfere with the world cup race coming up behind. 132 skiers had entered the 2015 Rampa, ranging from former Olympians to recreational skiers, mostly men but a few women were also on the Start Line. 113 skiers were to finish the day’s race.
Each racer’s personal journey up the formidable climb has its own story. I’m sure we all faced it with a degree of trepidation and more than a little uncertainty about just what a 28% uphill grade would feel like. No doubt, numerous racers on January 11 had done this race before, but for us three Canadians it would be the first time.
Here is my story, written on January 11, 2015:
The Alpe Cermis climb today was quite an experience. Coming at the end of the Tour de Ski (TdS) and at the end of our week as Observers of the TdS, it was fitting end to a great week.
The start of the week wasn’t that good though and it took until Thursday the 8th for us to receive our ski bags from Air Canada or Swiss Airlines, whichever airline had bungled having our skis arrive in Zurich last Saturday.
After two travel days, we didn’t have skis for a further three days and were not able to ski until Wednesday the 7th in Toblach. So, with Alpe Cermis looming, we had five days without skis and any real kind of training. There was very little natural snow in the Alps at that point and the TdS race courses were closed to us most of the time. Even if we had had our skis, getting quality training in would have been a challenge.
Arriving in Cavalese on the afternoon of Thursday the 8th, we found the Val de Fiemme also did not have any natural snow to speak of, but we went for an hour’s ski on the Marcialonga trail in the afternoon and then finally had a two hour ski above Cavalese at Passo Lavaze on Friday morning.
Race day at Alpe Cermis …..
Of the 132 people signed up to ski, it turned out two of them would be Northugs. Mr. and Mrs. Northug (Petter’s parents) were in the race and, of course, our joke for Saturday was guessing how many Northugs we were going to beat on Sunday – none, one, two or three.
The race course : After doing a few hills at the Val de Fiemme Nordic Centre, the race course follows the Marcialonga trail along the river to the bottom of the Alpe Cermis alpine ski area. Two kilometres of skiing at the Nordic centre and four kilometres of Marcialonga trail gets you to the bottom of “The Climb”.
The climb starts right away and is relentless. As much as you tell yourself to relax, to glide and to not blow up, it’s a hard race for pacing. Not having ever skied up a 28% grade, I had no idea how that would feel and how I should handle the 10-15% sections which come before. The uphill grade keeps on changing, but is never below 10%. The steeper sections are attacked straight up, the traversing sections are not at the steepest parts, and the “shallow” parts in-between are still steep.
The climb was a hard physical and mental experience. Physically, pacing matters a lot, trying to relax is crucial, maintaining body lean and mechanics is a constant focus. Going from one-skate to offset and to diagonal skate and back to offset and back to diagonal skate…it becomes an on-going struggle between speed and survival. The switchback sections are actually quite difficult even though you’re traversing the hill. If you don’t enter the turn right, it’s a struggle to get set-up for the next turn and you basically come to a stop.
For most of the climb, my body felt fine but my speed was limited by my heart rate and energy level. My heart rate monitor told me afterwards I had spent 48 minutes in Zone 4. With less than one kilometre to go, my legs were feeling VERY “done” and the rest of my body wasn’t much better. But, there’s still three quarters of a kilometre to go and the grade hadn’t gotten much easier. There’s a false flat (only 4% uphill grade) at about 300m to go and you can switch to one-skate, but then it gets steeper near the finish line and you offset to the end.
Mentally, it became a game of maintaining effort, not wanting to look to the top of the section you’re on, not getting bored/frustrated with the incredibly small steps you seem to be taking up this steep mother of a section and knowing the best thing is to just put one foot uphill after the other. They do have kilometre markers up the climb, but with only three uphill kilometres in total, there are not a lot of those. The 1.5 kilometre marker was good to see (halfway done) and the last few hundred metre markers were encouraging. Otherwise, there is not a lot of positive stuff out there.
It felt good to be finished, but more in a workmanlike “did it” kind of way. Somewhere in the last few hundred metres you realize you are going to finish this thing, but because it’s a survival test there’s not a lot of euphoria — just a quiet “alright, good, phew” kind of thing. I now understand much better how the WC racers feel at the top and why they mostly collapse. There is such a fear factor of being caught, blowing up, not making it.
How did we do against Team Northug? Mark and I beat both of them, Mrs beat Mr, and Andrew would have beat them had Mr Northug not taken his skis off on the steepest section and walked up the hill. That’s illegal, by the way, but no one called him on it.
Andrew won the “Best Dressed” award – T-shirt and plaid shorts. In the start grid, the young Italian next to me pointed to Andrew and said “Wow – that must be cold!” I said “He’s Canadian.” The Italian fellow said “Ah, of course!” That seemed to settle the matter in his mind.
Would I do this race again? Yes. Now that I know what to expect, how it all works and how steep the bugger really is, yes, I would race it again. I would also train differently for it – instead of skiing up Moraine Lake Road, I would ski up Norquay’s Lone Pine a few times. I’m not completely kidding… It took me 17 minutes for the first six kilometres and 34 minutes for the next three kilometres. I took it easy in the first six kilometres and arrived at the bottom of the climb relaxed and feeling ready, but it still took me over eleven minutes per kilometre. There is no point in getting to the bottom of the hill much faster – the 30-60 seconds you save on the flats mean nothing once you’re on the climb.
Race Ski details :
Temperature : air -2, snow -4; clear sky, but shady as the sun had not climbed over the mountains yet.
Warm base, medium stiff Skitrab skis, “short” poles
Base wax = HWK OSV
Race wax = Swix HF7BW
Topping = One Way5 PF100
Structure = V03 on tails
Although we all had different skis, we all raced on the same wax treatment except for Mark who added a bit of HF8BW into his race wax.