We just finished another JNQ weekend at Theodore Wirth in Minneapolis. I definitely prefer this location for racing as I get to sleep in my own bed, and wax in our heated garage. We also have the ability to do more testing ahead of the event as we are already near the location. We did our first round of testing Wednesday afternoon because the temperature was going to be similar to race time on Saturday. This was going to help guide our decision on paraffin choice. You can look at the results HERE.
We took the top 4 paraffins from our Wednesday test, and did a retest on Friday at the race venue. In addition to doing the 4 paraffins, we also did a quick 4 pair application test as well to further help guide our testing for the weekend. Results are below.
Conditions: Man made snow, ~27F, light dusting of new snow while testing.
Paraffin Test Products:
1. Star Dark Med Powder
2. Rode R30 Paraffin
3. Rex NF21 Paraffin
4. Rex NFX21 Powder
Results:
1. Rex NFX21 Powder +0cm
2. Star Dark Med Powder +40cm
3. Rex NF21 Block +50cm
4. Rode R30 Paraffin +120cm
It was interesting redoing this paraffin test. On Wednesday, ¾ of these products were basically tied with each other. After this round of testing there was some fairly significant differences between the products. My guess is this was due to the light amounts of snow that happened while we were testing. It wasn’t enough to accumulate to anything, but probably enough to slightly impact the test results. We ended up racing with Rex NFX21 Powder for both races.
Application Test:
1. NF21 Liquid x 2
2. NFX Blue Block x 2
3. NF21 Liquid + NFX Blue Block
4. Glide Cleaner + NF21 Liquid x 2
Results:
1. NF21 Liquid x 2 +0cm
2. Glide Cleaner + NF21 Liquid x 2 +0cm
3. NFX Blue Block + NF21 Liquid +20cm
4. NFX Blue Block x 2 +40cm
These results were very straightforward and made a lot of sense to us. We picked out the Rex NF21 Liquid and the NFX Block because they are very similar products. We could then look to see if block vs. liquid vs. combination was better. We also were able to test if putting glide cleaner on after doing the melt on paraffin would help speed the skis up and that did not seem to make an impact on the ski speed. We made sure that we tested more liquids than blocks in the following tests on the weekend.
1/26 Skate Sprint
For the skate sprint we focused on the cold application top coats using our information from testing in the previous week to help narrow our focus. We new that the Star and Rex products were testing well so we added more of those into our test. I have also recently received some new Rex test products that I wanted to get more information on and these are conditions where they could potentially work well in.
Conditions: Man-made snow, ~25F and windy.
Cold App Test Products:
1. Star Beta Med Block
2. Rex NFX Old Block
3. Star Dark Med Liquid
4. Star All Conditions Liquid
5. Rex NF41 Liquid
6. Rode RXL Med Special Liquid
7. Rex TK-501 Test Liquid
8. Rex NFX21 Test Liquid
Results:
1. Rex TK-501 Test Liquid +0cm
2. Star Dark Med Liquid +0cm
3. Rex NFX21 Test Liquid +10cm
4. Rex NFX Old Block +10cm
5. Star Beta Med Block +50cm
6. Rex NF41 Liquid +50cm
7. Rode RXL Med Special Liquid +60cm
8. Star All Conditions Liquid +90cm
I was really excited to see the performance out of the two test products from Rex. We have had a ton of success this season with the Star Dark line and these conditions seemed to fit in line with where those waxes work. To see the Rex line compete with the Star Dark liquids was nice. After this set of testing we went and did a follow up test with the liquids. One of the test liquids from Rex (TK-501) is a true top coat rather than a standard liquid paraffin like most products on the market. We put the TK-501 on top of the NFX21 Liquid to see if it would make a change in the results at all. After applying the TK-501 to the NFX21 liquid, it went from 10cm behind Star Dark Med to 35cm in front of Star Dark Med. This was super exciting as we found a way to further increase the speed of our winning product. We ended up using Star Dark Med Liquid, and then covered it with the new Rex TK-501 test liquid.
1/27 Skate Mass Start
Sundays race ended up being a bit colder than I originally anticipated. When we waxed on Friday it looked like it would be in the upper teens to maybe low twenties for the racing, but we woke up to 2F and a very cold snowpack. We pushed our testing into the colder direction and that seemed to pay off! We also turned this into a bonus weekly wax competition. We have been doing some wax competitions over the past few weeks between some of the managers at the shop for fun. You can read more about them HERE. We moved the 4 best products from the day before ahead (Rex TK-501, Star Dark Med, Rex NFX21 Liquid, and Rex NFX Old Block) and the rest of the managers picked out what the next best choices. See results below.
Conditions: Man-made snow, ~1F in the morning warming up through the day to about ~15F at race time.
Cold App Test Products:
1. Rex TK-501 Test Liquid
2. Rex NFX21 Test Liquid
3. Star Dark Med Liquid
4. Star Dark Cold Liquid (Ian)
5. Star Next Cold Block (Matt C.)
6. Rex NFX Old Block
7. Star Beta Med Block (Jakob)
8. Rex Olos Powder (Jeremy)
Results:
1. Star Dark Cold Liquid +0cm (Ian)
2. Rex NFX21 Test Liquid +0cm
3. Star Beta Med Block +10cm (Jakob)
4. Rex TK-501 Test Liquid +15cm
5. Star Cold Block +40cm (Matt C.)
6. Rex NFX Old Block +60cm
7. Star Dark Med Liquid +60cm
8. Rex Olos Powder +80cm (Jeremy)
We tested pretty early in the morning when the sun had not yet crested the horizon and it was still pretty cold. We decided to go back out again just before the start of the womens race to test the top two products against each other to see if there was a difference once the sun was out. During the follow up test, Star Dark Cold Liquid ended up 30cm better than the Rex NFX21 Test liquid. I decided to try the same test as the previous day to see if adding the Rex TK-501 test liquid to the top of the 2nd place topcoat would help. It ended up brining the ski back to even with the Star Dark Cold Liquid. This was very exciting as two days in a row adding the new test liquid to the winning liquid paraffin helped to speed the ski up. What was even more interesting was how drastically different the snow temperature was meaning that the test wax might be able to work in a very wide range of conditions.
Here are the current overall standings for the wax competition after this weeks bonus competition:
-
Ian +0cm
-
Matt +30cm
-
Jakob +35cm
-
Jeremy +45cm
