On December 17th I flew out to Utah to begin training and acclimating at altitude in preparation for this season's US national championship races. Being able to go out so early was a great opportunity. Altitude is still not something I've figured out completely, and it helps to at least be acclimated before having to find a way to race well with I had time to do some enjoyable exploratory skiing around Park City and spend time with some friends before the craziness of a week of races started. The format for this year was skate sprint, skate 30k mass start, classic 15k individual, classic sprint. While I chose to do all of them for the value of race experiences, my focus going in was the 30k - the first reasonably long race of the season for me.
The skate sprint was an extremely cold race for how short it was. Because of this, the snow turned to styrofoam and made for a very slow and difficult course. I walked away without qualifying for the heats, but with the warmup I wanted for the 30k.
The 30k mass start was a tough experience. On the very first downhill it was clear that my skis were not running fast. I tried my best to roll with it, figuring that if I could work my way into a good position early, I could draft the whole race and still finish in a decent position. After giving this plan my best shot, I went far beyond the anaerobic threshold I could maintain for the race, and got dropped. I reset my goal to the default "finish the race and save it for another day", which proved to be a challenge in itself that day.
Only half way through without much success yet wasn't enough to completely lose motivation. I went out ready to rip the classic 15k. During the race I was aware that it wasn't coming together. On the last big climb I figured I'd see how hard I could blow up as a challenge for myself. The answer was: pretty hard. I wish I had tried that earlier in the race. If I wasn't having a great race to begin with, maybe taking a huge risk like that earlier could have paid off if I could have recovered from it even a little and tried again.
I did not come into the final classic sprint expecting much based on the week's results (and maybe my sprinting history). Surprisingly, it may have been the best race of the week from my perspective! I pulled together some good energy for the race, and I think I skied technically very well. I didn't qualify for the heats, but I felt I had finally skied a race about as well as I could have, and I was ready to be done. I'm was not happy with how the week went, but this closes out what I had considered only my first period of racing for the year. With 9 short and incredibly competitive races behind me, I'm ready to ski marathons only, and attend some of the coolest cross-country races there are in the US and international ski scene. Hopefully there is more enjoyable racing and success to come!
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