World Juniors!

Well, World Junior/U23 Champs are now over, and overall, they were pretty good. This year, the Championships were held in Praz de Lys, France. It was sure fun watching the U23 men dominate the competition in the first week of racing! Juniors raced during the second week. I was a little disappointed at first because going into the races I had a the big goal of cracking top 20; I was close, but it didn't happen. I didn't race the sprint race (the first race) in an attempt to save myself for the the distance races. I still am not sure if that was a wise idea because it might have been a good idea to use the sprint as a preparation race for the distance races. In the first distance race (the pursuit) I felt a little rusty and not 100% race ready, because it had been a good three weeks since I had done a real race.

The pursuit race was pretty fun though. It started a little slow and after about 2km I somehow made my way up into the lead! No one was really pushing the pace so I ended up staying in the lead for almost 1km.

I was feeling pretty strong, especially in double poling, but after about the 3km mark into the race, the weather started to change and I started to lose my kick. The last 5-6km of the classic part of the race was tough, trying to double pole all the steep uphills to make up for the lack of kick. I ended up getting dropped pretty hard by the leaders by the end of the classic leg. The skate leg was tough as well. I wasted so much energy double poling around the classic course, that I didn't have much energy saved up for the last 10km in skating. I ended up losing a couple more positions in the skate leg, and I crossed the finish line in 25th place; the same number I was wearing on my bib.

The individual skate 10km was better for me but was still a little tough to swallow. I started the race pretty conservatively, maybe a little too conservatively. After 5km, I was in 28th position, and there was still a good 30 racers to start behind me! After 4km I started to pick things up. The last 6km of the race was really good, I pushed hard, skied pretty smooth and had a good finishing kick at the end. But after I did a little cool down I learned that that wasn't quite enough to push me through to the top 20. I ended up 24th, just three seconds out of the top 20! The times were so close together! But I guess that's how it is at World Juniors. It was still a good race and I had to be happy about the way I raced, even if it just 3sec off of top 20!