Ok, maybe that’s overstating my writing abilities a bit, but here goes…
The Best Dam Barefoot Race 2008 was a race for the ages and after 22 miles, it came down to nearly a photo finish because of some crazy footin ability. I don’t know all the details, because my team wasn’t even to the turn around boat at the half way point, but here’s the story that I heard…
MVS #1 was cruising to the finish line, with the 2nd place boat still around the bend, when the remembered they need to have all of their skiers ski in the race at least once. Yes, you’re reading that right, after 22 miles, the 4 or 5 man barefoot team hadn’t even gone through a single complete rotation yet. For me, that’s simply mind bogolling. 22 miles and you hadn’t made it through your whole rotation yet? So about 200 yards from the finish line, they had to drop their footer and do one last footer change. Not sure if there was some difficulties on the change or what, but as they were finishing, Ace In the Hole came around the last bend and beat them to the finish line by 16 seconds. Footstock Dave Mueller was watching from his perch at the Moonlight Bar and I’m hoping he caught this footage on video. He’s always caring his camera around, lets hope he used it. Following MVS #1, MVS #2 crossed the finish line 1:17 behind them. Top 3 spots seperate by 93 seconds. Very close race.
Ace in the Hole featured Chuck Gleason from Barefoot Central, Aaron Schoelzel a past Footstock champion (and RAJ member), Chris Van Zeeland (another Footstock Champion) and 1 or 2 other skiers that I wasn’t familiar with. Clearly, they were stocked with talent. MVS #1 featured footers from St Louis that love to barefoot race. I don’t know all their names, but they come to win and practice for this stuff all the time. They also have a little racap on their Barefoot Endurance Racing Website. They have a first hand account of the ending.
The final results from the race are…
1st Place – Ace in the Hole in 23 minutes and 7 seconds
2nd Place – MVS #1 in 23:23
3rd Place – MVS #2 Pavestone in 24:40
4th Place – Hot Footers in 30:48 (the Beaver Dam Team)
5th Place – Webfooters in 49:40
6th Place – Mad-City in 63:43
Overall, the race, hosted by the Beaverland Must-Skis and Teri Bell, was very well run. The weather more or less cooperated. A little wind that created a few rougher spots on the lake, air temps in the 60s kept everyone from completely freezing, and there was no rain!!! Dawn and Woody’s Moonlight Bar provided a great place to start from and celebrate afterwards. Everyone that stuck around got to hear Footstock Dave take the mike to sing some karaoke. Surprisingly, he sang pretty well. Later on, Chuck did a duet with Dave on the karaoke stage. Bugsy, from the Mad-City team, treated us to an old boy band song (NKOB?) while the Bell family rocked a variety of music.
Props to BareFoot Central for providing some door prizes for the footers and Footstock for providing a free entry into the competition as a door prize as well.
Check back here a little later this week, as I’ve got some footage from our boat of the start of the race. All the boats taking off is quite a sight.
Mad-City Wedge 