Bozeman Day 2

Today was 15km for women, 20km for men

Mass start

Classic

+2 degrees celcius

Snowing heavily

Here are some pictures:

About 800 meters into the men's race

Up the first big climb.  Etienne went on the attack early - at the 1km mark. That's him at the front, in black.

An aggressive first lap for Etienne.

Toomas Kollo was lurking a few places back, in the front group.

Etienne leading halfway through lap 1.

Marcus Deuling

Eventually, Etienne was skiing by himself, off the front.

The main front pack, including Tom, caught up to Etienne at the 5km mark.  Etienne latched onto the group.

Tom, in the mix all day.

Etienne, mid-race. Hanging onto the group.

The final hill of the race.  Toomas in about 12th/13th.  He won a sprint to get tenth at the finish line.

The first step to winning a race is winning a lap.

It was good to see aggressive skiing out there today.  Mackenzie put herself in the leader group right from the start. The group of seven skied together for the first half of the race before splitting up, with Mackenzie getting seventh, our best result of the day, and Mackenzie's best classic college race of her career so far. Toomas got tenth, Etienne was sixteenth, but Etienne came with his game face on and gave it his best shot, and Tom was there to pull through mid-race with our best result on the men's side. Things are improving. We showed some spark today, even if the results are yet to come.

We leave Montana tomorrow for Colorado, and another set of races next weekend.

(If you're wondering why there are no pictures of the women racing, it's because I've been in the wax cabin during their races. Perhaps next weekend I'll get to see the women race.)