Last TT before Nationals

I was in such a hurry today that I mistook my classic boots for skate boots. We had planned to go classic skiing after our skate TT with NSF. On my way out the door I grabbed another older pair of atomic classic boots thinking that I should save my new ones some use (little did I know that I had already mistakenly packed the new ones as skate boots). I got up there started putting on my boots and realized my mistake. I was devastated. There was some time there where I thought I would just classic the TT while everybody else skated. I was even testing my classic skis, but the wax was shearing so I decided to just sinch up my classic boots as tight as I could and just gut it out on skate skis. Lucky for me, Atomic uses a pilot binding for both classic and skate.

I am not going to lie to you, I was already making excuses in my mind for the a poor performance when I skied down to the stadium. but after 5 minutes of skiing on them I was totally comfortable on them, and was almost ready to race. I didn't get nearly enough warm up. While everybody else was out on the course warming up I was testing classic waxes. not a good call. and to make matters worse it was dumping snow. There was a good 3 inches of fresh powder. It was not the sunny SoHo I have come to know and love. we were a little worried that we might get lost on a long lap around the olympic 5k. so we opted to do 6 laps of the sprint course.

Now for the actual race. I started out pretty well. I was right up there with the leaders for the first lap. Wilson (TUNA) and Nick Hendrixson (NSF) broke away during the 2nd lap, but they were only 15 meter or so ahead. I continued to ski with Tanner Putt (really fast J2 from NSF) for the third lap. but that's when the wheels came off. Tanner faded away off the front in the 4th lap. Danny Guiney (NSF) caught and passed me at the end of the 4th or 5th (i can't remember, but that was dissapointing because I had beaten him earlier in the season.) Andrew Putt (NSF and Tanner's older brother) passed me like I was standing still on the 6th. Pretty dissapointing considering I had hopes of winning or at least being in contention for this race based on early season races. My legs just would not go. I tried to keep my technigue together, but I didn't have any pop. Maybe it was a little bit the fault of the classic boots, but I cannot put any blame there no matter how much I want to. boots don't make up the difference. skiers do