The first race of the season went fairly well. I have been training hard all fall and preparing for the race season with hopes of progress and success. I had two main goals for this race; one was to ski it relaxed and technically well. I have a tendency to get over excited and go out to hard then blow up near the end. I wanted to have my second lap actually be faster than my first lap. My second goal was to place in the top twenty. I haven’t seen any results yet, but I feel that I did pretty well over all.
I have been coughing extremely hard the last couple of weeks with great frustration and confusion. I knew that we had the first race coming up and I have been wanting to do really well at it. I was getting extremely frustrated though because my cough wasn’t going away but actually getting worse. “Am i getting a cold” I thought to myself as I was watching my heart rate very close. My resting heart rate was still in the 40’s and when I’d go ski, I felt great and my heart rate was still sitting where it normally does. I would think “What is wrong with me?!” During the last week of school I have been busting butt so I can get all of my finals done early. I didn't want the stress of having finals and homework to burden me for the race. So needless to say I was pretty stressed out all week, and that wasn't helping my cough. Finally on friday afternoon I was done with school and officially on vacation! I was debating on going t practice because I was coughing up a storm. I’m glad that I actually did go though. I skied with Christi and Rachel and we discussed what could be wrong with me. To my surprise, and relief, we are thinking that I have acid reflux disease. All of my symptoms are pointing in that direction. That took a huge load of stress off, which is really good because stress only makes acid reflux disease worse. I was now excited because I was actually going to be able to do the race.
Sunday morning came way too early. I went to sleep sometime around 1 am and woke up at 5:20am. I packed up my gear, grabbed some yogurt for breakfast and was out the door. I was feeling pretty ok until we got to Kremling. That's when I started feeling sick. I think most of it was because of the van ride and listening to Joe’s awesomely bad tehcno/ 80’s mix. I grabbed a cinnamon roll hoping that food would make me feel better. As soon as we got to Frisco, I was changed and heading out to go walk/ski the course. MOnitoring my heart rate the whole time I began to stress because I was sitting at the top of my zone one and I was hardly moving. I thought “Oh great! Should I still race, am I actually getting sick now?” After skiing the course I decided to go take some advil ( Thanks Fern! ), drink some water and take off my heart rate monitor. I put in my headphones and put a smile on my face. All my life I never used a heart rate monitor when I was warming up for a race and I think constantly watching that morning was stressing me out way too much and keeping my heart rate way too high. After fifteen minutes of skiing and smiling, I was feeling tons better. I didn't rush to the start like I usually do but casually stretched and made my way to the gate. They started the count down and I counted along with them in my head: “5...4...3...2...1 SLOW! “ is what I thought as I charged out of the gate. I knew I had to ski relaxed and smart if I wanted to achieve my goals, so that's what I did. I purely just had fun the first lap. When I’d pass people, I’d have a huge smile on my face and tell them “great job!” trying to help them out. I knew what spots I needed to hit a little bit harder than others and what my over all goals were. I actually had a plan and was going to stick to it! I knew that the race was more or less going to be the whole backside of the course, so the first lap going up that hill I made sure to stay relaxed and smooth. After I got over the top and started my double poling again, It just occurred to me that the whole next 4 kilometers was going to be all double poling. “Oh great!” Once I came around the lap I knew that I needed to up my tempo a little bit, but stay relaxed and not over do it before the long climb. I was looking forward to the first couple climbs because they had a downhill right after that I could actually tuck and get a little recovery on. After the last steep climb and tuck I said to myself, “ok here's my race. This is where I need to go” I started the long gradual climb and thought smooth but fast. It was working, I was catching up to more people and saw Nicholai and Justin working together just ahead of me. I wanted to get up there and work with them knowing that the double pole section to the finish was going to hurt. It was all I could do to hang on to Nicholai’s powerful double pole. Then out of no where number 166 came flying by me and I was like “Holy crap! what's up with that tempo?!?!” So I tried to keep just keep up with him until the end. I finished strong, and felt good about my performance. I stayed nice and relaxed the whole way and it seemed to have worked for me.
I’m always glad about a race if I accomplish atlas one of my goals, especially the more important goal. If i dint get the top twenty, oh well. I have time to do that. he important part was that I had a great time racing, and felt that I did a good job at staying relaxed and pacing myself. Without being able to do that my top twenty finish will never come. So all around, I feel that I had a great season opener and an amazing time!
No comments:
Post a Comment