Saved My Best For Last - Qualified for World Under-23 Champs on the Last Day of Trials
Check out the Video by Buff of the skiathlon on Jan. 12, 2014. I'm in it! (blue suit, bib #10)
It was that time of year again, probably one of the most important weeks of racing on the calendar for the top Junior and Under-23 skiers in Canada: Trials for World Championships. It was also a very important race for the top domestic skiers in Canada because these races were also being used as Olympic Trials with two spots for the men and two for the women on the Olympic team up for grabs. After a relaxing Christmas holidays spent in Thunder Bay with the family, carbo loading on mashed potatoes and making sure there was enough protein (aka turkey) in my diet. The new year rolled in as the team and I packed our ski bags and wax boxes then flew cross country to set up base in Canmore AB - where it would all happen Jan. 8th to 12th.
Having been through the nerve-racking ordeal that is trials the last four years, I felt like I was pretty experienced in how to keep my perspective of myself, my racing, and everyone else’s racing in check. Nothing is worse than a wildly shifting perspective around an important set of ski races. The roller coaster of gut-clenching nerves, to blind confidence, to unrealistic expectations, to doubt in my abilities was a pretty wild and interesting ride while it lasted. It’s not often that I get to be in a situation where I care enough about the outcome to feel these kind of emotions. I tried to let myself enjoy them, but if they became too much, I would just remind myself that they were all very unnecessary - all I had to do was ski fast. And that’s what I did!
The first race of the week was a skate sprint on Wednesday. This race was a trials race for the Olympics, not for World U23’s. Since my focus was more on qualifying for the World U23’s, this race wasn’t very important to me. My coach and I laid down the ultimatum going into this race that if I qualified in the top 3, I would ski the heats and go for the Olympic spot. I qualified 8th so I called it a day and got back to our accommodations as quick as I could to start recovering for the U23’s trial race the next day.
The next race was the 15km classic individual start. The first race of U23 trials so things were real. To qualify for World U23’s you have to win one of the three trials races or have some of the highest points from the distance races. I knew I had a good shot at winning the classic 15km because I had won the U23 category in the exact same race format less than a month earlier in Rossland. However, the 15km didn’t go as well as I hoped and I finished 4th in U23. Still squarely in the running for a spot on the team, but not on the team… yet.
After a nervous day off Friday, the weekend started with a skate sprint. I qualified strongly in 4th overall, (2nd U23) and was feeling great for the heats in the afternoon. I easily cruised through the quarter final, but in the semi-final I missed a break off the front of the pack and just got squeezed out of a spot in the final. A disappointment because the body was feeling more than good enough to win. But the good feeling in the body was a favorable sign for my next, favourite, and final event of trials: the 30km skiathlon.
It was a funny thing, and a feeling I get rarely, but when nerves woke me up at 2:30am the morning of the skiathlon, I knew immediately, just based off how good the body was feeling, that I was going to win the skiathlon. I tossed and turned for four hours trying to get back to sleep but I just wouldn’t calm down. Sleep didn’t matter, I knew I was in great shape and I was going to have a great day. The classic portion of the skiathlon was amazing - mostly because my skis were incredibly fast. I was making up 20 seconds each lap on the downhills - often shooting right to the front of the pack. Because the classic course was four laps of 3.75km, I was making up huge time just with my skis so I was able to dial back the effort on the climbs to save my energy for the skate portion. By the time I came into the transition to skate, there was only one other U23 in my pack. I tucked in behind him for almost all of the skate portion until the last hill where I made my move. I had a bit of a gap by the top of the last hill but going down into the final straight, he came back at me. It came down to the line, but I got there first and earned my spot on Canada’s world U23 championships team! We were in an unofficial tie for a while on the results but once the official results came out it was fixed. As it turned out, we were so far ahead of the rest of the U23’s that the final sprint didn’t matter, we both made the team easily.
It was quite a relief to be over with trials, and it felt great to be on the U23’s team for the second year in a row. But I only had a few days to relax...
