Nov. 25, 2010
Training: Race day!!! Classic and skate sprint qualifiers. Total time: 2.5hr
Wow!!! What a start! The weather was definitely on the chilly side and I definitely brought a solid bag of extra warm clothes to stay warm. The way this works is that there are two sprint qualifiers set an hour apart. Skiers go out of the start at 15 second intervals on a point to point course. We started with a classic prelim and an hour later a skate prelim. Both these courses were long and just barely FIS legal in length, but awesome to ski. The courses were really tough with a steep climb at the end of both of them.
I could barely drink my coffee this morning because my nerves were making my hand shake a bit, but I was more excited than anything i think. At the race venue, my legs were feeling heavier the closer it got to race start, but I did a usual warm-up and tried to screw my head on straight. When I finally took off from the starting gate, my skis felt fast and my nerves faded as quickly as the start wand flicked back. Apart from the cold, I was comfortable in my stride and rhythm and although the best line would have me get out of the tracks a few times, i stayed in so as to keep things moving smoothly. I rocketed down the last fast downhill and prepared for the final long 200m steep climb. As I came into the bottom of the climb my ski clipped one of the flags guiding the way and tripped myself up a bit, but hardly a 1 or 2 second loss. I felt strong as I crossed the line and was pleased with the effort. My lungs were searing from the cold, and the post-race cough started quickly. I headed back to the start area some 800m away and prepared for the skate race by putting on abnormal amounts of clothing.
Transitioning to skate after a hard sprint effort in the cold is by no means easy and I was having troubles. My legs were tired and I couldnt seem to find a comfortable feeling with it by the time I was to leave to start gate. I felt pretty clumsy out of the gate and with the cold snow the skating was not as fast as I would like. The first half of the course was a struggle for me to find rhythm, but with about 800m to go I found a sweet spot and was able to pick up speed and roll over the last downhill with a lot of speed. I came into the steep climb with a bit of energy and felt as though i wasn't loading with lactate as much as i should have. I wasn't nearly as winded after the skate race which was probably due to me struggling through the first half.
We waited for results for quite a few hours and everyones nerves were on end to see where they stacked up for the season opener. Mark and I were elated to find we rocked the classic and skate races. Mark was third in the classic and 12th in the skate. I was 4th in the classic and 5th in the skate. The combined times puts mark in third and myself in fourth overall. I will definitely take those results for the first of the season, but we have two hard distance races over the next two days.
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