Monday, March 5, 2012

With 2nd place at MARA, I won the SwissLoppet Cup

Well, the races in the SwissLoppet Cup are not finished yet: still Engadin to go next weekend, but I have enough points now to say that I won that thing. The main goal of the season (top 3 in the overall SwissLoppet Cup) is achieved with the highest first place! It's super cool to realize that all the work I did has finally materialized into very good performance that I can be proud of!

So short overview of the last two weekends.

The previous weekend was a weekend of Gommerlauf. I did both races on saturday and sunday.
Saturday, Classic 21 km.
A group of 5 people including me separated from the others. We all were double poling on skating skis, except italien Paredi who went on classic skis without the grip wax. I managed to finish third by passing two very strong suisse sprinters.
Results

Sunday, Skating 30 km (SwissLoppet).
Remo Fischer (swiss national team) started to break the group from the beginning. I was kinda suffering, but then recovered and race continued all right. I was 9th, but then slowly managed to pass other guys and managed to reach italian Simone Paredi and swiss Marko Mullematter. We went three of us together till the finish line. On the finish line to fight for third place we came in this order: Simone, Mark and I, and actually it was hard to fight there because of new fresh and slow snow so we finished in the same order. I got my fifth place an some raclette cheese >)
Results

Our peloton, 8th here

Was hard here

I m fifth

Last weekend.
Saturday, 10km skating, U-Games&FIS race.
Well, the wet snow. +14 or even warmer. Running in T-Shirt. I did not expect big results from this race, since my main goal was MARA next day, but it turned out to be a very good race for me where I first broke 100points in FIS races. I finished 6th with 76.39 FIS points.
Results

Sunday, 42km classic MARA (SwissLoppet). The second place that gave me the final points to win the SwissLoppet Cup. An interesting race, got some new experience. I ran on brand new Atomic classic skis. Very good skis indeed!! But I had big issues with kick wax. I put base klister the day before and put yellow and red clister (toko) before the race. The snow was harsh and icy, thus after double poling the first 6 km on the first climb I realized that the klister is gone and I have no kick whatsoever, what a pity!! The shape was perfect, skis were gliding perfectly but no kick. Guillaume LALEVEE, a very strong french classic skier (5th classic Transju this year and 12th last year), ran away from me on that climb (he had very good grip). I managed to get back to him on the following after relatively flat part and then we went together with him until the last 6 km with 3 climbs. He got some gap on the first not very long hill, later I managed to come closer (10-20 meters) before the last two long steep uphills and there I had no chance. I knew it even before. I wanted to fight but I realized that I have no chance without the kick wax. Mara is too challenging to go double poling :). But anyways, it was interesting and I enjoyed the race.
Results


Now Engadin next week, and I will try to get a good shape for 50km Swiss Championship on the 31st of March.

4 comments: