By Brian Gregg
I have been looking forward to the 15km Freestyle Individual start race at Soldier Hollow for the last three years, which is when I heard the announcement that National Championships would be in Utah. I had a great race today and set a new personal best at US National Championships with a 4th place finish. I am still looking forward to my first podium, but am enjoying the moment of today.
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| Moved up in the standings during each of the 3 laps |
Today was made even more special after a particularly rough start to the season. One week out from the first race in West Yellowstone I caught a cold. I took several days off from training and although I was healthy before I raced my results in the following races were sub-par. I finished the first period of racing with a 34th? place finish in the Silver Star Nor-Am. I came back to the Methow, rested hard for a few days and then Scott and I made a plan to get back on track for US Nationals.
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| 15 second intervals meant a lot of traffic on the course. Photo: Bill Pierce/FAST |
I had a great starting position in the race as one of the last of the 'A' seed skiers to go out. This meant that almost all of the fastest ranked skiers were ahead of me on the course and I could get splits off of them. Caitlin was an awesome wife and teammate hiking way out on course to give me splits. I started hard to catch my 15-second guy Bryan Cook. Bryan is a super smooth skier and I figured we could work together along the course.
At 4km we climbed up Hermode's Climb and when we rounded over the top I could see Tad Elliot coming up quickly behind us. Tad won the National Championship last year and I was surprised that he had made up so much time in just 4km. He caught up to us at about 6km and I set in to try and hang on as best as possible. I was able to relax behind Tad and stay with him throughout the course. There were a few times where I started to fall off the pace, but I was able to surge back up to Tad. Tad was getting splits that he and Eric Bjornsen were fighting for the lead. I wish I could have done more work to help him, but I didn't feel strong enough to lead.
On the last lap Tad received a variety of splits, of skeptical accuracy. At 13km we got a split that Tad was 18 seconds in the lead. Erik must have been finishing really strong because at 13.5km it was 5 seconds and at 1km to go it was 3 seconds. There were a lot of skiers on the final climb. We hammered up the final climb looking to gain every second possible. I knew since Tad had caught me I wasn't going to win the race, but I figured I was in the running for the top 5.
Eric finished strong and captured his first national title. Super exciting and great to see a fellow Methow skiers on the top of the podium. Tad finished 6 seconds back. Third place went to Matt Gelso who finished 15 seconds behind Eric. Eric and Matt skied most of the race together as Matt started 15 seconds ahead of Eric and hung on to him when he was caught.
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| Scott coaching in the rain (and on crutches) at the Driveway Butte hill climb earlier this year. |
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| Excited for the 30km Mass Start classic on Sunday. |
