Post Swiss Nats…
Posted on May 21, 2007
After a nice light recovery ride along the lake with Wayne last night after yesterday’s races, and an extremely enjoyable ride today (15km solo, 45km with a small group, another 15km solo), I am home with a bit of time to spare before the Giro starts today, and so I thought I would type up a small report.
First, I just want to thank everyone for reading, responding, sending emails, and posting comments. You all motivate me to spend the time to maintain the site, and keep it interesting. I do hope you all enjoy following along with my travels and WIC schedule.
Yesterday I raced the remaining races of the Swiss National Championships. In all, it was a cool experience, and I believe a positive one at that. As I mentioned, I wasn’t feeling the best, and found myself somewhat reluctant to race. In the end, I of course did, and am quite glad to have ‘bit the bullet’ so to speak. It was clear that racing on the track at that level would be valuable experience, and frankly extremely inexpensive at that. I very much enjoyed racing under no pressure. The Swiss open their National Championships to foreign skaters, and since there are so many here, the pack was full of non-Swiss skaters. I was wondering how the Swiss skaters felt about it…
Anyway, in the morning I raced a 5,000m points, and a 3,000m. I felt alright in both, and was handling the pace and movement ok, but more importantly was learning a bunch about how the pack was operating, and the lines to skate in response to it. I was feeling better about how I was skating from race to race, and though I was feeling worse and worse physically, it wasn’t until the last race; the 10,000m elimination that I actually felt comfortable in my surroundings on the track. I lasted until 8 or 9 laps to go in the 50 lap race. I had a bunch of energy and speed left, but was caught in the traffic and didn’t get around it well enough going into the lap I was eliminated on. I ended up moving up from the back with so much speed that I went from last place (elim’d) into 2nd between the line and the corner, and almost took out the whole field. I even heard an “oooooooooo!” gasp from the crowd. I think that race might have been the highlight of the season so far, it really was a bunch of fun for me.
I think I’m done writing for now. I am going to watch the Giro and enjoy some food. Maybe a coffee. It goes really, really well with Swiss chocolate. Really, really well.
-A.
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