Lappe Invitational. Respect.

Goodday.

10km classic individual start went down today. Grand total of 4 competitors in Open Men. 30s start intervals starting order: Timo, Phil, Werner, Myself. I wanted to take it out slow like Teichmann or Bauer, then pwn (from Wikipedia: Pwn is a slang term that implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent that has just been soundly defeated) it through the last 5km. Or something along those lines anyways. My slow start wasn’t quite as slow as it should have been, didn’t stick with the plan very well. So I started fairly normal, and caught Werner around the 5 km mark.

I had to push fairly hard at a few points in order to catch him by the point I wanted to. So I latched on and went for a ride. What a ride! For those of you who don’t know Werner Schwar, he is currently the President of the Lappe Ski Club and he is an incredible distance athlete whose name is always on the list of top kms skied per year at Lappe, and he’s also challenged for the World title of most km skied in 24 hrs. I heard a whispered rumour today that it is in the 400 k’s, closer to the 500 mark even. He is also Mike Somppi’s all-time biggest idol.

But yeah, so I caught him. I remember at Nats in MSA that he passed me at one point and I skied with him for the remainder of the race only to lose to him in a sprint to the finish in the 15 km classic. I was having a bit of déj­a vu out there. Once I caught him I started to regain some composure from my big surge and attempted to get some rest. On the downhills and flats it was great; my skis were way faster and I got to stand up for much of the time. The climbs were a different story; Werner’s high-tempo, choppy diagonal stride left me gasping for air by the top. I managed to hang on, skiing in this fartlek-like style and I waited for Grunt to make my move. I popped out of the track and ran up, and brought her home as best I could over the next 400m or so.

Results: Phil got me by 17.7 s, I got Timo by 8 s (??? – it’s funny cause the whole race I was getting splits that we were even. Got me a bit worried…), and I got Werner by about 40 or so.

On the whole, fairly successful day. I was taking it as a training race and it was exactly that. Got in my hard intensity for the week. I didn’t feel very strong racing, but that is to be expected with the big week that I’ve done so far. People have been pressuring me to do the race tomorrow, which is, technically, the 2nd half of the pursuit. But this week’s focus is not to race, it’s to train. Therefore I will not race tomorrow, and will relinquish my 2nd starting position. I will hit up some much needed skate skiing tomorrow with a 2 – 2.5 hr easy ski. And then maybe some explosive strength in the evening? …or perhaps leave that for Monday.

Anyways, my blog entries always end up being way longer than intended, so I should get on with things.

Keep up the hard work. Train well.

Thomsen