Yo! Just wanted to post a quick update about the night sprint in Zug from yesterday. We left Davos mid afternoon and drove the two hours to Zug. The crew included coaches Chris Grover and Justin Wadsworth, and athletes Torin Koos, Chris Cook and myself. Arriving in Zug was quite surprising, green grass and all. The sprint course was a 500m ribbon of snow in a local park, right on the shore of a large lake. The athlete lounge was a large boat docked near the start.

Justin getting the wax ready… lakeside!

The course: you can barely see the line of snow to the right.

Snow and Green Grass?

The Finish area being prepared.

At 5pm the qualification round started. I was second out of the gate, hammering through 2.5 laps in the slush. The effort took almost three minutes, and I ended up with the fastest qualifying time by 4 seconds, Chandra Crawford second and German National Team skier Nicole Fessel third. Then the wait began, it was 3 hours and 10 minutes until my first heat (a small women’s field meant we would go straight to semi-finals).

Just as the heats started, heavy rain began to fall. In my semi-final I got into the lead over the first 50m and led a controlled effort all the way around to qualify for the A final.

As we lined up for the final it was me, Crawford, Fessel and an unknown Swiss girl that had apparently fallen in the lake on her warm-up. I changed my start lane choice at the last second and opted for the inside. It proved to be a mistake as my start was a little delayed and I got stuck back in the pack.

Over the first 200m I was very antsy to move up. I tried to pass going to the outside of the first turn, but Chandra stepped on my ski and I went down. My pole strap came undone. I jumped up immediately, but a gap had already formed. I had to chase madly after the three skiers ahead. Coming into the second lap I was able to pull in third place and gain back some ground on 1st and 2nd. But the finish line came to soon and I had to settle for third.

It was a bit frustrating not to be in the fight for the win, as I could feel I had the necessary speed in my body. But I learned a good lesson: I should have been more patient and waited for a safer place to try and pass. Oh well, that is sprint racing!

A big thanks to Chris and Justin for preparing the skis and supporting us, despite three solid hours in the pouring rain!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 4:22 am and is filed under Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.