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I just got back to Quebec City from a fun weekend of racing in Orford, Quebec. It was another mini-tour style race, three races in three days. The tour started off with a 4km classic prologue. I’d never done a prologue race before and was looking forward to it, being such a weird distance I didn’t really know how hard to push myself right off the start. I think I started a little bit too fast and realized it about half way around the course, so I slowed down a little bit to have enough energy for the finish. The course was pretty flat and in ideal conditions I think it would have been doable on skate skis and just double pole the whole race. I ended up finishing 4^th Open Men (1^st U23) just one second out of the 3^rd and about 14 sec off the winner.

The next race was a 10km individual classic race. I had good skis and I felt good but got a little too excited in the first couple kms and wasn’t really skiing very smooth and efficient. I was just running up most of the hills, but when Stefan Kuhn caught and passed me I was able to stay with him, and skiing behind him I smartened up and started to ski more relaxed into the finish. I placed 4^th again in the Open category and 1^st U23.

The last race was a 20km skate handicap start based on the results from the two previous races, so I started in 4^th place. Pate Neumann, who ended up finishing 2^nd in the day’s race, caught up to me a couple kms into the race. I skied most of the race with Pate, until the last 6km where I slowed down to take a feed and Pate got about a 15m gap on me, which I wasn’t able to close and stayed the same until the finish. So I moved down one position on the overall results in the Open Men, finishing in 5^th, and 1^st overall in the U23 category.

The next couple weeks promise to be busy ones. Tonight I fly to Europe, race the Swiss championships in Switzerland this coming weekend and then an OPA cup in Italy the weekend after. Then I fly back to Canada for the Canada Games two weeks later.

Until next time

David