This is shameful, but I happen to have more pictures from our tour of the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory than I do of the racing this week. Obviously, my priotities have already started shifting to vacation and “off-season” mode! However, the season’s not quite done yet, and we’ve still got two races left. And I’ve still got a little fight left in me for these last two skate races. So I’ll start with the race report from the week.
It's a CXC-APU sandwich! Prologue podium with Holly and Sadie (Erin Phillips photo)
After a few days of 80 degrees and sun, we showed up for the skate prologue and were suprised with a hard packed, icy fast course! It came as a bit of a shock after an all-running warmup (the course was closed to athletes). Everyone felt -and looked- pretty uncoordinated out there for the first lap but things pulled together the second time round the course.
Skiing with Sadie! (Herb Swanson photo)
The next day we had a 10km/15km mass start classic, in the slush and rain! It wasn’t a super great day for me as I picked the wrong pair of skis and ended up doing more running than cross-country skiing. I tired out really quickly and although I pushed my hardest, it sure didn’t look that way on the results sheet! Sadie skied a really impressive race, pushing the pace from the second lap on and winning, with all results and race information for the week at http://www.2012supertourfinals.com/home/
Doing a little more running than skiing...(Elizabeth Simak photo)
Today, however, the sun came back out and we got our classic sprint on. I was super psyched to make it to the final and get to follow Chandra and Kikkan through the course – trying to keep up with them is hard but fun! Chandra showed us how it’s done by winning both the qualifier by a ton and then the final…all after winning the sprints and 30km at Canadian Nationals! Sooo impressive. And Kikkan came back from Red Bull Finals, which I’m putting here:
If you’ve never seen skier cross done on cross-country skis, you need to watch this! The video highlights the jumps and rounds of this year’s Nordix in Oslo at the Holmenkollen venue.
Quarterfinal #2, with Holly and Sophie (Simak photo)
The course today was hard and fast and icy, till the sun warmed up the tracks and it slowed down a bit. But it was still fast enough to make the twisting, winding downhill a very interesting experience!
Chandra gracing the top of the classic sprint podium with me and Jennie (Simak photo)
On our day off in-between the 10km and sprints, the CXC team went on a little tour of Vermont, which was AWESOME! We saw maple syrup being made in the sugar shack, visited Lake Champlain Chocolates and saw Cabot cheese, and got hot cider at Cold Hollow Cider. And the we went to the Ben and Jerry’s factory!
Yes, I would definitely describe ice cream as "euphoric" (Simak photo)
This part of the tour really made my day. Week. Heck, it made my whole month better.
Waylon and Adam goofing off...(Simak photo)
Did you know that the top 3 best selling ice creams are: Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Chunky Monkey?
That's a LOT of sweet stuff! (Simak photo)
I’ve always dreamed of holding a tub of ice cream that’s bigger than my head. It was fun to try the Vermonster challenge but even with 6 of us, we couldn’t take down the entire tub in one go! It’s a gallon of ice cream with bananas, cookies, and various other toppings that all turn to soup by the end. We all got serious stomach aches later, but some things are just worth it. There are some people who would raise an eyebrow at my pre-race strategy of eating my weight in ice-cream…but I happened to have my best classic race in a loong time today, so obviously the sugar-high pays off big time!
Good times with the crew (Simak photo)
Then the sugar high set in. And I couldn’t. stop. moving! It was pretty funny actually.
Setting speed records grocery shopping...and we haven't even gone inside yet! (Simak photo)
Tomorrow we’ll go do some serious hill climbing!
