It was a fun change to get into a 15km race yesterday & I'm looking forward to something even more different in the 30km on Sunday. The longer race was nice because I got some time to relax into racing and savor how much fun it was to be out there. The first classic lap I skied mostly with the group but dropped off the pace by the time we came into the stadium. I skied the second classic lap with Amy Glenn just behind me-- the girl is a good skier, it'll be exciting to see how her ski career progresses over the next couple years. I dropped Glenn in the exchange zone and caught Stursova at the half a k into the skate leg after grabbing a feed from Vordenberg with one pole still not attached yet. I paused behind Stursova thinking it might be nice to catch a ride but then decided to hammer on past since I was feeling jumpy. Trygstad caught me after the hill and I let her lead through the stadium and onto the second lap. One one hand I was psyched to have Trygstad come up because it gave me a bit of a ride and I figured we could catch Dehlin, which we did. On the other hand, all my memories of Trygstad are of her kicking my butt in junior races so I was also thinking, "not her... again." After we passed Dehlin I took over the lead from Trygstad and started pushing the pace up the last hill and then I hit the downhill and really raced it so I wouldn't get caught-- 8th place for me, totally respectable.

Congrats to Liz on winning... I told her we needed some fresh flowers for our pitcher and she came through for us. Leif also won the race (no prize money since there were 3 foreigners ahead of him-- just the title & more flowers) so our little room at the Wedgewood is having a good showing. Leif and Liz also won the transition zone (I was 4th) so good job for that too! Also congrats to KO for having an awesome race, 6th, I'm so proud of my ski buddy!

Full results in pdf format can be found HERE.

And we drove out to the wilderness to a friend's house to watch the Northern Lights last night! It's too hard to fall asleep after an evening race anyway.