US National 5/10k Skate, Houghton, MI, January 1, 2008

All athletes shown are affiliated with Toko

Wax report on bottom

USST's Leif Zimmerman is back!

SuperTour leader APU's Laura Valaas

USST's Liz Stephen has a huge future before her

Team Rossignol's James Southam

SuperTour Leader CXC's Garrott Kuzzy going fast

CXC's Brian Gregg has been coming on strong this year

USST's Kris Freeman, fresh off the World Cup...and a cold

USBA/CXC's Caitlin Compton

MWSC's David Chamberlain

Rossignol's Karin Camenisch

Rossignol Warrior John Bauer

Women's Podium

Women's Podium - an all Toko show!  Compton 1st (apparel and wax), Stephen 2nd (gloves and wax), Camenisch 3rd (gloves and wax).  Behind Men's race winner Ivan Babikov were Leif Zimmerman (gloves), Kris Freeman (gloves), and Garrott Kuzzy (gloves, apparel, and wax).

It was a glorious day to be a skier.  Overnight lows were around 17F and highs during the race peaked out around 23F.  Lake effect snowfall fell consistently throughout the event.  The snow was light and dry.  Despite the 15 second intervals during the women's race, the course did not glaze which shows how dry the snowfall was.  Between events, the snow stopped falling which yielded a glaze which held up during the men's race despite a return of consistent and sometimes heavy snowfall.

It was an easy day to be on the Toko side of things.  When the snow is cold and too dry to glaze normally, we go with "Old Faithful" which is LF Moly, followed by HF Blue, covered by a rotocorking of JetStream Moly.  Today was no different and the results were superb.  We have used this same combination in 8 of the last 10 Boulder Mountain Tours and 7 of the last 9 American Birkebeiners.  We have also used it in all of the SuperTour races thus far this year (Yellowstone, Bozeman, and Soldier Hollow).  A simple combination with a massive range that is pretty much always the fastest when conditions are fairly cold or colder.  For the Men's race, we added a layer of JetStream High Speed on top as the glaze changed things enough to warrant this.  JetStream High Speed performs best when there is a glaze.