Sprint Relay at SoHo

I dragged myself out of bed this morning to do a team sprint relay with duncan. The Utes as well as the US Nordic Combined Team were there. I must admit that I underestimated the nordic combined guys. When I think nordic combined I think mediocre skiers that focus more on jumping than actual training. But, Bill Demong showed up. He is an amazing skier and won the world championships last year in nordic combined. I was totally psyched to have him there.

It was freaking cold. As I passed through park city, I looked at the car thermometer and it read 23C. Luckily, I had thought ahead. I was totally decked out in my crazy tights even though it wasn't Tuesday (TUNA has a tradition that states, "if an athlete has crazy tights to wear, they will be worn on Tuesday's practice). I roll into the SoHo parking lot and Bill, Duncan, Ian, and Wilson are already there. I say high to Wendy, put on my skis, and Duncan and I start warming up. SoHo, apart from being the sight of the 2002 winter olympics, might just be the best rollerskiing in the world. Duncan and I are only skiing the sprint course today, but SoHo has another 6 or so Ks of paved trials with wicked ups and downs that make even seasoned athletes a little nervous. It is exhilarating.

Wendy calls everyone together to give us a little race prep information. We are going to do a team sprint relay which means I will ski a lap and tag off to duncan who will ski tag back to me again. we will do this until each of us has raced three laps. but, thats only one heat. we will end up doing another one after we have had 20 mins rest.

I take my place on the start line, and we are off. my first lap feels great. I feel as though I am not even really skiing that hard. I keep pretty close to Ian Havlick (who won the junior national sprint last year at this very course, but on snow). I tag off to duncan who ended up having a decent race at the start, but ramped it up and finished extraordinarily well. Bill sharpens my poles in between the time I finished my lap and the time Duncan comes back into the stadium to tag back. My second lap isn't so great. my legs are a little fatigued, but I manage to hang on to ian once again. My third lap is just agony. I think I ended up being 10 seconds slower than my previous laps times (which is a lot in a 1.3k per lap sprint).

Both Duncan and I really pulled it together for the second heat, and improved our times. we ended up beating the previous heat by a whopping 30 seconds. I contribute it mostly to better hand offs between laps. Bill was really proud.