A Word from Ti and Logan

February 15, 2016

Ti and Logan here, we just finished a big week of racing.  We started it off with the last weekend of best cup racing, which went well for both of us.  There was an interval start skate on Saturday and a classic mass start on Sunday.  Both days consisted of long climbs and fast skiing, and we enjoyed it all (for the most part).

Ti-

The skate day was arguably my best race so far this year.  Warming up, I was a little worried about the hills that dominated the course.  It started off going around the Competition loop then went straight into South Tower, so if you didn’t start off easy going up the Comp wall, you were going to have a rough time later on going up the Surprise cut-off climb on White Bear.  So I came up with a plan to chill out on Competition then hammering South Tower, because there would be a reasonable amount of recovery on the long downhill right after the climb.  After that, I planned on giving all of what I had left on White Bear.  In the race, I stuck to this plan, but I went out a little hard on the Competition loop, so I was hurting pretty bad on White Bear, but I still pulled through and ended up winning the race.  My skis were running really fast, which I think helped with the outcome of my race.

 

Logan-

The skate race was by far the hardest race I’ve ever accomplished on skis. The morning of the race it had snowed just enough to slow up the conditions and make it so the race would require a lot more effort than anticipated. The skate course was also made up of some massive hills that were astonishingly difficult . The amount of mental strength it took to trudge through South Tower and Competition twice was tremendous because of their steepness and length. By the middle of my second lap, I found myself trying not to regurgitate all the Gatorade I had downed before the race. However, I pushed through the uprising swell in my stomach, and found myself sprinting to the finish line. I crossed the finish and collapsed onto the snow gasping for air. At this point my gut, probably jealous of how hard my lungs were working, decided that yes it did have something to bring to the table. I wiped my lips after minutes of undergoing my gut’s envy, and walked away from the race knowing I had given it my all.

Nordic Skiing Fairbanks, Alaska

ABOVE: Ti in the center of the podium for the skate race on Saturday.

Ti-

On Sunday, I woke up a bit sore after the taxing race the day before.  The race I was going to do now was the 3k classic mass start.  3K’s are hard.  The course was not anything significant, just going around Roller Coaster, White Bear access, East ramp, then finishing with the Dark Alley cut-off on Warm-up loop.  However, the pace of a 3k race is basically a sprint pace, so right off the start-line, if you aren’t double poling all out, you’re going to get ditched because that’s what everyone else is doing.  So I was expecting this to happen, so I started out going pretty hard, until the top of the stadium hill, when this kid who didn’t have any business skiing where he was decides to cut me off and cause me to get tangled up with him in the process.  Thankfully, I didn’t fall.  However, the leaders got ahead and I spent all of my time on Roller Coaster trying to catch back up to them.  By the time we hit White Bear access, I was with them, and our pack had a pretty good lead on everybody else.  When we hit the last climb up the last hill on Warm-up loop, I really started to feel the climbs from the previous day, and I had a good pace, but not good enough for the last climb of a race.  I ended up with third on the day, which I was psyched about.

Overall, it was a good Besh cup season, and I came out in second place for overall points for U16s, which secured a spot for Junior Nationals in Cable, Wisconsin, taking place in March.  Logan also qualified easily for JNs for U18s.  We’re both stoked to go ski on one of the hardest courses in the US!  Peace out.

Written by Ti Donaldson and Logan Mowry.