Nationals

Canadian Nationals are here again and so far we've raced twice; the Team Sprint and a 10km individual Skate race. Just like last year, I raced the team sprint with Graham Nishikawa, only this year we did quite a bit better. In the Semi Finals we tried to ski a bit conservatively to save some precious energy for the Final. We placed 2nd in our Semi Final which qualified us for the Final, I skied the first leg of the relay, and Graham the last. In the first two of three laps in the Final I tried to ski easy and smooth and just stay in the lead pack. On my last lap, there was only four of us left in the leap group and I managed to tag off to Graham in about 3rd or 4th positions, still in the leap group. On Grahams last lap things got a bit spread out and he was skiing in 4th spot, but with about 250meters to go, he put the hammer down and passed two people ahead of him, finishing us in 2nd place overall!

Going into the 10km skate I was hoping that the team sprint the day before hadn't taken too much out of me (Semi Finals were at 1:45pm and Finals were at 4:30pm!), but I don't think it had too big of an impact. Due to warm conditions and a lack of snow, we ended up racing on a pretty easy, fast course. I ended up skiing almost all of the race with Eric Carleton, who started 15sec behind me. I was a little slow off the start, finishing the first of two laps in 21st position, and sped things up a little to finish the last lap in 11th, finishing overall 13th...59sec off the winner.

We have a rest day today, then a 15km individual classic race toworrow! Should be fun...