We are one day away from the end of U.S. Nationals here in Anchorage, AK, and I am very happy with my results. My Nationals kicked off with the 15km skate race after I decided to sit out the skate sprint in order to be better prepared for the two events that I have been training the most for. I was feeling great right up until two days before the 15km when I started to get a few cold symptoms. Unfortunately, I was not able to fight these off and I just decided to go with it, hoping for the best. The 15km went all right considering that was probably the breaking point of my sickness. I just was not able to get full power because I was pretty congested and had a pretty sore throat.
After the 15km I continued to hit the vitamin C and was hoping to be 100% for my favored classic technique. The morning of the race I woke up and felt the best I had, but was worried that I would simply run out of gas because my body was still fighting off my cold. However, I knew that it was a mass start race and that I just had to try to stay with the leaders for as long as I could no matter what. If my body would allow it, I believed that I could stay with the leaders the entire race.
The team left for the venue after a little bit of a scare. Brian Gregg knocked on my door and told us to bring our zero skis if we had any because it was about 32 degrees and snowing, a classic waxing nightmare. Of course, by the time the race started our waxing team of Igor, Bryan Fish, Brandan Ostroot, and John Hugus had nailed the wax and we had great skis as usual.
The course was pretty soft because of all the snow and having the women race a 20km before us, but it held up pretty well except for the steeper uphills which made for a lot of herringboning. I was a little disappointed because my kick was good enough that I could have skied up a lot of those hills had there still been a track. Also, this is where eventual winner, James Southam, and 2nd place finisher, Kris Freeman, were able to drop me a little bit each lap. I was able to close the gaps on the gradual uphills and downhills for three of the four laps, but I eventually was dropped for good on the third lap. This was also when a junior from Fairbanks, AK, David Norris, blew past me and closed the 10 second gap to James and Kris. He was really moving and I was pretty concerned I was not going to be able to catch anyone and would end up 4th, just missing the podium. I tried to stay calm and continue to ski relaxed keeping the gap steady.
Midway through the third lap on the biggest climb James and Kris were able to drop David, and Kris stopped to get his blood checked a little after that climb. Kris then proceeded to pass both me and then David in an attempt to catch back up to James who had widened the gap to me from 15 seconds to about 30 seconds. James and Kris then skied away from David and me most of the last lap, and I was just trying to catch back up to David without spending too much energy. I wanted to keep some in reserve for the last kilometer where I was planning on going as hard as I could and hope that I could close the 10 second gap that David had on me for most of the final lap. We hit the final gradual uphill with about 1 kilometer to go and finally the effort of bridging up to James and Kris took its toll on David. I could see he was having some trouble getting kick and his legs started to look a little unstable. I decided this was the time to go for it and I was able to use the hill to bridge up to him. Then I sprinted as hard as I could hoping to get a good gap before the descent into the stadium. I just kept my head down and hammered into the finish for my very first Nationals podium.
It was great to get my first podium here because my parent’s made the trip up here and were cheering me on for the duration of this extremely hard race. I would like to thank them along with my coaches and teammates for helping me achieve this result. I would also like to thank all of my supporters as well as the sponsors of the entire CXC Team Vertical Limit. Without the support of so many people, especially my family, there is no way I would be able to be a fulltime ski racer.
Just about finished.
Just after finishing.
Finished.
Thanks to teammate Audrey Weber for the great photos.
