IN THE ARENA WITH SYLVAN: Here We Go

The season has begun and is going full steam! Last Thursday I came to West Yellowstone to get in some good skiing before our races this past weekend. The skiing was amazing all week, cold but good. We had some successful intervals on Tuesday and then tested before the races.

Friday was an exciting day for our team. We had our teammate, Ryan Scott, win the sprint qualifier and I came in 2nd, just .6 seconds behind Ryan. The next qualifier was 2 seconds back, Skylar Davis.

I was in the 4th quarterfinal and it was an exciting one to say the least. It was a fast heat and I led 90% of it which may have been my downfall. I know I needed to have a good position going into the last little bit, but I led too much which caused me to big down a bit in the final stretch. It was so close at the finish between me and two others but I missed it by just a small amount. I ended up 12th on the day. Happy but not completely satisfied.

Saturday we had our 15km skate and woke up feeling pretty good. I had a difficult starting position so I had to play my race a little differently than I usually do. I had the first bib in the A seed so I was not able to get any splits off of any of the other higher ranked skiers, so essentially, I wasn't sure where I was in comparison to the field until the whol field came through. My goal was to set a good first lap time to scare the rest of the field without going too deep and not being able to come back. I went out hard and set a good first lap time but struggled to finish the race with a good poppy feeling. I would describe it more as "hanging in there."

I ended up 3rd behind my ITA teammate, Brian Gregg who skied a great race. He paced his race quite well. He started off slower and moved up each lap. Pretty impressive.

Pretty happy with how my ITA teammates are doing! That's it for now.

We are heading to Bozeman and then Roasland in the next two weeks. We'll have some updates in the works!

Below are some photos from last couple of weeks!