Finally!

Finally I won the Tour of Anchorage!

I have had so many really bad races at the Tour over the years to finally win the thing was pretty sweet. Best of all I got to do it the way I would have hoped to, a 40k breakaway. Frode set the pace out of the start and after switching off a few times he retook the lead going up Spencer Loop which is a really hilly 7k stretch of trail. Then Thomas Oyberg took off shortly after we got onto the climbs and got a small lead that I let grow a little bit while I sat behind Frode waiting to go. Once I did and caught up to Thomas I took the lead and tried to pull open a gap on the rest of the field. I felt really, really good on that part of the course and had to hold back a bit and tell Thomas to stick with me and we can ski away with this thing.

The Tour has about 10k of hills at the start then about 38k of flat before some climbing up to the finish at Kincaid. We made it to the top of the climbs and I was pretty sure if we worked together we could hold off the rest to the end and make it a two man race.

After the decent he took over the lead while we dodged, bobbed, and weaved thru the 40k skiers that make the Tour somewhat of an obstacle course. Once it was my turn to lead again I passed a group of 40k'ers and Thomas got tangled up with one of them and went down hard... $@%#! I looked back and knew the other guys couldn't too far behind and decided just to go for it.

So from there it was just a mental battle of keeping the pace up on the long, long, long flat section. Fortunately the skis were running quite fast other that the stretch of trail the people use as a doggy bathroom and is quite brown... Another big help was the little tailwind I had along the coast that just as easily could have been a headwind. Also my wife was out on the course handing me drink bottles about every 12k which made huge difference when you are doing a solo effort for that long, no way I would have mad it without those. Almost didn't anyways. At about 3k from the end my legs started gettting pretty wobbly and things started getting a little blurry. Fortunately I had a good sized lead and was able to finish off my drink and get my legs back under me a cruise on in. It felt so nice to come into the stadium filled with people with big lead and have the luxury to enjoy the finishing lap.

Also- Thomas was able to hold on for second outsprinting a group of 4 I think.