December has started off well! Norway greeted us to an
abundance of salmon, brown cheese, waffles, and most importantly SUNSHINE! The
hotel buffet is no joke. Every meal has a full spread of everything you can
imagine and then some. Many different choices of meat and seafood, any carb you
can imagine, tasty vegetables, and an extensive dessert bar! While the snow was
a little sparse, we were able to drive to higher elevations to ski on some
natural snow and enjoy the sun and scenery.
I also celebrated my birthday midweek! My teammates threw me
a painting party and all of us followed watercolor instruction by Caitlin to
create some really nice landscape paintings. I love painting, but oil paint is
my favorite medium and those are a bit cumbersome to travel with so I unable to
do any art over the course of the winter. This was a wonderful surprise and a
ton of fun!
The organizers were able to get together a 3.75km loop for
the races with manmade snow. The day before the races we got a big storm that
left a fresh blanket of nice, natural snow everywhere. It packed down well
overnight and made for some really nice racing conditions on Saturday. Day 1
was a skiathlon, an event we only do once or twice a season. It starts with
7.5km of classic skiing then we switch to skate gear midrace and finish with
7.5km of skating. It is a gear intensive race, making logistics all that more
important for the day. The only flat on the course in Lillehammer is the
stadium, the rest is up or down. It is very nice skiing, but challenging
nonetheless. Skiathlon races are a bit of a mental hurdle for me because I am
generally better at classic skiing and am therefore never quite sure what is
going to happen when I switch to skate skis. My general plan is always to make
up as much time in the classic portion and try to hang on in the skating. For
whatever reason, I wasn’t able to make up as much time classic skiing as I had
hoped. On the flip side, I didn’t feel all that bad skating and managed to only
loose a few places during that portion of the race. Retrospectively, I think I
was skiing a little timidly both in the classic and skate portion with a
subconscious fear of anticipating skating to feel bad. I was skiing technically
well and finished in 37th, not a disaster and not quite what I
wanted. Lesson learned: always send it.
Saturday temperatures reached well above freezing melting
that nice layer of snow that had fallen and then dropped to below freezing
Saturday night making for an ice rink of a ski course on Sunday morning. Ice is
my least favorite condition, especially when I have a nice layer of sticky
klister on the bottom on my skis. Sunday was also relay day so my race was not
just my race, but an important part of the Team USA’s race. The downhills on
the course are very fast to begin with and got a lot faster when the tracks
where solid ice. I did my best to stay calm and maybe on the surface I appeared
calm, but inside I was holding back a flood of tears. I pulled myself together
as best I could and the race was off. I found I was climbing really well and
feeling quite good on the climbs. I moved up to the front on the longest climb
of the course, a grueling 700m climb. But what goes up must come down….I tried
hard to take a deep breath and ski fast and controlled down the hill, but just
couldn’t get the panic out myself and scrubbed much more speed than I would
have liked. Now in the chase group, I set out to just ski the climbs as best as
I could and survive the downs. I tagged off to Sadie in 7th place with
a number of teams in sight. I was disappointed that I couldn’t overcome all my
fears, but hopeful that my teammates could pick off a few teams. Sadie skied an
aggressive leg, leap frogging with three teams in front of her before tagging
off to our skating machines. Liz, a strong climber, made the most of the climbs
dropping 2 of those teams before tagging off to Jessie. Jessie quickly latched
onto 4th place, Sweden, and just as quickly passing and dropping
them. She was quickly putting time into the 3rd place team and the
three of us who had already skied our legs were nervously watching the big
screen in the finish as we suddenly realized the podium was in reach. Jessie
caught 3rd place on the big climb and then skied over the top of
hill very hard, skied an incredibly daring downhill and just flew into the
finish to three overwhelmed and screaming teammates! Team USA on the podium!
Two years ago, I watched, from the sidelines, a USA girls
relay team win bronze in Lillehammer. It was very inspiring and I knew I wanted
to be a part of that someday. To get on the podium in the same place two years
later is a great feeling of accomplishment. Watching my teammates ski
unbelievable legs full of heart, determination, and belief will keep my
inspiration and motivation high for the next two years I’m sure. Having a
strong team is an amazing asset as each member has their own wealth of
strengths to learn from. I’m a lucky girl to have a strong team in AK and a
strong team the rest of the season with USST.
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| Very festive on the streets of Lillehammer |
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| Finding Sun and Snow up high |
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| Sadie, Sophie, Jessie, and me enjoying our ski |
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| Sadie at the painting birthday party |
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| Boys hard at work |
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| My finished product |
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| Lots of neat paintings |
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| The big snowfall before it all melted... |
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| Wax tech JP meeting with his athletes about the race the next day |
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| Greeting Jessie at the finish line |
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| Some very happy girls! |
