.: Easterns

The Eastern Canadian Championships in Nakkertok, Quebec are now finished, it seems like the season is just flying by. The races were ok in general for me.

The first race, a skate sprint was again not great but a little better than most of my sprints so far this year. I didn’t feel very good in the qualifier but felt a lot better in my heat. The courses in Nakkertok are quite narrow, which makes it hard to pass. I got off to an ok start in my quarterfinal but somehow ended up in the back of the pack soon into the race. I felt strong but every time I would try and make a pass I would get boxed in or pinched out in a corner. I ended up a frustrating 3rd in my heat, and didn’t make it through to the semifinals. I ended up 13th at the end of the day.

The next day’s race was a 15km individual skate. I think this was probably my best skate race so far this season. I skied smooth and consistent, we did three times a 5km loop and each of my laps were faster and faster. I finished the day in 6th place, a mere 3 seconds from the podium.

The last race of the mini-tour was a 30km pursuit start classic, which didn’t go very well. First off, I think I was a bit tired, maybe I hadn’t recovered efficiently enough from the previous two races, but I was also having trouble getting my head in the game. Once I realized that I wasn’t having a good race I toying with the idea of dropping out and saving some energy for my journey to Europe. But I’ve never DNF a race before and I didn’t feel like breaking that record...so I finished, but I wasn’t very happy with myself at the end. I ended up 10th on the day’s race and 7th overall in the mini-tour, which isn’t terrible, but I felt like I should have been able to do better.

Now all of that is over, and I just arrived in Europe. Livigno, Italy to be more precise. I’ll be here for 6 days so get some training in and adapt to the altitude and time change before I head over to Turkey for the U23 World Championships!