Freestyle Race at '08 Junior Olympics

Jay Woodbeck

Greetings from Anchorage.

The freestyle races were today -- 5 km for the J2 boys (14-15 years) and all of the girls and 10 km for the J1 (16-17 years) and OJ (18-19 years) boys.

Kai Sharp

The difference between Monday and today was amazing. Monday, the stadium was an ice rink. While not perfect yet, the stadium was usable today, thanks to colder temperatures last night (i.e. 24 degrees) and a couple of inches of snow.

It was a tough course today. The girls had temps of about 28 when they started this morning and the first group off had a little fresh snow to contend with. Even after that was scraped off the course, the girls still reported a fairly slow day.

Ruth Oppliger

The older (J1/OJ) boys, on the other hand, were the last to start, so they all went out after noon, when the temperatures had climbed above freezing and portions of the course were slowly turning to mush. I talked to head coach Nick Baic after the race and he thought that everyone held their own, although he did say that everyone looked much better yesterday during training. But conditions were different and the course was much faster yesterday (i.e. still kind of icy). He's going to encourage much resting tomorrow in preparation for the classic mass start on Friday.

After Jan, Teresa and I returned to our apartment, Teresa and I went to the Hillside trails (across town from Kincaid) for some skiing of our own. The skiing was much better than it was earlier in the week, but those trails were also mushy.

I had klister on, which worked until I hit a couple of steep downhills and left it all behind. I ended up on a trail that was very hilly -- it had a pretty substantial elevation climb (at least for a ... well ... middle-aged guy who hasn't skied much in the last week).

The summit, however, afforded a beautiful view of Anchorage, Kincaid, the mountain that sits across the inlet from Kincaid, and some very big mountains to the north. You are supposed to be able to see Mt. McKinley from Anchorage on a clear day -- so I've convinced myself that I did.

More news tomorrow.

Dean