February 14, 2011 (Beitostolen, Norway) – I’m knocking on wood as I write this, because I’m scared to jinx this beautiful sunny streak we’ve been having lately! Today was another blue sky, bright sun, and crisp trails type of day. We had the final race of our “mini-tour” today; a 10km skate for the women and a 15km for the men. I was hoping they’d keep it 15/30km, but since it was predicted to be miserably cold out, and the Norwegians are much more careful to preserve their athletes lungs than we are in the US, they shortened the races and they didn’t start until later in the day. Which turned out to be a good call, as it got nice and sunny outside but was still pretty chilly.

The race was awesome for the US team. The coaches were all out cheering and giving splits, which were super helpful with so many people racing and individual starts. And because when we raced, we were broken down into the separate age brackets, and I started with the 19/20 age group. This made for some fun chasing and passing during the race. I’m still not sure how he managed to do it, but Pete Vordenburg definitely popped up on the side of the trail to cheer about 10 times during my race! Very motivational, as he must have been running like crazy to do so.

At the end of the day, Morgan finished 2nd, I finished 3rd and Liz finished 4th. And Tad came in 11th, which is totally awesome in such a tough men’s field. I’m very proud of the US – top 11 for everyone who raced!

I’ve linked the website with the live results HERE. (it’s the only result page I could find, although normally the results are up on the FIS site, and I’m sure they’ll show up later).