Rex OV Klister, Craftsbury 12-2

Air temp: low 40's
Snow Condition: A Manmade loop with 2-3 inches of new snow from earlier in the week that was lightly tilled in. The tracks appeared to be mostly man made granular snow, the tracks generallly remained firm despite the warm airtemp, A few spots softened and some of the tracks had a firm wet icy glaze.

Test length per trial: 4-5 k

Point of the test: I wanted to test Rex OV against all other waxes today. It has a good reputation and the label on the box said for course wet snow 0'-10' C, perfect for today

Test 1: OV vs Swix KR 70
       In this test both waxes kicked well, and glided well on the longer downhills and flats, The 70 did not transition well and had a very sluggish feel after a climb going into a downhill. The 70 was a poor choice and a good education on snow temp vs air temp as the snow was likely too cold for this wax

Test 2: OV vs Rex Universal
     For the fist 2k of this test I found these two waxes to be identical, until jumping out of the tracks on a colder downhill section of the course. Outside the tracks on the looser colder snow the universal seemed slower

Test 3: OV vs Rex Gold
      Rex gold was the best gliding wax of the day. It could be kicked, but required more effort than the OV

Test 4: OV vs Toko spray on orange
       The waxes seemed to have equal kick and glide, by feel I could not tell a differnce, however during this trial I developed some lower back pain, enough that I thought I might have been done for the day, But to my suprise it went away in the next test. That made me question the effort I was putting into making this wax work. Possibly a thicker application from a tube would have given me more confidence. This wax has performed well for our team and other high school teams in the past so it will remain a race day wax to test for sure.

Test 5: OV vs Swix KR 60
         Like I said in test 4, my back pain went away in this test, the 60 had the
       best feel of the day, I felt like I could have skied another 20k, however I felt it might have been a touch slower than the OV.

Race day Pick:

Long technical course and semi fit racers : Swix KR 60
For the fit racer on most courses: Rex OV
For a sprint: Rex OV mixed with Rex gold ( an educated guess )