I had fun skiing the 20k today. I just enjoyed being out there.

This morning was a full-on snowstorm. It let up by the time the men raced. Which is good-- it was forecast to start raining, yuck. Because we'd all been staying close to the stadium testing and retesting different skis & wax the tracks out on the race course were full of snow.

Luckily for me, Kikkan sucked it up and led most of the first two laps. Especially on the first lap, this was a big deal. Our first lap took about 26 minutes and the second lap was more than 2 minutes faster. I was psyched, because of how much extra work it took to clear the trail, I basically got a nice, chill first lap to warm up. Thanks Kikkan!

What I say is: It takes a lot of guts to expend that much more energy in the first lap and know that you're strong enough to pull it off.

Kikkan did it in style. She was the only skier today who skied faster on each lap & fastest on her third & final lap. That's a fact. I think that if we had had clean tracks she would have won by minutes instead of seconds. But that's only my opinion.