First of all, if you haven’t heard about or read about Kikkan and the USA ladies having an amazing weekend over in Europe – you should! It’s all over Fasterskier, Skitrax and Skinnyski. Kikkan won the skate sprint, and today Kikk and Sadie got silver in the team skate sprint. I absolutely love starting out my day reading about our girls kicking butt on the World Cup. What an inspirational weekend!
With that in mind, writing about the Supertour is going to be super anti-climactic! But I’ll do my best. I was really nervous about the snow conditions here in Bozeman – they had to move the races up to a 3km loop at Bohart Ranch and there were definitely some rocks poking through the trails. But the volunteers and race organizers did a superb job and after a lot of shoveling and some last minute snow, the trails were race-ready.
5km skate (picture by Evan Dethier)
Yesterday we had a 1.4km skate qualifier in the morning, and 1.5 hours later, a 5km (10km for men) skate. Ouch! The trails were very challenging with some really steep hills that could make you blow up if you weren’t careful on the first lap. Today we had a 10km (15km for the men) classic, and the CXC team had a great day, with all men and women in the top 13! Really proud of the team’s efforts, and of course Jason Cork and Bill Pierce nailed the wax AGAIN. It was amazing because even after scraping off layer after layer on the icy 180 degree turns, there was just enough left to get us over the hills! Great job dudes.
I had some technique and pacing goals in mind going into the races, so it was a good chance to work on being careful around corners and staying relaxed for the first few km of the races. My technique always seems to fall apart right about when I start getting that aweful “bloody” taste in my mouth. Although that sounds pretty gross (and it is) it’s actually a fairly good meter for me – if I’m not tasting iron by the final climb of the race, I know I probably didn’t push it hard enough. Now I just need to be able to hold the technique together as well!
And then…I almost missed the awards ceremony! Which shocked and surprised…no one. I was putting on more warmups in the ski hut when a coach told me to get out there since they’d started early and everyone was already on the podium! I came running over and the announcer said I ran like a girl. Whatever…one of these days, I’ll pull my act together!
All the results from the weekend are linked HERE. Tomorrow we start driving up to Silverstar, Canada. My favorite place on the western tour!
