GRP skier Adam Martin and his flashy neon socks accelerate to a first place finish at the Lost Nation Roll last Sunday. “Tall socks are warmer than bare shins,” Martin explained.

On Sunday, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center hosted the Lost Nation Roll, the first open-to-the-public rollerski race on the Center’s new paved roller-loop. NENSA organized the race, which attracted 56 racers from the junior ranks to masters. For elite ski racers in the region, who had been largely starved of racing opportunities up until this point (save for NENSA’s App Gap challenge in August), the Lost Nation Roll served as a valuable test of fitness and speed.

Fourteen skiers and biathletes from the Craftsbury Green Racing Project competed in the four-lap, 11.2km race contested on matched Swenor rollerskis. The GRP’s Adam Martin took top honors in the men’s field, with teammate Akeo Maifeld-Carucci taking third. Evelina Sutro, a UVM senior who is training with the GRP this year, was the top GRP women’s finisher, taking third behind Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins and US Ski Team member Julia Kern, both of whom train with the SMS T2 team based out of Stratton, VT.

“It was fun to put a bib on and race again,” said Sutro. “I am excited that the season is just around the corner.” Sutro, who came through the first split time in 8th but fought her way back to 3rd over the middle of the race, finished her four laps only 40 seconds back of Diggins. But it wasn’t her place that occupied Sutro’s thoughts while out on course. “I was putting a lot of focus on my technique during the race,” she explained. “I have been making some changes with my technique so it was a good opportunity to work on those changes while going hard.”

All seven of the GRP women finished within a minute of Sutro, and all in the top 11. Talk about a strong team performance! “I think we had a really solid showing highlighted by Lina in third and [GRP rookie] Margie [Freed] in 5th,” said GRP veteran Caitlin Patterson, “especially considering that some of our competitors are some of the best skiers in the US.” Patterson finished 6th, followed by biathletes Hallie Grossman and Susan Dunklee in 7th and 8th, respectively. Michaela Keller-Miller finished 10th, and Alexandra Lawson, who is finishing up her studies at Middlebury while training with the team, finished 11th.

GRP skier and University of Vermont senior Lina Sutro descends the long downhill on the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s roller loop on her way to third place in the Lost Nation Roll.

In the men’s race, Maifeld-Carucci started out hard early, taking the early lead through each of the first two laps. But Martin and SMS T2’s Ian Torchia, who were college teammates at Northern Michigan, stayed close, within four seconds of M-C at the halfway point.

“I heard that it was close,” Martin recalled, “and seeing Ian and Akeo each time I skied through the fields gave me additional feedback. In my mind, I imagined another racer really hammering the last lap, so that kept me motivated all the way to the finish.” In the end it was Martin who was able to hold pace over the final two laps, finishing 14 seconds free of Torchia.

Maifeld-Carucci hung onto his blazing start for third, only two-tenths of a second behind Torchia at the finish. “It sounded like people were trying to give me splits, so I knew I must be close to someone but I didn’t really know who,” said M-C, who also said that the clacks of his poles or noise from the rollerskis prevented him from really being able to hear the coaches out on course. M-C was focused on his own race, and in the end, satisfied with his effort. “I was just trying to go out, ski hard, and put together all the things we’ve been working on. Last year at least for the first two-thirds of the season I struggled to maintain that hard, high-intensity skiing. So it’s nice to feel that I have more access to that.”

GRP skier Braden Becker finished a strong 5th, followed by GRP biathletes Jake Brown and Raleigh Goessling in 6th and 8th, respectively. Finn Sweet, a Craftsbury junior program alum who is training with the GRP before he matriculates to UVM, finished 9th and was the top junior in the field. Ben Lustgarten, who has taken on a full-time engineering job in Burlington but hopes to join the team at a number of races this winter, finished 11th.

Racing in a pandemic certainly comes with its own set of risks, and NENSA and COC together implemented a number of important measures to mitigate the risks as best as possible (Read more about these Covid-safety measures along with a write-up on junior racing here).

“NENSA and all of the race volunteers and organizers did a great job of stating and following through with the COVID safety protocols,” said Patterson. “It was easy during warm-up, in the start, and afterwards to stay distanced from other people when moving, and wear masks and keep distance while stationary. All of the athletes were really respectful of mask wearing and keeping distance, even while visiting and catching up with people we hadn’t seen in a while.”

As snowflakes begin to dot the sky and the rollerski season comes to close (fingers crossed!), the team is looking forward to racing on snow. “Those rollerskis were really fast, which can feel different than a lot of snow conditions can,” M-C explained. As Patterson put it, “While we’ve had a good summer of rollerskiing, there’s nothing quite like snow and real ski racing!”

The GRP ski team will be in action next at the Craftsbury Season Opener on December 5.

Full results for the Lost Nation Roll can be found here for women and here for men.

Lost Nation Roll Recap: GRP and the Elite Field