As far as my races, I did fairly well in the distance race and was happy with it.  My goal was to ski the course well, rather than worrying about how hard I needed to go.  A course like Canmore seems to do the pushing for you (at least for me) so the trick was to pace it well and ski it as smoothly as possible.  I felt good about that race, and the nerves or craziness that might come from being in my first World Cup never really hit me at all.  I wasn’t really nervous, I was just focused on how I wanted to ski my race.

 

The sprint race was a different story.  I was still cool as a cucumber (even pretty confident because my warm up had felt good) until about 20 minutes beforehand when I headed towards the start.  Then I remembered that I hadn’t done the speeds that I usually do in my warm up, and my legs felt really crappy when I was trying to do them running in the pen.  Feeling good during the threshold portion of my warm up doesn’t mean anything when the race is a 1k!  In the end, I finished up last.  I felt kind of ineffective, but not to the degree that I would have thought I was last, so it was kind of an unpleasant surprise.  Luckily, I didn’t feel like checking until I got back to the hotel so I was able to watch without worrying about it.  Honestly, the world cup is not a bad place to get my first last place, and there is nowhere to go but up!

 

More important than my races, was experiencing my first world cup.   I really loved the scene, the energy, and the fact that there were actually people interested in watching it!  According to the announcers, there were 9 million people (mostly in Europe or the east) watching on TV.  Thats amazing!  I think this photo sums it up pretty well:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the Awards Ceremony after the race.  Look at all the people watching!  Also, it had to be timed correctly so that live TV in Europe would have it on prime time, and there was a camera up on a boom truck getting the whole view.  That’s pretty amazing if you ask me.   The locals were really into it too. Afterwards a little boy came up to me and asked if I had fun, he wanted to talk about how he is a downhill racer but is doing cross country in school and likes it.  I told him there are lots of people who go from being downhill racers to really good cross country skiers, and I wonder if someday he will be the next big nordic thing.  Living in Canmore, with the Alberta WC Academy there, I don’t doubt that he could be.

 

Watching the heats and and the awards ceremony really made me think.  This is what I am training for, this is the big time, this is my goal.  It’s really amazing and cool, but is it the absolute greatest thing that I can do with myself?  I think that, if I could be on the world cup circuit in a few years, that would be probably the coolest lifestyle that I can think of.  Traveling from place to place, racing, skiing, getting to know athletes from other countries, I think that that would be worth it.  Erik and I were watching the heats and awards together, and he said that if the podium is the only reason that you do it, skiing will be a hard life for you.  But if you appreciate and love it the rest of the time: the training, ski testing, racing, living on the road, and all those other components, it really is the best thing that you can do.  I think skiing exclusively isn’t for everyone, and it seems like American skiers tend to have a hard time and question that more than other skiers.  They struggle with funding, opportunity, and an American view that we should be good at many things at once.  However, the few that want it bad enough, maybe they can change skiing in the US.  Imagine having a sprint A final that was 5 Americans and 1 Norwegian.  Wouldn’t that be crazy?

☺