3rd at Planoiras Swissloppet. Super shape this year!

3rd at Planoiras Swissloppet. I could not even expect a better result taking into account the very high level of participants including the current suisse national team Toni Livers and former suisse national team Gion Andrea Bundi plus all the best racers in Suisseloppet. But it seems as this year I should have bigger expectations than last year, since my level became a lot higher (I hope it's not just a temporal shape).
Fortunately, I did not loose anything this time :)

I am number 35

When we came to Lenzerheide, the air temperature was -16. Like back in Russia :) I picked up Atomic hard track skis, because the track was hard and cold. When we came to the start, the sun went out and the sky was blue without any cloud. It was a super pleasant and beautiful race in the full of sun valley surrounded by snowy mountains! I even got some suntan on my face :)

Sunny!!

The start of the 25km race was quite fast and the speed was high from the beginning. The group started to break from the first kilometer due to the high tempo of Toni Livers. So after few kilometers we left four people in a leading group. But in few kms, the tempo was too high for us as well and Toni went forward and we went in a group of three: Gion Andrea, Matthias Inniger and me. We went together untill 10km before the finish. Then I went forward before the downhill. By the way, the Atomic skis were quite good. Not faster then those of other people, but at least not slower. So once again, I am very happy with Atomic skis this year!!! After the downhill we had not very steep uphills followed by downhills. I felt strong there and Matthias and Gion Andrea could not keep up. I think I had 10-15 seconds of advantage in front of Gion Andrea before the last uphill (the second hump at the elevation graph here), Matthias stayed even further. However, on this last uphill which was quite long I ran out of gas and Gion Andrea reached me by the end of it and attacked. I could not keep up and lost the contact. On the final part he increased the advantage to 22 seconds. So I finally reached the finish line third and was actually very happy and proud!

My race info, including a warmup and a cooldown.

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