Super Tour races in Washington

Last Thursday part of the team and I traveled to Washington where I competed in my first ever races in the U.S., which were also my first ever Super tour races. The Super Tour is an American race series that goes on over the course of every season (in case you were curious). This was an awesome weekend for me, with Saturday being my first of the season where I actually felt really good.

So the weekend started off on Saturday with skate sprints. Being my first time racing in the U.S., and being one of only three Canadians in my category, I really had no idea what to expect after my qualifier. It felt pretty good, and I ended up qualifying 4th in my category (1st of those 3 Canadians). This gave me some good confidence going into the heats in the afternoon. Lucky for me, as the day wore on the icy race course became a little softer and by the time my heats started the snow had turned into my favorite kind of snow for skate sprints. I was pretty happy about it. So my heats started with my quarterfinal, in which I was able to let up with about 100m to go to take the win and advance to the semifinals. The next two heats, the semi and the final, required a bit more effort on my part, but I managed to keep the trend going. I ended up leading all three of my heats on Saturday from start to finish, and capturing my first Super Tour gold medal. As you can see from my new Blog picture above, I was very happy about it.

Sunday's race was a 15km classic individual start. I wasn't feeling quite as hot as I had been the day before, but I was still hoping for good things. The course was 3 laps of a 5km course, which was basically one long grind of a climb for a few kilometres, followed by a fast, technical descent back to the stadium. Sadly for me, I managed to crash on not 1, but 2 of my times going down that descent. Not my best day. Despite my crashes however, I did feel pretty good for the rest of my race. So when I saw that I finished 3rd in my category, I was pretty happy about it.

After Sunday's race and awards had ended, we started the drive back to Canmore, spending the night in Vernon, BC. We ended up pulling into Canmore around 3:00pm this afternoon. So now that I am back, I'll spend the next 10 days training and working, and then I'll be off to Ottawa for the Eastern Canadian Championships. I have had some great times racing at Nakkertok over the years, so I am really looking forward to it.

Here are some pictures from this weekend.

Super Tour races in Washington

That's all for now, cheers!