Tour de Ski – Day one

I figure that a short post is better than none at all…. so here it is:  The Tour de Ski started today.  While I had a poor result – by far, my worst “distance race” since being in Europe, I have to happy in that I felt as if I could ski. Yesterday, in the training day, my wrist was incredibly painful and I have to admit; I was worried to say the least.  Today I had a top-notch tape job done by Steph, our massage therapist and a double dose of pain meds.  The duo seemed to do the trick!

Conditions today were icy, squirrely & fast – not my favorite.  But, it’s snowing outside right now which makes me happy. Klister covered conditions are some of my favorite and I have an awesome pair of skis if the waxing goes that way.  I’ll have plenty of girls to chase tomorrow in the pursuit start so it should be fun to “hunt some down” and try and improve my overall placing, not to mention, aim for a solid “day of” result.

Other than that, one of the big themes of the Tour is RECOVERY. With nine races in eleven days, proactive recovery becomes imperative.

Here is the plan: after the race, reach for my Boost – yep, the “old folks drink.”  I may be the only person on the US team that likes the stuff. Me and maybe my grandma 🙂 Change clothes afterwards… get a good, short cool down, ice my hand, change into dry clothes, hustle back to the hotel for a shower, put my feet up. I’m sure we’ll start using the mobile ice bath as fatigue builds up. Also, Kikkan and Bird did a bit of personal fundraiser to bring Steph Caverhill, a massage therapist over for the team.  Most teams travel with a massage therapist everywhere. While we normally do not have one, we’re excited to have Steph here to help us out over the next week and a half. As I said above, she did an awesome job of taping my hand. It’s cool to have a female on staff…. I can tell with the little things like the fact that she used pre-rap on my tape job so I don’t have to pull of 1/2 of my arm hair when de-taping. Thanks for that Steph!

Here’s the only picture I have of today so far. Check back later and perhaps I’ll have more posted?  Thanks for everyone’s encouragement! Go team USA!