Kuusamo

My first full World Cup weekend is over and though I was disappointed with my races it was a good learning experience and gave me lots of room to improve in the future.

I jumped right into the World Cup tour at one of the toughest events on the World Cup calendar: the Kuusamo mini-tour. 90 women and over 120 men started the tour and everyone was fighting for early-season prestige. Friday was a classic sprint race. I felt pretty good but my hope of finishing in the top-30 was proven overly optimistic by my 50th place finish.

Saturday was a 5km skate individual start. My first distance World Cup race did not go very well! My legs didn't feel very peppy and the race was capped off with a big crash on a steep S-turn (definitely should have chosen the snow-plow option instead of trying to hang on at full speed on the ice). I picked myself back up and finished off the race but it was certainly not how I wanted to make my World Cup distance debut. If you really want to know my final result feel free to look it up, suffice to say there is lots of room to improve next time.

Sunday was the mini-tour finale with a 10km classic race. We had a handicapped start based on the combined times from the previous 2 races, which meant I was in the mass start at the back of the pack. I worked hard to put Saturday's race behind me and focused on racing as well as I could. My body felt way better and I was able to make up some spots. Even though I was at the back it was still a decent race as there were always girls ahead to try to catch. I placed 67th in the 10km and finished the mini-tour in 69th.

I had a tough weekend but in the end it will motivate me to train harder and smarter so that one day I can be up front fighting for those top spots! There were some impressive Canadian results which were great to see. Dasha, Chandra, Alex and Lenny qualified for the heats and Lenny finished 5th in the final. We ended the mini-tour with Alex, Devon and Lenny all in the top-30. It was also really exciting to see Kikkan Randall from the States kill it with a 4th place in the sprint and 6th overall in the mini-tour!

Other than racing, it was an interesting experience being in Northern Finland. Kuusamo was very dark and grey the entire time we were there. The streetlights stayed on all day, though there were a few hours when they weren't entirely necessary. We ate reindeer at a couple meals which was delicious especially with lingonberry sauce on top (sorry Santa).

There were a few inches of natural snow on the ground when we arrived.

The course was still being prepared our first day in Kuusamo and there was a snow gun blowing directly onto the trail in one spot. It was a very frosty ski (notice the snow on the top of my toque).

We are currently in Davos, Switzerland for a few days of training before heading to Dusseldorf. We are staying at a great little hotel a few kilometres from town. Apparently the Canadian ski team has been staying here for over 20 years! The food is amazing and it has been so nice to see the sun again.. There are 3 different short loops of snow around town. We have been skiing on a 750m loop which will be the sprint course for the World Cups here later in December.

We fly to Dusseldorf tomorrow. I race the skate sprint on Saturday and team sprint on Sunday. The race course is in the middle of the city so it should be an exciting weekend!