US Nationals Update, skate race - Ben Westesen
· Wed Jan 2, 07:26 PM by Timothy M. Weston
Emotions ran on high today as one by one competitors left it all on the 5km (for women) or 10km (2 laps for men) course. The women started bright and early and were presented with cold, hard packed conditions which, along with Floyd’s genius waxing job, made for very fast skiing and fast skis for nearly everyone today. The women were faced with the challenge of a relatively short, fast paced one lap which resulted in ridiculously fast times for all. Everyone was forced into using the “bat outta hell” technique hammer out the course, fighting for every second. When reviewing the results one could observe that a mere two seconds could mean a drop of 10 places down the list. Despite the annonamous BSF skier’s comment “BSF has now gotten all our bad races out of the way….,” all our female competitors raced extremely well and were resulted with excellent results.
The men, who started between the hours of 1 and 3 in the afternoon, were faced with a completely different challenge. It had begun to snow towards the end of the womens’ race and had continued to dump for the remainder of the day and by the time most of our male competitors took off out of the starting gate, a good four inches had accumulated on the course. The wind had also picked up resulting in a brutal lapping and finishing stretch and poor visibility. The men all battled their way through two grueling laps in the ever-worsening conditions which turned the already challenging course into a pure “guts race.” All the men fought hard for every second today, tried their best, and despite could-be degrading comments made by Dragan, everyone left the venue in high spirits- for we had a national champion among us. Leif Zimmerman freakin’ Killed It. Today was tough for all, but it left everyone in good moods and excited to compete again on Thursday in the classic races. Stay tuned for more BSF updates.
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Ase Carlson Senior Nationals update - day 1, travel IMD licenses
Excellent report Ben. Thanks for the update! Hope you guys keep writing. We love it back home.
— Neil Westesen Wed Jan 2, 08:08 PM #
hey thanks guys for doing this!! good luck with the rest of the races! i love reading this while i am over in spain!!! GO BSF!
— Joey Rydell Thu Jan 3, 08:04 AM #