After a fairly successful week in duntroon at the Canadian nationals and earning my first overall aggregate award I was happy to come home and relax after a very hard week of racing. We had great snow in Canmore and the skiing was really good. I kept the hours fairly low a few days of volume and a day on the treadmill doing some exit testing for the team as per usual. That shape I thought was still good and was excited to go race in Alaska Fairbanks. I left on Sunday and was held up in Seattle for 10.5 hours enjoying a few coffees from starbucks. I did finally make it and so did my gear which was surprising and I was very happy about. The next day I was able to get on ski’s and see what Fairbanks had for trails, I was impressed with what they had to offer and great classic terrain as well. The 10km /team sprint ( Nish and I) / 30km pursuit will start at 7pm because of the volunteers are at work all day great dedication from them to work then head out to the cold to help run this event. In the 10km it took me a while to find my grove , I finally found it in the 2nd half and was able to move from 4th to 2nd which I was happy about.
The following day brought in some warmer weather which was nice and Nish and I where feeling pretty good about our chances. We both skied reasonably well. I missed an attack on the final lap where I lost 10meter and was unable to make that up. Nish did his best and pretty much closed it but as soon as he did the attacks started off the front. Nish came into the finish line lounging for 3rd just lost ending in 4th.
After those two races I believe I will sit out and support our Canadians with some feeds for (Nish,Dan,Pate,Ivan) in the 30km pursuit.
Unless I feel really good today skiing will see how the body is. My main concentration will go to the 50km on Sunday which will start at a normal time and it will be an extremely hard course. I look forward to that race because of the difficulty of the course and it being the last race of the season too.
Wish me Luck!!!!
