Did the Tuesday Night Ski race again tonight, 2 standard laps with classic technique. I got onto the trails early enough to do a couple warm up laps…only to stand around for 15 minutes waiting for the race to start, doh! Grip was in short supply tonight but had really good glide, even outside the tracks. There were 3 waves of mass starts tonight, I was in the middle group. I got off to my usual slowish start so had some skiers to chase. I managed to pass 2 skiers on the flatter sections double poling hard skiing outside the tracks. This allowed me to take more direct lines on the trails instead of following the winding tracks…and all the double poling practice I’ve done recently certainly helped. On the second lap I caught up to another skier on the uphills but he was also fast on the double poling sections, at least while we were in the tracks. Near the end of Sitzmark he took a spill while re-entering the tracks…he said he was ok so I kept on going. I knew this guy could ski well so I double poled really hard on the flat trails hoping to open as big a gap as possible before the downhill. As I started the downhill I couldn’t see anyone behind me so things were looking good. But I was quite slow on the final hill tonight, the soft snow near the bottom had been catching my skis on the warm up laps, so I was spooked on this section. I snow plowed the bottom of the descent, fighting to stay under some control and managed to just cross the line before a white flash blasted past me…I knew this guy could ski!
Did a really good ski last night, 1.5 hours on good snow for skating. My legs finally recovered from Friday’s runs, which seemed to help me ski a bit quicker, worked on switching between 2-skate, 1-skate and offset, trying to maintain speed while smoothing out my transitions between the different techniques.
It’s almost loppet time! 
