December 8th, 2007
Dec.8 2007
PIC: wax tech. Peter and I laugh off a tough day
Yeah… that wasn’t the distance world cup debut I was looking for. It was a rough day for me as well as a lot of the field because of the weather. Because of our less than stellar FIS distance points, Cook and I were the first ones out of the gate after the 4 nations group guys which proved to be a weather disaster for us.
It was one of those days where the temperature was hovering just under freezing and the tracks were getting nice and glazed. During warm up were testing klister, hard wax, and a combination of the two. It was tricky waxing but nothing we couldn’t handle. Then the white stuff started to fall. Unfortunately it started to fall 20 mins before the start of the race and Cook and I were already on our way to the start.
When the snow came down it came down hard filling the tracks. This made the first lap and climb out of the stadium a rough one. I had to stop and slap the skis a few times to get the snow off the bottom. By the second lap the snow had started to die down and the tracks began to grease up again. Unfortunately I went from sticking to slipping in a matter of minutes and my second and third laps were a struggle on the fast icy tracks. The difference in the speed of the track from the first to third laps was incredible. I think I lost 2:30 in the first 3k of the race while trudging through the powder on my first lap. By the time cook and I got around to finishing the top ranked skiers had just left the start gate onto the fast glazed tracks. Not exactly helping us stack up to the best in the world.
Looking back on it you can only smile. Our waxers did everything they could and worked really hard all day but when the timing is THAT bad there’s not a whole lot you can do. On days like today we just try to took back and learn as much as we can in order to better anticipate these things in the future.
Regardless of the results today was a good training race for me. Being a sprinter on the world cup we don’t get too many chances to race 15k, so any time I can put the bib on and practice a distance start it’s a good thing. Because of my health the coaches only wanted me to do one race this weekend so unfortunately I’ll be sitting out the relay. The good news is we have enough racers here to still put in a team. Check back for pics!
