Going into these first races of the season, I’ve had some doubts about my preparedness, as I haven’t raced big races before the new year in the last several years. I was still training quite a bit until recently, and felt like I didn’t have the time to get my body ready for racing. I managed these dismissals by reminding myself why I’m here and that I can complete the motions I need to race the best that I can, so that’s where my focus went for the weekend. I obviously still had result expectations in the back of my mind, but as I got closer to racing, my specific steps for racing took precedence as my main goals. These ended up being: 1. Dialing in my race routine (warm up intervals, pre race eating, ski testing. 2. Pacing, and 3. Relaxing in the middle of races. These are all some things that I end up feeling disconnected from in the summer with fewer and different types of race efforts. The pacing was my biggest source of nervousness for Saturday’s 15km interval start, especially as these courses had some hills with potential to really slow a bonked racer down. So after the race, when I realized I thought I’d paced it well, I was super happy! There was still a twinge of disappointment with the result, but I tried really hard to focus on that good pacing and the fun last lap I had skiing behind Sjur Roethe and then Klaebo, De Fabiani, and Kruger for the finish. After that, I was just excited for some tactics and group skiing on Sunday. I started 2 seconds behind Kruger, and 4 seconds ahead of the wave of 30 (😳). I just started fast, skied with Kruger for a few minutes, then got into the lead pack of the wave. It shuffled around a little, but I mostly skied with a group of Swiss and German skiers and Scott Patterson. In the last couple laps, I really started to dig deep, and that felt good to realize I can really push that hard again! Racing feels like it’s coming back to me pretty quickly, and I’m super excited to get another chance at World Cups in 2 weeks in Davos! Until then, our team will be there training and enjoying some more daylight.

JC hours before being 1 sec from qualifying

Waiting for our burgers after the last race and seeing the local sights

And then we flew to Davos! The cross-country and nordic combined world cups both wanted to go to central europe, so FIS chartered a plane from Kuusamo to Munich. Kinda cool to be on just a regular plane but with only skiers. It made travel a lot less stressful, as we didn’t get exposed to as many new people. The drive to Davos was smooth, and we’re excited to be here!

They have about 4km of man-made snow here, but it’s been snowing all day today so hopefully we can ski more soon. Racing in 2 weeks!