Sprint day!!

Dec. 17, 2010

     So there are definitely some positives and negatives from the day for me. To begin i will briefly describe the course. From the start you shoot straight up a long drag uphill for about a minute. The course then drops about halfway down and takes a right throwing you right into the second and fairly short steep uphill (about 10 seconds max). From there you drop into a high speed downhill to culminates in a really tight left hand 180. A short 80 meter drag over the flats brings you to the final downhill that ends in a high speed finish. The finish stretch is shorter than what we typically see, but legal.
     My prelim qualifier went fairly well for me. The long first drag went a lot faster than i thought it would and I found myself with power to spare over the top. The second short uphill could have gone smoother as I struggled through the transition, but i came over the top and down the hill with speed. I made it through the high speed 180  with no problems and finished strong. I was happy to finish in twelfth (5th american) overall.
     The quarterfinal heat was a little less than stellar. We found out that we had three APU skiers (Mark, Reese) in the same heat supplemented by Garrott Kuzzy (former 9th in World Cup), Canadian national champ Graeme Killick and top Canadian sprinter Phil Widmer. I am still fairly new to sprinting in my career and have little experience in heats. I get better each time I roll through them, but I end up having more to learn every time.
     Out of the start I was sitting well behind the leader Phil Widmer, but soon realized the pace had come down quite noticeably, a tactic used by many sprinters to control the pace and save energy. I felt great and was chomping at the bit to try and get around, but the course was not quite wide enough for three. Reese had gotten out well and was skiing next to Widmer in front. For me, the way i get though heats is to ski all out from start to finish to kill some of the speed out of the sprinters in the finish. I was trapped. We got over the climb and I went into the downhill in third. My second mistake came when i took the right turn into the uphill wide and allowed Killick to ski inside of my line which allowed him to pinch me out on the hill. I went from third to last really quick, but we were all still together. I found my way back to the mid field through the drag past the 180 turn and went into the final downhill in fourth-ish. The high speed finish is not my strong suit, and was my eventual demise. I was feeling strong and fast in the finish, but even though i was less than a ski length back from the winner, I finished 6th in my heat. We had the tightest heat of the day. Nobody knew what place they finished until a few minutes later. Oh well, I still have some things to learn, but overall the heat went well and im excited to know my body is finally feeling strong again.