I successfully completed my first pursuit race today. I managed not to get too nervous, especially after I realized that I was seeded as the seventh slowest racer (for these races your bib # is your rank among the field according to FIS points) so there wasn't too much pressure.

Our race consisted of three 2.5 classic laps, then a change of gear, and then three laps of a different 2.5 skate loop. Before the start they gave us a few messages from the jury, namely "if the first racers are going to lap you, you will need to please take yourself out of the race," so I suddenly had another goal- not to get pulled. On 2.5 laps, someone only needs to be ahead of you by 7-8 minutes to be lapping you, so it is a real danger. Nineteen guys were pulled out of the men's race earlier today and four women were pulled from ours. On the results those people were listed as DNF, which is cruel. They should get some credit for not dropping out of the race of their own volition. Mass start at noon, they always run the men's races in the afternoon here for television (apparently people are more interested in men's sports than women's) but someone objected so we raced second today. This is good for gender equality, but I prefer racing earlier when the skiing's better and you don't have to sit around all day waiting to race. Since the start was only seven lanes wide I had to start pretty far back. I had a clean start and avoided a 4 person pile up just to my right. The race spread out after the first classic lap. I had a clean transition, everything went precisely as I had practiced. Packing for a pursuit race is not second nature to me yet. I had forgotten skate skis to warm up on, but Brian Gregg let me ski on his before the race, thankfully, because when I switched to skating I was glad that my skate muscles were warmed up too.

The skate part of the race went well too, I managed to pass a few people. Although one of them was a woman who tried to snowplow on a mushy corner and ended up doing a somersault instead. The most exciting part of the skate course was the downhill. Let me rephrase... The Downhill. So you climb up this long, leg-burning hill and at the top, the second top, not the false top, there's two signs that I imagine say "CAUTION. DOWNHILL." And then you have The Downhill, which, under normal circumstances wouldn't be a big deal. Recall, however, that a field of 60 men skied The Downhill 6 times already this morning in their race and skied it on their warmups and cooldowns. So by the time we raced, it was treacherous. It stars out turning to the right and then a really steep pitch that had been scraped down to ice, then a deep sugar sink, then immediately into a left hand icy corner and into a down and up gulch. That was the worst of it, the remainder of the downhill was manageable. Snowplowing on ice proves to be, if you try it on nordic skis, ineffective. It is also difficult to control your direction. So you get going quickly by the time you hit the sugar sink. Which throws you way off balance because the snow is drastically slower there and then you have to pull yourself together in time to make the next corner; that was the corner that most people were falling on. I knew I was off-kilter on my first lap because there was an audible collective gasp from the spectators as I entered the second corner. Don't worry, I didn't fall, but my next two times on the downhill were similarly ungraceful.

Results:
Junior Women
Junior Men
U23 Women
U23 Men