Monday, March 5, 2018

Second victory at MARA after 2014

MARA is a 42km classic race in Swiss Jura. The only classic race of Swissloppet series.

This race is always very special for me. Here are all my participations:
2009 - 5th
2011 - 4th
2012 - 2nd (lost klister after 5km, so double polling all the way)
2013 - 3rd (twisted ankle 3 days before, so double polling all the way)
2014 - 1st (long awaited victory)
2015 - 14th (the worst mara ever)
2016 - 7th
2017 - 7th (went with klister but should have double poled, the leaders did so)
2018 - 1st

The original Mara track is a race with many uphills (not flat at all). It was one of my main goals this year to perform well at this race. Already last May I knew I will do it double polling :) And so was my preparation... Even though I was not training even close to what I was training before, I managed to get a good shape on skis this season (well, to be honest the snow came in November and I was a lot on the skis this winter, should not complain much).

I did on Saturday 25km race (part of the Maxi-Mara). It did not go well, I had bad feeling and after coming back home went to bed for 2 hours with hot tea and honey. By the evening, I was already feeling good.

The weather forecast showed slight minus coming into plus. Normally, I do my double polling races on classic skis, but since my new skating Rossignol skis were performing very good in the last 4 races with warm conditions, I decide to run on them.

On Sunday the weather was simply amazing. I saw all people suffering with the kick wax and thought that at least I dont have this stress today. On the other hand, I thought: "Conditions for diagonal technic seem to be easy today and double polling might not have advantage given the hilly profile of the race". Turned out, I was wrong and many people did have a lot of troubles with kick wax as the snow conditions changed a lot during the race and snow was sticking to the skis in the second part of the race. In any case, I went to the start and saw many familiar faces. I knew, the race is gonna be fun... and so it was!

Since the start, we had quite fast speed and before the first long uphill (after about 5-8km after the start), we were five: Evgeny, Reto, Arnaud, Philippe and Guillaume (4 SASlers and a French). Was cool to see 4 people from my club in the lead. Arnaud was doing double polling as I, the other three had kick wax. Then, there was a long-long uphill. By the end of it, have lost a bit the contact with them but then on the flat I managed to get back.

The race continued. At some point, Reto was creating a gap with others and I jumped on his train. We managed to slowly run away and then were changing with each other to maintain the high speed, Reto mostly on the uphills and I am on the flatter parts of the track. About half way through the race I noticed that Reto is not following me and there is a small gap between us. I thought he would get back to me on the uphills but he did not. I continued to race alone in front.

My main fear was that on the 4 uphills in the last 8km (with the last long and steep climb), the chasers will catch me due to their more efficient diagonal stride, so I had to work hard all the time to create as much advantage as I could. When I looked behind on the top of the hardest uphill 2km before the finish line, I saw that they are not close to be. There I knew, I had my second victory at Mara.

I crossed the final red line with my hands up. It was a long time since I was that happy after the ski race. The weekend was definitely a big success for me and a highlight of this winter!!!