I have had a good camp In Lake Placid so far.  I arrived here on October 1st coming off of a few weeks of fairly high volume.  I jumped into some double pole intervals with the sprinters on Saturday to tune up for the skate hillclimb race up Whiteface on Monday.  I felt great in the intervals.

The morning of the Whiteface race I woke up at the painful hour of 6:45 Am and ate breakfast at 7:00. Normally I would eat my pre-race breakfast three hours before the 9:00 AM start but the cafeteria at the Olympic Training Center doesn’t open until 7:00 AM.  This ended up being a moot point becasue shortly after eating I was informed that the race start had been pushed back to 10:30 AM due to ice on the road.  The race was also moved 2 miles down the mountain.  It was still the same distance but did not finish at the top of the mountain.

I felt fine on the warm-up.  I put in about 10 minutes of level 3 and a half hour of level 1.  Then it was race time.  The start of the race had a double pole zone.  Duncan Douglas came out of the start just in front of me and took the lead.  He decided to use his V2 custom race skis again for some reason.  I drafted him for nearly the first mile but I was unable to keep up when he broke into a V2 alternate on the 12% grade.  At this point I had about a 30 second lead on the rest of the field.  Nearly everyone behind me was using the same Marwe training skis as myslef with  the standard “6″ wheels on them.

I hit my max heartrate at 1.5 miles and it stayed there for the duration of the race.  I remembered a couple of flat sections that I could recover on,  but they were mirages.  Every time I went around a corner the same relentless road grade greeted me.  I skied steady and never blew up, gradually extending my lead on the rest of the guys.  I passed the lead group of women who started 10 minutes before the guys at about the  4 mile mark.  Liz stephens, Mogan Arritola, and Caitlin Compton were hammering.  They all looked stong and impressive.

When I finished the race I immediatly checked my bloodsugar and lactate.  My glucose was a little higher that I would have prefered so I will make another adjustment to my prerace insulin programs.  My lactate was 8.3 which is a very high number for such a long race.  It indicates that despite not doing much intensity last month, my body is primed to start racing.

Caitlin Compton was the next finisher.  She broke away from Morgan who finshed second, and Liz, third with about 400 meters from the finish.  Our women are looking good and it should be an exiting winter to watch them race.  Noah Hoffman came in next.  He was the second “Marwe finsisher” after myself.  He was two and half minutes behind me but a full minute and a half up on the next male.  This was a very impressive finish for the junior.  I have done several training sessions with him this summer and I believe he is the real deal. Its great to have a junior this talented coming up the pipeline.

The rest of my stay in Lake Placid will be focused on volume.  I have 25 hours of training planned for the remaining six days of camp.

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