First Race

Yesterday was the 10k classic. This was my first race at WUG. After talking with coaches, I had decided to do the two distance races and the relay. Unfortunately, those are also the last three races, meaning I had to wait a week and a half to start racing. I haven’t decided if this is good or bad, we’ll see.

Tuesday morning I was doing a standard day-before-the-race ski, which for me is an hour and a half of so of mostly easy skiing with a bunch of short, very high intensity pick-ups. I was struggling to get my heart rate into level 4. This is generally a bad sign. I was a little frustrated. After I finished and the day wore on I started to feel some cold symptoms. My roommate Sam had some elderberry and zinc tablets, so I took one of those. I had no intention of flying thousands of miles to Slovakia to not race. But there is a point where you just can’t race. I didn’t feel that bad so I decided to decide in the morning.

I woke up yesterday morning still feeling sick, but well enough to race. The first thing I did after waking up was go to breakfast. I have had a carefully planned out raceday morning breakfast since high school, so adjusting to the Slovakian food at the hotel has been a little tough. I had a week and a half to get used to it, so I sucked it up. I had mixed fruit, toast, and oatmeal which actually isn’t too far off from my standard one.

Once I got out on my skis I felt ok. Still sick, but not too terrible. The course was closed for all but about 20 minutes before the race, so we skied the 200m warm-up loop for an hour or so. When the course opened I skied about half of the course. I skipped the outside loop because my race skis weren’t ready and I wanted a chance to get on them before the race. When I got my race skis I had about five minutes to course closure, and 23 until my start. I decided to go for a little less kick because I was concerned that they felt slow, so I brought them back to coaches. They were ready about 10 minutes before my start, so I grabbed them and sprinted down to the pen.

I have never been in a race of this level, so the pen was an interesting experience. We get both ankles chipped, and two volunteers put the chips on for you. When I began to shed my layers, I had a camera following my every move. It’s really cool how big Universiade is in this part of the world. I realized that Universiade is very similar to how the Olympics were before they allowed professionals to compete. Well, except that at this Universiade there were some professional ski racers. 

Kyle and myself in the pen

Throughout my entire warm-up, I was thinking about Michael Jordan’s flu game in the 1997 NBA Finals. Jordan woke up with food poisoning and was extremely sick the night before, but managed to play excellent basketball and led the Bulls to victory. Because I was not feeling too well, I thought it was a good comparison.

Channeling Jordan

Once I started racing I forgot that I was sick. That’s a good thing. I felt like I was skiing pretty strong at the start. I flew up the biggest climb (at least it felt that way.) When I went by Christi she gave me a split that I was 5 seconds off from Kyle and 10 off from Nathan. I got passed by the two skiers who started 1 and 2 bibs behind me ant the very end of the first lap. I stuck with bib 18 for a while. I really stuck to him. I was riding the back of his skis and followed him when he changed lanes. Eventually he dropped me, but I managed to keep bib 17 in sight for the whole race. When I went by Christi on the second lap I think she said I was in 35^th; I was kind of in the zone so I didn’t really hear it very well. My wax started to slip on the second lap, so maybe bumping the kick back a little bit was a bad idea. It’s hard to say. I also just felt like I was hurting a lot more on the second lap, after the first one had felt so fast. After I finished I didn’t feel like I’d ever quite been firing on all cylinders during the race. It was an ok race, but I know I can do better when I’m feeling 100%. I also need to take into account the strength of the field and the fact that I’m one of the youngest competitors in the race. Nathan came in at 79^th, 8 seconds ahead of me in 80^th, and Kyle in 81^st, 5 seconds behind me. Despite my suffering on the second lap, I actually improved my position during it. 

During the race

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been in Eastern Europe is that there are a lot of smokers. While there are plenty of smokers in the United States too, it definitely feels like there are more here. The real problem is that they like to smoke right next to the ski trails. If people want to smoke they have every right to, but I feel that it is very inconsiderate to the athletes to smoke so close to the trails. The book we are all reading, Fevered, is all about human health and its impacts on human health. Like smoking, pollution has a similar damaging effect on athletes. Fevered has a long chapter that details the harmful effects of poor air quality. I am very thankful that I live in a place with clean air.