Elizabeth Guiney: Race Season Is Here!

It's been a little while since my last post, sorry about that! I have a lot of pictures to share, but I'll try to keep the words short so that I can catch up without writing a novel.

After our camp in Park City, we had about a week at home in Craftsbury, and then did a short on-snow speed camp in Foret Montmorency up in Quebec, where they had a 2.5k saved loop from last year. It ended up being a really productive camp with high quality speed workouts, and we even managed to entertain ourselves for 4 whole days without wifi. Amazing! Anyways, after that we survived some rain in Craftsbury and packed the trailer to head out west. Luckily, the skiers got to fly to West and the techs were nice enough to drive the truck and trailer all the way across the country.

Here's a short video of a time trial we did in Foret:

One of our activities while back in Vermont-
capturing and tagging all the chickens so that
we could send them to a new winter home.
Kait and Hallie decided to match for the occasion

Kait was considering just riding out to West in the
back of the trailer, after all we were already packed!

A wintery mix coming down at the Outdoor
Center prior to our departure.

Even though we heard reports of sketchy snow conditions in West Yellowstone, by the time we got there, the skiing was decent and a few inches of new snow every night helped get things race ready. We had about 3 days of skiing before our first races, a set of 5k FIS races that were in conjunction with the Yellowstone Ski Festival. It was really nice this year to have these races as "warm-up" races, as our first races of the year are usually SuperTours. In this case, the pressure was definitely off! We were free to treat the races as workouts and focus on nailing down all the important parts of race day: fueling, warming up, testing skis, and remembering how to go hard. That's the funny thing about the first races of the season, although we train all year and have some indications of where we are fitness-wise, it really doesn't matter until we put skis on and race. A rollerski time trial is not a race, and neither is a set of bounding intervals. So there's a nerve-wracking element to the first races, and usually a small seed of doubt, did I prepare enough? Did I do everything I could to show up to the line ready to go?

I was really happy with the first weekend of racing, as I placed 4th in the 5k skate and surprised myself by winning the 5k classic. In the past I have really struggled with the first races of the season, especially in West Yellowstone, but somehow I managed to push that out of my head and just go for it. It was also awesome to have my mom and her boyfriend out for the races- they get really excited about ski races so it was fun to ski well with them there!

Our first rental house in West Yellowstone was
called the "fox cabin", and featured decorative
fox quilts, fox stuffed animals, and about 30
fox paintings on the walls. Super bizarre

A gorgeous day for testing in West Yellowstone with Ben and Mary

Happy about snow, happy to be in West, and
generally just happy!

5k skate race, thanks Katrina Howe for the photo!

Another shot from Katrina from the 5k classic

Classic podium.

Although we were supposed to move to Bozeman for the first SuperTours, partway through our time in West in became apparent that there wasn't going to be enough snow up at Bohart to hold the races. Luckily, West Yellowstone was generous enough to step in and offer to hold the races there, and although it meant a longer stay in West for us, we were just happy to have somewhere to race that weekend! Cabin fever can set in pretty hard in West Yellowstone, it's a small town with not too much going on in the winter. We made a lot of runs to the local coffee shop, hit the IMAX theater, watched hours of World Cup ski and biathlon footage, and before we knew it the next races we there (we may have done some skiing in there too).

Thanks to Salomon Nordic for outfitting
Kait and I with new ski boots and clothes! Here we
are modeling our purple outfits by Yellowstone National Park

Warning, if you use my phone to take
selfies, you may end up on the blog!
Hi Mary

My favorite part of West Yellowstone is catching
up with friends from the ski world. Always love
seeing Anya, who coaches for the BSF juniors

We moved to a new rental house,
this one with recliners, a fireplace,
and fast wifi. Upgrade!

For the SuperTour, we raced a freestyle sprint and a 10k classic individual start. For some reason I got insanely nervous on the sprint day, ran out of time to do half my warm-up, and was just hoping that my body remembered how to do this whole sprinting thing. Luckily it ended up being just fine, and when I saw I qualified in 5th I knew that I had a chance to have a good day. I've never actually made it to the semifinals on the skate sprint course in West, so that became my mission for the day. The course is super winding and flat, so positioning is everything. I fought all the way through my quarter and was really happy to place 2nd and make it to the final. Then in the semi, I had a good position the whole way and was in place to finish 2nd in the heat when I chose the wrong lane going into the finish. I ended up 3rd and missed lucky loser, so my day was over just like that. But that's sprint racing!

With a little extra motivational fuel, I refocused on the 10k the next day. That morning it was snowing really hard and the wind was howling, but it was still a race day and we had to go out there regardless. Plus the techs had already been out testing for hours. I quickly dialed in my skis and got ready to go, and when it was my turn to break the start wand, I went out on a mission. I kept getting splits the whole time that I was either 5 seconds ahead or 5 seconds behind Katherine Ogden from the Stratton team. I started near the beginning of the A seed, so I wasn't really sure what this meant and just kept pushing all the way to the line. It turns out, the reason I was getting those splits was because Katherine and I were battling for the win. I ended up winning by 7 seconds, and got my first SuperTour win! Having my dad and stepmom out cheering made it extra sweet. It's nice to start the season with confidence, rather than digging myself out of the "Yellowstone hole" of previous years. I just hope to keep it going into the next set of races, and right now am focusing on taking each start one at a time.

Finish of my semifinal heat in the skate sprint

Getting ready to go out in the blizzard in the 10k

With my dad and stepmom after the races- thanks for coming
up to watch!

We don't really look alike at all..

Women's podium- so stoked to see Kait have an
awesome race and take 3rd!!

And Ben got 2nd in the men's race, so it was a great
day for the team overall!

Thanks coach Pepa for all the cheering and
support!

Now we're in Silver Star, British Columbia, getting ready for the second weekend of SuperTours, which are also combined with a Canadian NorAm. I think Silver Star may be my new favorite place to nordic ski, and I'm really excited for the weekend's races. I'll post a (much shorter) update after this weekend!