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| From Cowboy Chase 2009 |
The Cowboy Chase weekend was one of the most successful in club history! We changed the format this year to make it a more traditional 2-day pursuit and had a 10km skate on Saturday and a 10km classic on Sunday. It was an amazing weekend of racing!
The 10km skate was a mass start and due to the fact that our amazing MBNA groomers decided it would be nice to groom the lower meadow we had the best mass start area we've ever had. Lots of space to have a fair start. We had 38 men, 21 women and 5 kids start the race. We started the women 2 minutes behind the men and the kids 2 minutes after that so the start was well manageable for everyone!
The course was a 10km loop so after the start we had awhile before anyone came back in. Rachel was out on the course with a radio and we got a couple of updates from her but it was on the edge of the radio reception so some of it was lost but we knew that Zhenya, Dan and John were skiing together and Kari, Gwynn and Britanie (Western State) were also in a pack. We expected to see the first man enter the campground between 26-28 minutes and we were not disappointed when Zhenya came flying up the hill into the campground with Dan only a few seconds back! They both flew around the campground and despite an attempt at a comeback from Dan Zhenya was able to win the race by only 10 seconds! John came in only 34 second behind Dan and Joe was only 29 seconds behing John. Talk about a tough top 4 and we were missing our star freshman, Eliah, with illness! Jacob, still struggling to come back from ACL surgery in September showed how much training he had done in the fall coming in only 50 seconds behind Joe with Freshman Matt and an ill Justin within a minute of Jacob. Grigory followed Justin within a minute and Nicholai, Willie and Adam finished in a pack, just to make things interesting on Sunday. Fitz, still sick but needing to do something, struggled in followed by Devin, back for his first race in a month, to round out a strong men's team. There were many great packs that should make Sunday interesting. On another note, UW Nordic Team Alumni Brian (Bus Mom) had a great race finishing as the 5th citizen racer! It sure was great to see him out there!
The women also wanted to make things interesting and after Kari and Gwynn changing leads for 10km Britanie showed herself to be a tad stronger at the end, just edging Gwynn by 1 second and Kari by 2! Marie had a strong race to finish in 5th follwed by Ava in 6th, Karyn in 7th, Shannon in 8th, Catherine in 9th and Gina in 10th. Talk about a leathal women's team! Our two beginners, better know as Cara & Kara, skied together for most of the race with Kara just pulling out a win. They were followed by Jenny with a solid race. There was also a UW Nordic Team alumn in the women's race. Mae came up from grad school at CSU to show the new girls how it was done. At the end of the race she was in 3rd place and on solid footing to make some gains in her favorite technique on Sunday.
Sunday dawned bright and sunny and the pursuit part of the race was on. The times were extremely close and most of the field went out within the first 13 minutes! The classic race was a 2 lap race so we all got to see what was happening in the middle of the race. The course was a solid 5km's so we were expecting to see the first guy (Zhenya) at about 15 minutes. We were surprized when he and Dan came flying by the start at just over 13 minutes! John was in hot pursuit but losing groud since Dan and Zhenya were working together and Joe was also working hard but not being able to gain on John. Other men were mixing it up, some losing ground, some gaining and the second pack of Nicholai, Willie and Adam was just holding together. Gwynn had made a move for the women and was leading Kari with Britanie starting to lose a little ground. The other women were once again gaining or losing, mostly depending on whether they are skaters or classic skiers, except Morgan who didn't race yesterday and was rapidly plowing up through the field.
The final lap turned out to be extremely exciting with Zhenya just edging Dan for the overall pursuit win but Dan just edging Zhenya for the classic race win. John hung tight for 3rd, Joe had a great classic race and stayed in 4th. There was some mix up in the rest of the men with Adam showing his summer training and managing to drop Willie and Nicholai. Brian made an amazing run to take the overall men's citizen lead!
The women also made an amazing finish. Kari managed to just pull away from Gwynn to take the overall lead and Britanie finished 3rd overall. Morgan caught tons of people and took 4th for the day in the classic race. The rest of the women skied well with little mix-up.
On the whole it was an amazing weekend of racing and sets us up nicely for USCSA Nationals which start on Tuesday, March 3. We can hardly wait!
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