We just got done with our first weekend of racing here in Montana. The first events were held on the South Plateau outside of West Yellowstone, on a Forest Service road groomed for skiing. Conditions did not at all accommodate the ski festival last week, and the organizers made a superhuman effort to keep the races and clinic alive despite the lack of snow.
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Our first race was a 9km point-to-point skate, on a generally-uphill course. Given my ranking I was seeded just outside of the A seed, which meant I was first in the B seed and therefore, first starter. Sometimes this can be a real benefit; you get the best tracks and in this case, I was able to continue warming up on the course until fifteen minutes before my race. The downside was of course that there was no one around to pace against, and no splits to receive on where I stood part way through. I've had experiences at high altitude (the plateau is above 7000ft) where I've gone out way too fast and blown up, so my primary goal was to ski conservatively and smart until the final 2km climb to the finish.
Unfortunately, my conservative approach was a bit too much so, and I left myself a bit behind by the time I reached the climb. My finish was 1:24min off the lead, in 31st place. The men's field right now is extremely tight, that so many guys could be in such tight contention. While I wasn't ultimately happy with the finish, I know that with a better pacing strategy I will close that gap a fair bit.
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| Rocking my new Madshus suit in the sprint prologue |
The next day was a sprint prologue; again it was a pacing game. I won't belabor my mistakes, but it was essentially the same situation as the previous day but in reverse. The course was again a point-to-point, with long flat-then-downhill for the first kilometer then transitioned into a gradual uphill with some curves to the finish. I started very fast and made a huge effort to create maximum speed on the flats and downhills, which didn't aid me much. Exerting that much energy maybe gained me a second or two (I got a brief split that I was in third at the 1km mark), but seriously damaged my ability to finish strong. By the time I hit the climb I had tapped out my legs and it was all I could do to keep pushing to the line. I estimate that I lost about five or six seconds in that final .5 kilometers, and finished in 13th place. Again, not a great result and I don't believe it's exemplary of where I'm at right now. Fortunately the race wasn't a Super Tour, rather just a good chance to get a sprint effort in before this week's series in Bozeman. You don't often get freebies like that to make mistakes so I plan on making it count. This week will be better.
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