Today we had our first pursuit race of the season. A pursuit is when you race two 5ks in one day- one of each technique. How you placed in the first race sets you up for where you start in the second. The first one to cross the finish line in the second race is the winner. For the most part it went pretty well. Let's break down the day shall we?
The day started off with a two hour delay due to icy road conditions so the ski team hung out at the Duluth mall causing havoc as usual.
We arrived at the meet and immediately set forth complaining. Conditions were questionable and temps were climbing! We were pretty crabby about that and the fact that we racing a pursuit that didn't even start until 1, so not much recovery time between racing. As we were changing we discovered that three of us have matching mysterious knee bruises. It's just like two dots and it's so weird cause we don't know where they came from!!
My mysterious knee bruise
The first race was skate and as we decided what to wear (in the end we went with just ski suits which is skier slang for our spandex uniforms), our amazingly wonderful coaches and the occasional family member volunteer touched up our wax jobs to deal with the wet conditions.
The skate race was fast, I even heard rumors that the first place guy came in at like 12 minutes (I never saw the results so this could be false information)!!! With a lot of rolling hills, quick turns, and icy conditions (odd considering the heat) it was a very technical race. Not that anyone actually had good technique, it was all we could do not to eat it. The general consensus is that people felt like the kids at MYSL (Minnesota youth ski league). The girls' did pretty well with Emma Stertz in 3rd, Maggie Anderson myself and Lucia Wyland going 12th 13th and 14th, and Jaylynn Lauer rounding out the top twenty with a 19th place finish. She may have been 17th, it was such an exhausting day I can't remember.
After a quick break it was time to test skis and race again! Sadly today was a klister day. For those of you who don't know what it is, klister is satan's mistress and the bane of every skiers existence. It's gross and sticky and gets on everything.
Anyways, the classic race was painful with temperatures going down as the sun went down. Talking with some other teams it seems to be no one had any kick so those uphills were fun!! On the bright side our team was able to move up in individual placing. Which is great because historically we've never been that good at classic. They new training plan must be ormmworjung or maybe it was the awesome cheering we had out there and the coaches yelling encouragements as we went by.
I may have stolen a stranger's
hat...don't worry I gave it back!!
Okay, he had to ask for it because
I forgot.
As soon as all the results were in we had awards. I'm excited to say that Sam Stertz rocked the J-High racing again with another 1st place finish!! Hans came in either 8th or 9th (there's debate among the team in where he actually placed, I say 8th). The boys team placed 5th overall out of about 11 teams.
On the girls' side of things I came in 9th, and Emma managed to keep her place for a 3rd place finish. The girls' team came in second like the beasts we are.
Thanks for reading!
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