THE SNOWMAN COMETH

In his first big snowshoe competition, the densely-fought La Ciaspolada 5- and 10-kilometer races near Trentino, Italy, up in the Dolomites near the Austrian border (early Hemingway ski country), 20-year-old Haverford freshman Nathaniel Grabman came in a more-than-respectable 81st in a field of 600 — there were actually 6,000 people floundering around the mountain courses, but only one-tenth were really in earnest. That event happened last March, and this year, Grabman, a personable young sophomore with a Bob Marley haircut, will be heading back to his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, for the March 4th-5th-6th 2005 Nike ACG U.S. National Snowshoe Championships, the U.S. Snowshoe Association's largest effort to date.

Mark Elmore, an articulate, upbeat national snowshoe coach who also serves as sports director for the U.S. Snowshoe Association, characterized Grabman as "energetic and accomplished for a guy that young," a "strong runner in cross-country events" whose cross-training "can only be beneficial, a great tool. It's completely beneficial in that it's a full-body workout," burning calories at an even higher rate than track events do.

That's because 8 X 22-inch competiton snowshoes, made by such companies as Atlas, Tubbs, Redfeather, and Crescent Moon, which mostly are constructed of aluminum alloy with rubberized fixtures (in which to fit a sneaker or racing shoe), and with smallish metal crampons to grip the snow surface — require a longer stride in running, and a slightly higher leg-lift to avoid getting tangled up... "Thus, great aerobics," Elmore chuckles.

Grabman, who is thinking of astronomy as a concentration, and who loves Haverford for its "seriousness" and "freedom," modestly allows that he took up snowshoe racing "because I wasn't any good at cross-country skiing . . . No, I didn't actually participate in winter sports all that much in Alaska, believe it or not. It was when I got down here — I love to be outside, the campus is so beautiful, and I went out for track, the 800 and 1500 and 3000 meters, cross-country . . . And sometimes it snows out here, and I thought it would be fun to just take off on snowshoes, hit the long hill to the duck pond, the nature run through the woods — this was an old farm, did you know?

"Well, it doesn't snow that much, but when it does, you can get around better on snowshoes . . . Up north or out west in Colorado, say, you can get back into country you'd never penetrate without them. High up in the mountains, too, there are places that just become inaccessible . . ."

Tom Donnelly, Nathaniel's cross country and track coach at Haverford, where he does well in the 4-to-5-mile events, the mile and half-mile, and the difficult 2-mile steeplechase (three-foot police barriers set along the race course, which must be jumped), assesses him as #12 on the team, a "solid" athlete, well-liked by all the teams' members: "He's just a good kid, like all of our athletes."

Life at an academically elite East Coast school was an adjustment for Grabman: "Alaska is more like California in the laid-back pace and all . . . Things here are more — 'Come on, let's go!', but of course by New York standards, it's leisurely."

He has particularly good things to say about the Honor Code: "I'm not that, uh, self-assertive, sometimes, and the Code helped me speak up . . . Like my room in Barclay, 326? It's on the end there, near the fire escape? So a bunch of kids who smoked would get out on the landing outside my windows — which I keep open in the warm weather, I just like fresh air? And they'd be smoking away and the stuff is coming into my room in clouds . . . And I was able to speak up to them and ask them to move, because I just hate cigarette smoke . . . And they were cool, they moved away. I woulda never done that before . . . Owe it to the Code."

The U.S. Snowshoe Association's 2005 Nationals in Anchorage this March will be combined with the 70th Annual 2005 Rondy schedule, which will include both Citizens' 5- and 10-kilometer Snowshoe Run/Walk events on March 5th, a Saturday; and for those still stoked for Sunday, the USSSA inaugural 4 x 2.5 km Snowshoe Team Relay event at Russian Jack Springs.