Family Christmas, which was scheduled over new years weekend for my moms family was cancelled due to predicted bad road conditions. So I quickly signed up for the Twin Cities Championships 2 days before the race. I was not mentally or physically prepared to race it turned out, and it was a rough couple days. The classic race on Saturday was a double pole heavy race with very slow tracks that nobody used for poling and very steep uphills that had to be run. I placed over 2:00 behind the leaders, including Bjorn, which is horrible for an 8k race. The Sunday skate went better. It was a pursuit race based on finishing time from the classic race. I still lost an additional minute to Bjorn and Andy Brown, not quite as bad in a 15k, but still less than ideal, but I caught and passed my friend Evan Slocum right near the end, which was my goal on the day.
The next weekend I still hadn't recovered any desire to race again, so I sat out the Pre-loppet in favor of an easy 50k classic ski at Wirth and a 20k skate at Murphy. It felt good to really hit the long distance, and restored some confidence for the next weekends race.
Seeley Hills Classic was next up on the list. I tend to race well in Wisconsin races for whatever reason, especially on the Birkie trail, but I had no high aspirations for this classic race. The conditions ended up being fresh snow in the tracks, which meant the lead pack would not be breaking up much for the first half of the race. I tucked in at the back of the pack behind Dave Nelson and was content to sit there. Bjorn dropped back to chat for a while, keeping an eye on the front of the pack the whole time of course. Then he went up to take a pull and I continued to sit on the back. This turned out to be a mistake, since his pull was just enough to shed a few people off the back. I quickly passed Dave Nelson and his pack when I saw this occuring and pushed up to quickly catch Grant Nelson and his pack. I dropped them but was unable to regain contact with the lead pack of 8 skiers. After the turn around at the 16k food stop some of the tracks were skied in, so the pace got much higher and I was unable to pull the leaders back. I fought until the large climb at 18k then decided I would settle the pace down and see how the rest of the race unfolded. I kept getting info that I was sitting in 9th and figured I'd be pretty happy with a top 10 if I could keep from imploding in the last 10km, a weak spot for me at this race in prior years. I passed OO still just a minute or two behind the lead pack, but they were out of sight if not completely out of mind. It was nice to have the distraction of skiers coming the other way from the short race, and I did my best to push all the climbs since my legs were still feeling good. I saw Bjorn, Andy, and Ben Koontz were all that was left of the lead pack when I was less than 1k from the turnaround, so I felt ok about that gap. Then I saw a few more skiers go by the other way, and when I had the turnaround in sight I saw the next 2 guys only about 30 seconds ahead of me. I kept that in mind as I started back and pushed up the pace, still feeling surprisingly good. I caught the first skier with about 8k to and the second with about 4k to go then just put my head down and hit every hill as hard as I could. At the turn around I saw that the Nelson brothers were starting to close the gap, so I wanted to make sure I didn't get passed in the last couple km. I crossed the line in 7th, less than 10 minutes behind Bjorn, who won the race, by far my best Seeley performance yet. Also, my back didn't hurt at all, usually after long classic races it is really bad, so hopefully that means I'm getting my double pole technique straightened out finally. Next on the list, defending my title at the Balsam Vinterfest.
