The skate sprint went relatively well today, nothing spectacular but at least no one asked me if I fell. I could feel my tempo bog down in the hills and I think that would have been the difference for me between qualifying & not qualifying. Still... to put things in perspective, I would say this was my best skate sprint qualifier. ever. So I have that going for me.

I didn't fall but kikkan & newell did, which was sad. Newell in the quarterfinal and kikkan in the A-final. It was so painful to watch kikkan fall. She was sitting in third coming into the stadium and you could tell she had more energy than the girl in front of her (Petra was way out in front already) and was going to make a move into second. And then she fell. But still... sixth place is pretty spectacular. Koos also skied spectacularly, 6th in the qualifier and then very aggressively into 8th. Nice.

I'm opting to race the 10k classic tomorrow. This will be my first distance race in a World Cup and I am hoping for my first ever DFL. Not really, but I have never been DFL before (even that one time when I jumped in a pro-1-2 cyclocross race after finding a bike I could borrow about half an hour prior to start...). Last is definitely a possibility for tomorrow, I'm seeded third to last, but I figure that it's better to be last than not to race. World Cup start rights are a finite commodity so tomorrow I race, not to win, but simply because I have the opportunity.

(and if you want a visual on how I feel about my chances in the race, the photo from pre-cyclocross race gives a good indication!)

Labels: race