For Saturday's classic race, Toko provided some great kick wax. 

During the week it snowed and then rained.  Trapps wisely kept off the snow till it dried out and froze up.  Then, when they groomed it, it turned into a nice sugar snow.  On Friday I skied around trying various wax combos.  Despite the transformed snow, stick wax worked, and the best that I tried was a layering of Base Green Stick and Red Stick.

Overnight on Friday we had a little bit of light fluffy power fall.  However, it was tilled into the old snow and the track was hard and icy.  In the morning I tried Blue klister covered with Blue stick and also the layered Red and Green.  On the hard ice, the klister was a little better.  Fortunately, I waited to call the wax for our team, because with everyone warming up, they broke up the ice and the tracks became sugary again.  Now, the layered Green and Red stick worked well.  The hard part was getting it applied properly because it needed to be thicker than a normal stick wax job.  Our girls raced on it with good success.

For the men's race it warmed up, but I skied the course just before their start and the wax was still excellent. The most interesting part was seeing many of the college men having terrible races with no kick. A friend chatted with some of the coaches and their problem was this:  They used a very narrow-range wax that worked 45 minutes before the race, but with the slight change in temperature the wax slipped horribly.  My Red and Green combo has a very wide range so it worked all afternoon and our men had good skis and good races.  On a day with changing weather having a broad-range wax is really important, especially with a big team to wax.

Rob Bradlee, Cambridge Sports Union