I recovered from the Noque with a few days of lovely (and warmer) skiing in Minneapolis just in time to head to the next race. On thursday, my teammate Andrew and I packed up his Subaru for another little race trip in Birkie-Land. I was looking forward to having a very different race experience from the Noque. My fellow Rochester-raised pro skier, Ian Torchia, was coming for the race. I knew that together we had a better chance of dropping my teammate Brian early and narrowing the competition to two, which we did... sort of...
Race morning was a bit of a mess. Upon arrival at the start, I realized that I had forgotten my water pack containing the 400-something calories I wanted for the race. I had already sped halfway back to get it when I found out that I could borrow my coach Catilin's pack. Brian had put some wax on my skis, and I was able to get in a couple minutes of warmup on them without any real wax testing. Ian and I started the race hot and dropped everyone else immediately. Then we hit the first real climbs, where the lack of wax testing hit me. I slipped my way up the first few climbs and played catch up on the descents and flats. Eventually this was unsustainable, and I was left double poling everything alone with a water pack that I had let freeze during my frantic effort to keep up.
With the huge lead we made early on, I expected that I would still come in second and beat Brian - an improvement from last week. However, the matches I burned while skiing with Ian came back to bite me, as Brian, who had played the long game, caught and passed me in the last 10k. I was on the podium again, which is always great, but the day had certainly not gone as I imagined. I at least did gain a lot of confidence in my double pole ability! If I could go back, I would have just taken the even faster skis without any kick wax and committed to double poling from the start. Knowing this is a good indication for my survival later in the 90km Vasaloppet! Next up is the Boulder Mountain Tour in Sun Valley, Idaho. Time to get back into skate racing, which has always been a reliable source of fun.
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