Well, it’s been a long time since the first blog post where I introduced myself. Hard to believe that it was only several months ago. Since then, we have been through the trials of testing week, the horrors of 6:30 AM practice, and the huge volume of Thanksgiving camp. Now, although these were all hard, they don’t fully capture the hardest part of being a collegiate ski racer. See, the hardest part of being a ski racer is not the time trials or races that we write about, but simply finding the motivation to get out the door every day and have the consistency to put in the hours. It was all the workouts that we didn’t write about that got us to today.
And what was today?! THE FIRST CARNIVAL! That’s right, we all made it through the trials of training to arrive at the doorstep of the fast and fun (albeit a little crazy) 6 weeks that we call carnival season. SLU had the honor of hosting the first carnival. We opened with a classic sprint today and will follow that up with a skate 5/10K tomorrow. Some of us will stick around for a Mid-A JNQ classic 10k on Sunday. It’s been a lot of racing for some of us in the past few weeks, but the excitement of racing our first college carnivals on our home course with plenty of cheering friends and parents has gotten us through. In fact, I would say we haven’t just made it through, but excelled and had a blast.
We had a strong showing today in the classic sprint, though many are feeling as if their best effort will come tomorrow in the skate distance race. So, stay tuned. For now though, here is a recap of the great stuff that was happening on course at Mt. Van Hoevenberg today.
The course at Van Ho was the real surprise today. We arrived early to ski and found out that we did not have to go up quite so much of Main St. (the big climb) as we thought. This meant that there were lots of hard decisions about to double pole on skate skis or stride on classic. In the end all our guys (and most that I saw on course) decided to double pole, and the women were a mixed bag. Fortunately for the women, both striding and double poling seemed to be competitive choices.
Once we all figured out what skis we were using and the coaches finished their amazing waxing, balancing having to prep both skate and classic skis, we got to racing! The women went first and everyone seemed to have a great time in the sunshine, though as always there were mixed reactions in terms of results. Having fun (and looking pro with Saints face tattoos) is what matters though, and I think that mission was accomplished! The boys followed it up with some strong double poling and good fun (minus the face tats, though they looked pro as well).
Lucy ‘20 made her first college sprint heats and was very excited to get the chance to race some speedy girls. She went off in the first quarterfinal to finish 4th. Although she didn’t quite have the speed and strength to move on (Fun fact-double poling with your arms actually hurts your quads), she had a great time and was excited to get the chance to race such accomplished skiers.
We all stuck around to soak up the sun, eat some great food made by our wonderful parents, and cheer for friends on other teams. We ended the day with a full team photo that is sure to make it’s way to the blog at some point. Many thought that it was the hardest and most painful part of the day to stare into the sun and not squint… It’s tougher than it sounds.
-Lucy '20
(All photos seen in this blog taken by Dana)
Men’s Results
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