Alaska update - Day 7

The past few days have seen a lot of action up here in Anchorage. Tuesday was a training day, Wednesday was the distance classic races, Thursday was another training day, and today (Friday) will be the classic sprints.

Wednesday was the last of the distance races at US Nationals. The women stated first with a 20k mass start classic right in the middle of a snowstorm. Liz Stephen and Kikkan Randal took the early lead, pulling along a group of 30 (or so) skiers through their tracks. The race started to break up around 10k when Kikkan started to pick up the pace. Only Holly Brooks was able to match her pace as the two of them broke away from the rest of the group. From that point, Kikkan managed to ski away from Holly during the last kilometer and take the win.

The men raced 30k mass start classic, starting shortly after the women had finished. By the half way mark, Kris Freeman and James Southam were alone off the front, going head to head. Sometime during the 3^rd lap, Freeman had to stop and check his blood sugar, thinking he would be able to catch back up to Southam. Over the rest of the race, Southam stayed in the lead, ultimately winning by over a minute. Tad Elliott had another great race, finishing 7^th overall and again the top U23 skier. Way to go Tad!!

The Juniors skied their 5/10k race in the afternoon. By this time the snow storm had slowed, but the trail had already seen 7 laps of racing from both the Women’s and Men’s field. All the new snow had basically filled in the original double tracks on the race course, plus the other racers had already beat the tracks out of both the uphill and downhill. This race was a good test of ski handling. Rocky Mtn had strong performances in these classic races, with Jessica Jortberg placing 4^th among J1s and AliciaRose Pastore was 8^th. In the boy’s race, Mike Vigers had a great race, also placing 4^th among J1 skiers. Spencer Lacy and Sean Woods also skied strong. From RMN, both Jessica Jortberg and Mike Vigers qualified for the J1 Scando Trip.

On Thursday, we had a training day. With the sprints ahead of us, we decided to head out and ski some different ski trails around Kincaid Park. We headed out on the World Cup loop, a trail that winds up and down a ridgeline just above the ocean. To put it in perspective, the World Cup trail made the 5k race course look flat. We were either ripping down steep, fast descents, or climbing up vertical walls. It was a really really fun trail!

Today we are getting ready to head back out to Kincaid for the last race of US Nationals, the classic sprint. Should be super fun and I hope to have some pictures up from that event.