Canadia!
· Mar 18, 08:43 PM
I’m back. Well, sort of. I think this is my first trip north of the border since I was at Ste-Anne with Dartmouth late 2005, and there will be no visits to the shelf on this trip. Ah well, race season is back and it’s time to go. The drive up took a couple days (we took a little break on the drive up – check out the XC O blog for pics) but we’re here and going now. No pictures from the venue yet, but the sun did come out today, so maybe I’ll get the camera out soon.
Today we had the 10k classic. 3×3.3 on the Olympic Classic trail. A lot of good skiing out there, if good skiing is to be had. Today was not one of those days. I ended up on hairies and they were decent. They weren’t good, but they were fast and they were better than what a lot of people had. I could pretty much run up anything as long as I was out of the track, but I couldn’t really kick the tracks. It was just a tiny bit too bad, because the hills were just barely skiable, so running definitely wasn’t the fastest thing to do out there. But I have to think my skis were above average.
As far as the race went, it wasn’t bad. Wasn’t great, but I haven’t done anything in the last month really (5 weeks if you don’t count the Birkie), so I’ll take it. I started 15 seconds before Robin McKeever and 15 behind Roycroft. (15 second intervals and 3 laps made it feel like roller derby out there on lap one, then it thinned out a little – there might be more of the same tomorrow, I’m not sure sure, no start lists yet). I lost time to Roycroft on the first lap, and McKeever caught me at about 2.5k. I didn’t hang on for two long, but skied a good second lap and stayed close. I pulled Dan back a little and was feeling pretty good for the last lap.
Then McKeever caught Roycroft and they really put the hammer down on last lap and really buried me. I struggled with kick and suffered my way through. My legs were wobbly enough to make me want to get out of my tuck on the second to last downhill, so that was a good sign at least for the effort. I skied the bottom half of the last climb like a champ and the top half not so fast. But, all told it was a real good effort to get out of the way. Here’s hoping for tomorrow!
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I’m dying to hear what happened in the 50K. Must have been quite a day for half the field to DNF.
— Tom Mar 24, 04:06 PM #