SoHo 10k and a race prediction

Mags and I did another ski race last weekend.  This one was a 10 kilometer race that was
part of the Wasatch Citizens Series, which is to cross country skiing in what
the Intermountain Cup is to mountain biking in Utah.   In
other words, most people are just out having fun, but there are a few folks that
take it far too seriously. 

Here’s a case in point. 
Like the ICUP, there are categories for racing based upon skill level in
the WCS.  Fast people should race in the
open category, and beginners should race in the novice category, the rest of us
race in what I call the age-grouper categories, where we race against people
close to our same age.  I don’t know which age group started behind mine, but
mid-way through my first lap some of them started to catch up to me.  On one particularly steep uphill I was trying
to go around some slower skiers—effectively taking up the entire track—when a
guy from behind me started to get impatient. 
 “Come on,” he said “we started a
minute behind you.  Give us a break.” 

“I’m trying to pass these folks too.” I replied, but was
thinking more along the lines of “If you’re so [expletive deleted] fast why
aren’t you racing in the open category?”

Also like the ICUP, there were lots of people standing
around before and after the race talking about their equipment.  I’ve never been very good about talking ‘gear’
and actually can’t think of a more vapid topic of conversation, but I felt even
more out of place at the ski race.  People
were talking about ski flex, special grinds, binding types, carbon fiber this
and carbon fiber that, and how many fluorocarbons were in their wax.  Pshaw, high-flouro wax? Who do you think you
are?  Should I call you Sven? Or Thor?  It’s not the arrow, it’s the Indian. 

Or maybe it is the arrow. 
 I got passed several times on
descents by the same guy I’d just passed on the climb.  I’d like to blame that on my transcendent
inability to go fast downhill in any sport, but there was clearly something more
going on. 

But oh well, there’s only one more ski race for me this
season and I’ll be using my same old hydrocarbon (aka zero-flouro) wax again,
and I’m OK with that.  But I do think a
prediction is in order.  My first race
was 5 kilometers, the next one was twice that distance, and the race on Saturday
is twice that again.  Not surprisingly,
my time in the second race was not exactly twice that of the first race, but
interestingly, it was less than twice my 5k time.  Clearly, this means that the longer the race
is, the faster I’ll be.   Sure, some might argue that the race
conditions were different, but I choose to ignore the fact that there was a
blizzard at Snowbasin while the race at Soldier Hollow was under sunny skies on
immaculately groomed trails.  [This also
explains why my second lap at SoHo was 14 seconds faster than my first.]  So  I’ve decided to use the data from my
races, consisting of exactly two data points, to predict my finishing time in Saturday’s
20 kilometer race.  As I've done in the past, I made a chart to
help me: 

As you can see from the chart, I’ll be finishing in about 42 minutes.  Sochi, here I come.