I jumped in the first races for my season last weekend and let’s just say there are still quite a few cobwebs hanging around. I had a period of sickness in the fall the hindered getting on snow time trials in while in Alaska, so my body wasn’t quite used to the race efforts.
Saturday started off with incredibly tricky conditions for early season. The temperature was hovering around freezing and the weather had granted us some new snowfall overnight. These factors coupled with a large women’s field and even larger men’s field meant that the race course conditions were tricky. The track was glazed and icy in some places while maintaining a fresh powdery nature in others. It was a great challenge for a first classic race day back working with my tech JP. I won’t say that we nailed it, but we learned some good lessons and the race wasn’t that important. I struggled a bit with my race execution as well, but again was reminded of some lessons that I should have learned when I was racing at 10 years old. However, sometimes we all need little reminders.
Sunday’s skate race was a little better. The conditions were quite a bit simpler and it was a skate race so we didn’t have to deal with the hassle/joy of classic waxing. I found a bit more energy than Saturday and raced to a better place. The depth of the Norwegian field is always humbling and definitely left me looking for more as we head into the world cup this coming weekend.
For now, the whole team is off to Finland. Most of our wax technicians left this morning in the our special waxing semi truck loaded down with about 500 pairs of cross country skis. We start the world cup season on Friday with a classic sprint.
Scott Patterson 