The 15k went reasonably well, as best I can tell.

It was a pretty strong field for a simple afternoon time trial at Craftsbury, with the whole Green Team there (NENSA’s elite senior team), and all the “college boys” home for Christmas. My whole family and some relatives came out to ski and watch/cheer and with all the cheering/encouragement in the first 2 or 3k I definitely got a little excited and went out pretty hard!

The guy starting in front of me was a Colby skier who I used to train with at Craftsbury, who finished right behind me in last weekend’s 10k classic in the eastern cups up in Presque Isle, Maine. I made up the 30 seconds on him in the first 1k or 1.3k or so. After that I passed last year’s J1/OJ sprint champion / last year’s top qualifier for Biathlon World Juniors, Ethan Dreissigacker, and after that I was pretty much by myself for the rest of the race (it was interval start) - but I knew there was at least 1 guy out there (Tim Reynolds) that would be tough to beat (one of the senior/green team guys), so that and the general desire to go all out no matter what, kept me digging throughout the race.

With my over-zealous start I felt like I was skiing noticeably slower on lap 2 than lap 1, but was also able to push super hard toward the end of lap 2 knowing it was the finish. Still, I was quite sure I’d lost time to Tim on the second lap. As it turned out, I won by 31sec. which is less than I thought I might have, but I also managed to keep gaining time on Tim on lap 2 so that was encouraging. I made about 20sec. on him on lap 1 and then another 10sec. on lap 2 despite my second lap being about 50 seconds slower than my first (part of this may have been  due to dirty skis as the snow was pretty dirty…but that probably doesn’t account for more than 15 or 20sec. at the most.)

All in all it was a solid workout and good to do another “race” rather than just intervals. I realized that while we’re often warned to not go out too hard at elevation, it can be equally important not to go out too hard at sea level if you’re used to elevation! A good lesson before nationals in Anchorage.

Highly “official” looking results from Pepa: (these are totally incomplete, just the top few guys I guess, and none of the girls…Liz Stephen was there which was cool to have a US Ski Team member / National Champion participating.)

Ian-43:48, Lap-21:26
Tim-44:19 Lap-21:47
Ollie-44:42
Tucker-46:29
Matt- 46:42