Editor: Craftsbury Green Racing Project wax tech Nick Brown shared his thoughts on this weekend’s waxing for the Craftsbury Marathon.

In the lead-up to the marathon, the course conditions have been great! We had a warmer weekend, followed by some very cold nights, and now it will be warming up again into race weekend. We haven’t had any fresh snow in a week now, and there has been some shoveling. The result is that we have great conditions, but the snow has been quite abrasive and somewhat variable. There are places where the tracks are quite powdery, some where they are down to ice, and the snow is generally fast. What does this imply for waxing?

First, this weekend is a fluoro-free event. While this may mean leaving aside some of your favorite kick and glide products, there are a lot of great fluoro-free options. There are also some new products coming out! I will be testing up until race time with some of my old favorites, and trying some new stuff as well.

In general, I am thinking about durability of both kick and glide. It is a long race, and even though it will be warming up, there is still a good chance of abrasive conditions on the course.

Glide
I would recommend a hard base layer ironed in, and then something targeting race temps more closely on top, either ironed or a liquid. If you use a liquid, make sure to leave plenty of time for it to dry!

Kick
A strong binder is a necessity. The best skis all week have had some klister element. Hardwax binders have been less satisfactory, while they may work fine on race day, they haven’t had the durability needed in the morning over the last couple of cold days, and I don’t have much confidence in them. I’m probably going to have klister layers down, and do a good job sanding and cleaning kick zones before that. Likely a -2 to -6 range drywax will be the top layers of wax, but that is much more forgiving if there is a good base underneath.

I will do more testing, and many waxes should give a good solution. My general suggestion is to iron in a thin green klister, then a thin layer of special violet klister, then iron in a layer of hardwax (like swix extra blue) and then the wax of the day for the last couple layers (swix extra blue, swix special violet, toko red, vauhti carrot etc) applied with a cork.

Marathon Wax thoughts with Nick Brown