Duluth Sprints
· Jan 24, 09:35 AM
I was sitting in the locker room at the Marshall High School/College of Saint Scholastica Hockey Rink in between the qualifying and heats during last nights sprints with 5 of the other 7 qualifiers. As I listened to the deep hacking coming from most of them, the only thought I could muster was, “did I not go hard enough?” Even with temperatures hovering just below 0, I didn’t manage to push myself hard enough to bring on the post-race hack – at least not after only 2:40. This wasn’t a problem on Monday when I did 2×5k TT efforts at Telemark, so the only explanation I have is that I’m just not good at pushing myself in a sprint – or maybe I just haven’t built the capacities to make that short an effort truly race worthy.
My goal before the race was to qualify – well, my goal was to be on the podium, but first I had to qualify. My theory was that if I managed to get in to the top 8 I had a chance to do something in the rounds, if not, well then I was going to be watching, and it was way too cold out there to watch. I did as aggressive a warm up for a sprint as maybe I’ve ever done, and while I didn’t do anything particularly special in qualifying, I did sneak into 8th, which was all I was asking.
In my semi-final I paid for my inability to get off the line quickly. I had the worst lane out of the start, and I was gapped at 100m. My first thought during the race was “this is faster than I expected to have to go right now.” I skied back to the group easily, but was stuck in 4th for basically the whole heat. The trails were for the most part narrow and windy, which made passing difficult at best. I got myself into 3rd behind Iverson coming up the last climb to the finish, but with an “S” turn at the top, there was no way to get by even though I felt like I wasn’t working. When we finally hit the finish straight it was a little too short and I was a little too slow, so it was the B-Final for me.
Finishing third in my semi gave me a better lane in the B-Final, and I skied big and aggressive to stay in the top two. I took the lead briefly over the top of the major elevator shaft that we climbed, but gave it back with slightly slow skis on the downhill. We went three wide at the bottom of the course and there was a little stepping on skis, but I emerged into the final S and finish straight at the front. It was satisfying to take 5th, though I think I might have been able to put up a fight in the A-Final if I’d made it. But until I spend more time focusing on the sprints, those might be few and far between.
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Brayton hello from Canada—
what’s your goal for hours this year-thanks-marty— marty hall Jan 29, 06:56 AM #