As I mentioned in the title of this post, this weekend of racing was a muti stage race. That means that everyones times from the first 2 days of racing were added together, and then that dictated the starting order of the last race on Sunday.
So, the first race was a skate sprint on Friday. This really was not my day. I got off to a slow start in my qualifier, and it wasn't until about halfway through the course that I started to feel good, by which time it was way too late to expect good things. My quarterfinal was a bit of a similar story, getting off the line in 3rd, and despite my best efforts, was not able to find a way around 2nd place, and that was the end of my day.
Day two of racing came in the form of a 10km interval start skate race. After my disappointing performance in the interval start skate race the weekend before in Silver Star, I was admittedly a little nervous about this race, as my skating confidence took a pretty hard blow. But, I ended up having my best distance race of the year so far that day. I felt really strong for both laps of the 5km course, and I ended up placing 4th in Junior, just missing the podium by 2.5 seconds, and 16 seconds off the win. While it's always a little disappointing finishing 4th in a race, I got over it fairly quickly. I had a great race, and to make it even better, it was my best points race in a distance event to date, and in case anyone isn't already aware, I am kind of obsessed with points :).
The final day of competition was the 15km classic handicap start (3 laps of 5km). I learned a pretty big lesson here when I didn't test my classic skis the day before. Because of timing and things like that, I did not get a chance to test my classic skis, so I just talked to my coaches and made a decision based on what I knew about my skis. Bad idea. So, I started the race 2 minutes and 58 seconds behind the top Senior man, and 22 seconds behind the top Junior Man (based on the handicap from the previous days of racing). My game plan was to just kill it off the start to catch the first Junior, and then ski with him for a while, but that didn't exactly pan out. By about 30 seconds into my race I knew that I had picked the wrong skis, as I had very little grip, and they weren't all the fast. I ended up trying to fight through this and still try to go super hard off the start, but that took its toll on me a few minutes later. I had a brutal first lap in which at one point I got the top of a hill and seriously considered dropping out of the race (this is a thought that has never crossed my mind before in a race, so I was not feeling good). But I decided to keep going, and I am very glad I did. I'm not sure what happened, but I was able to put my head down at the start of my second lap, find that next gear, and I went for it. I managed to make up some very big deficits on the next two laps and I finished with the 4th fastest Junior time.
*****If the whole "handicap" start thing doesn't make sense to anyone, please feel free to email or facebook me and I will gladly do another post explaining it in detail. It can be a little confusing if you don't know what I'm talking about :)*****
Unfortunately they did not do awards for the overall Junior mutli stage results, but after I arrived home last night I looked over all of the results, and I learned that I actually won the weekend overall for Juniors. So I can now safely say that I am very happy with how this weekend played out haha :).
I will now be spending the next 2 weeks here in Canmore preparing for the World Junior Trial races that will be taking place Jan. 6-9 in Thunder Bay ON. I'll likely do another post just before I leave for those races, and if not, there will definitely be a recap of them up here by the 11th.
So until then, Merry Christmas everyone!! And Happy Skiing!!
Cheers!
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