Update from the Field - CXC
The CXC Team has been out in West Yellowstone since November 12, so we've been lucky enough to ski the last few weeks. A lot of skiing equals a lot of waxing, and we're stoked to have Toko as a sponsor.
We've been prepping new Salomon skis pretty simply: First, we hot-scrape with S3 Yellow to get any dust/gunk off the new skis. We then put another layer of S3 Yellow on and iron it several (3-4) times to saturate the bases, letting the skis cool between cycles. (This is one instance where it's nice to be waxing 10-15 pairs of skis, rather than one; going through them all allows them to cool nicely.) From there, we do the same process with the Base Prep Grey (which is roughly as hard as the Red waxes) -- so the skis have been "waxed" somewhere between six and eight times.
Because the weather was so cold at the beginning of the week, and we needed to test skis and get them ready to race, we proceeded to harden up the bases a bit with S3 or LF Blue -- again, ironing a few times. At that point, I considered the skis to be ready to go. And so we went skiing.
For Thursday's sprint races, we ran some tests and came up with our base wax: Straight HF Blue. It felt like it "broke" slightly better than the S3/LF Blue and the various ratios of S3/LF/HF Blue and X-Cold Powder. Happily, top-end speed between the LF and HF was similar, but in a sprint with so much climbing, the break rate is more important -- if the LF had been faster at max speed but broke worse, I still would have stuck with HF.
For some reason, HF Blue seemed faster than skis prepped with Jetstream Blue powder on Wednesday, so we skipped applying pure fluoro in the wax room, but come race day (sprint), Jetstream Blue bloc and HelX Blue improved glide -- the HelX getting the nod. Kick-waxing in barely FIS legal temps was easy -- a thin layer of Carbon Basewax Green.
Because we'd done testing Wednesday and raced Thursday with good skis, it made waxing for Friday's skate races simple. Again, we prepped with HF Blue, applied Jetstream Blue and, at the benches in the morning, tested HelX vs. Bloc and went with the fastest -- Bloc, in this case. And that seemed to be a good choice, as Tad Elliott took the win in the 15k.
Saturday was forecast to be a bit warmer, so we had to speculate a little bit -- we prepped with HF Blue and HF Grey Moly, 1:1. For top-coat, we mixed the Jetstream Blue and Red powders, and at the venue, we tested Red and Blue HelXs and Blocs -- HelX Blue broke best and had an excellent top-end, so we went with that. Kicker was pretty straight-forward -- a couple thin layers of Carbon Red covered with a couple thin layers of Carbon Blue. Most of the CXC Team waxed a little long and pretty thin -- I could see the sanding marks in the kick zones on some skis after waxing, but they still hooked up. It helps to have well-fit skis and good technique! The skis worked really well -- a great combination of kick and glide. Brian Gregg was sitting around 6th at the top of the big hill with about 2k to go, but really worked the flats and downhills on fast skis to move into third.
All in all, with four races in three days in the bag, Gus and I are pretty happy with where the team is sitting. No one raced extraordinarily good or bad, but that's what we expected for this time of the year and the training load we've got in. We're looking forward to another week of skiing in West Yellowstone and then heading to Silver Star and Rossland for NorAm races. Hope to have some good reports from there! Jason Cork, Head Coach CXC Elite Team
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