.: U23s

Well, the World U23/Junior Championships in Erzurum, Turkey didn’t go quite as I had planned. My goal going into the championships was to get a top 12 placing in one or both of the two distance races. But instead I placed 36th in the 15km classic and 35th in the 30km pursuit and 47th in the sprint. Let’s start with the sprint.

The skate sprint was not a big focus for me, but since each country’s allowed four starts in each race and we were only four U23 men I thought I might was well give it a shot. I actually had a decent sprint considering how my sprinting has been going so far this season and finished **th, but for me the real races were yet to come.

Two days later was the 15km classic. I’m still not quite sure why this race didn’t go better. I feel like I had a good preparation leading up to the race and that I skied a solid race, but i just felt tired and “flat”. It wasn’t a terrible race, I just feel like I should have been able to do better, and that can be a frustrating feeling. Maybe I needed to do some longer, harder intensities a couple days before to get my body in better race shape. The result wasn’t too bad either considering the caliber of the competition. Usually the U23 Men category isn’t as competitive as the juniors since most of the best guys are off racing the world cups but this year was different. This year was by far the most competitive year in a long time since there was break in the world cup circuit so almost all the top U23 men in the world were racing in Turkey. Just to put it in perspective, some of the top guys that were racing in Turkey had just come off the world cup circuit with recent top 10 finishes. If the U23s had been a world cup instead of the U23s, I don’t think i would have been much further behind the winners than I was.

Anyways, on to the pursuit. The night before the pursuit I started to get a sore throat, headache, achy muscles and congested sinuses so I wasn’t 100% sure I was even going to race. The next morning I didn’t feel any better but I decided to race anyways, but I wasn’t very optimistic. I got off to a poor start and after one or two kilometers I somehow managed to get in the back of the pack and was skiing in the 60s. But I managed to have not too bad of a race and after made my way up the field to finish 35th. Again, not a great result, but not bad considering. After the race I felt just terrible. I’ve never felt that bad after a race, I think it was because I wasn’t running on a full tank to start off with, then I just completely buried myself and depleted all possible energy stores in the race. Just changing out of my race clothes after the race was very laborious. It took a good half a day before I felt like I was starting to get any life back in me.

Now the races are over and I’m heading back to Quebec and hopefully get rid of my cold and to start preparing for the Canadian Nationals in a couple weeks. I’m looking forward to being back in Canada! It feels weird to have done all that preparation and effort and travel half way across the world for just two races, and after all that not have them go very well, but at least it will have made for a good high altitude training camp for Nationals! It sure will be nice to get back down at a lower elevation and be able to train like normal again! Our last day in Turkey was in Istanbul which was cool. It’s not very often that we get a day off in neat place like that, usually we’re always stuck up at some small ski town in the middle of nowhere the whole time and don’t get to see any of the tourism or culture that that part of the world has to offer. It would have been nice to have a rain coat though, as it was +3 and raining the whole day. Well, that’s about it I think, here are some pictures from the races!