ICC 09-10, Winterberg Germany - Race 1

Arriving at the track this morning, it didn't look good. First it rained, making the track a water slide again, sigh. We had hoped for nice ice like yesterday, but today it was running about 2 seconds slow.

Glossy sheen on the start from the rain:

Then got cold and windy, then rained again...so from the start, it was clear that the ice and weather conditions weren't entirely fair, as the ice slowly sped up after the first few sleds went down.

Foggy morning:

I was 24th off due to my low ranking last year, out of 28 women sleds. Oddly, I felt relaxed and calm, instead of nervous and worked up. 6 runs here still didn't feel like enough, but I was at least somewhat comfortable on the ice, and focused on my push instead of worrying.

My first run I pushed a 5.60, 7th fastest, which made my day considering that no matter how hard I tried, the fastest I could push in practice was 5.77 seconds!

I had a bit of trouble lower on the track (hitting the wall 8-9, and a rough 14) but was overall pretty happy considering the mistakes I'd made, and came out 19th. Keslie, who went off 3rd was in 15th, just a couple tenths ahead of me, and Annie, who went off 8th. pulled her hamstring / tendon on her push so was 21st. (We cheered her on as she pushed, then we all heard her scream on her load, so we knew something was wrong. The doctor thinks she'll be ok to race in Königssee next week, but not at 100% yet.)

Keslie pushing (these pics are from training yesterday since I was too busy to take pictures today):

Annie, yesterday as well:

Between the first and second run, it started to rain again. Somehow still calm, I pushed a 5.59 (can't believe it!), dropped back to 20th behind the girl ahead of me, then immediately jumped back up a spot after the girl behind me fell back.

It continued like that, women dropping spots right and left, until at the end of the race Keslie was 7th and I was somewhere around 9th or 10th....of course you can see this was WAY too good to be true, and when the woman in 2nd dropped to 18th, we knew they were going to cancel the second run. I was bummed of course, since this meant I had a 19th, but still had pushed well and slid better than I had all week, so looked for the silver lining.

Finally, after the race jury deliberated FOREVER, they announced the decision: entire race canceled. I preferred canceling the whole race, over just the second run, giving me two chances to do better than 19th. (Fingers crossed.)

So tomorrow we have two one-heat races instead of one two-heat race; I'm ok with that, as long as the weather is better. And as long as I didn't burn out my legs today, so can still push as fast.

I guess today was an extra day of training!

The men are up racing right now; the weather of course cleared up for them and looked promising, so if it stays nice their race will probably be ok.

Anyway, wish us luck tomorrow.