I have now finished three weekends of World Cup racing. The excitement and nerves have settled down, everything feels quite routine, living out of a suitcase is getting as comfortable as possible, and hints of homesickness have started to creep in.
Luckily, week three brought us a little further south to the Swiss Alps where the mountains are big and the sun shines strong. I never realize how much I miss the mountains until I arrive back in them and then I get such strong feelings of wanting to be up in the mountains adventuring. With the low snow that we have here, I have been able to go running on the single track trails around the pass we are staying at which has been a real treat for me! Unfortunately, the manmade loop that makes up the race course goes up a narrow valley that is situated in a way that it never gets the sun so our sun time comes from the deck of our hotel in between training sessions.
This weekend was a double skate weekend with a 15k skate on Saturday and skate sprint on Sunday. Classic is my preferred technique, but I raced both days to work on my skating and one never knows when everything will click. I ended the weekend with a distance race that was close to being where I want to be, but still just short and a sprint with some very tired legs that ended up being another fairly close race. As I keep falling just short of where I would like to be, I have had to step back and focus on the things that did go well and the improvements that have been made in order to not get too down on myself. In the end, a place is just a place and not very representative of what happened during the race unless of course you win. In the distance race, I felt I was doing some of the best skate technique I have ever managed and I also was in the same place at the top of the course that I was at the bottom indicating that I was skiing the downhills much harder than I typically do which has been a big focus for me this year. Those are two very big accomplishments for me despite an average result. I hope to continue to accomplish those things in the coming races while of course, working to increase my speed bit by bit.
The team continued to turn in some strong results as well with 2 top 10, 3 top 20s, and 3 top 30s over the weekend!
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| Distance racing (Photo: TokoUS) |
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| Sprint Racing (Photo: tokoUS) |
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| Running adventures |
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| The view from the deck |
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| Not much snow, but good running |
Our time in the mountains continues for the next month so I am looking forward to enjoying many more days of mountains and sun!
