30k Pursuit Race:

Today was a fun but hard ski race.  I was more excited than nervous for my race, which is usually a good thing for me.  The morning started very well and I was able to get in a good warm-up and was happy with my ski and wax selection.  My coach, Bryan Fish, was on the ball with waxing so I had very good skis… I wish I could have done them a little more justice.

Instead of going into full details I’ll give a brief summary so no one has to listen to me ramble on and on.

Felt great out of the start, pace very doable, uh-oh… fell on sharp downhill corner on 1st lap, into last place, skied too hard to try to catch up, blew-up, recovered, blew-up again, excited to switched to skate, couldn’t go anywhere fast because I was so full of lactate acid, worked my ass off to catch and pass the 2nd to last place guy so I wouldn’t finish dead last, missed the finish turn off so I had to backtrack and ended up in last place despite all my effort.

Overall I am OK with my race and pumped about the experience.  I classic skied technically better than I have before but should have been able to skate ski a lot faster.  It was awesome to experience the World Cup first hand and be able to ski against the Worlds best.  Since I finished in last place I have nowhere to go but up the next time I ski a World Cup.

Tomorrow I am excited to cheer on my teammates doing the skate team sprint and I am also very excited to come home to my family and the Midwest!