Two Saturday's ago Dad, Dan, and I did the 25km Oosik Classic ski race in Talkeetna. We got up early and drove to Talkeetna the morning of. I did some wax testing with my friend Jacob after we picked up our bibs. Soon the race started. Jacob and I positioned ourselves towards the front, which was apparently a good move because Dad and Dan said they got stuck behind a bunch of really slow people. Just like in any race everybody got excited at the start so we ended up sprinting the first kilometer just to get away from the "faders." After that we settled into our distance pace. At this point there were four guys in front of us by maybe five seconds. Jake Bassett(APU), Jacob Volz(APU), and I (APU), formed our own group. At about 4km, Jacob and I dropped Jake. Nothing really happened until about 15k-ish when we finally passed one of the guys in front of us that had been dropped by the other 4. We had been drafting behind him for a while, when he slowed down. The other three had really broken away now, maybe 1-2 minutes in front. So Jacob and I kept cruising (through a couple of aid stations too, we tried to practice getting water on the fly). We took 10-15 minute shifts leading. It was sort of windy, just enough that you would notice when you were drafting. We passed the 23km sign and kept going. This is the weird part. We had been going for a while after that sign when I noticed a group of people on this corner. I couldn't decide whether or not we were at the finish yet. It was almost my turn to be the leader anyway so I start to pass Jacob. We went around the corner and yep it was the end. Jacob didn't realize it was over until we went around the corner. So I sprinted the last 100m to get into 4th place. Jacob finished a second behind me in 5th. The three in front of us beat us by a pretty wide margin; 3-5 minutes I think. Jake ended up finishing about 5 minutes behind us. My time was: 1:27:26. Dad finished in 2:34:29, Dan 2:44:42.
Later that night the party started. They were advertising free root beer and regular beer so we were excited for the root beer. It turned out that the root beer was $1, while the beer was free?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
The party was kind of lame. The highlight was winning some klister, but other than that it wasn't that awesome. The food was good though. The following day we took our time driving back. This was also the first time taking the camper out this year. I think our friend Boomer had some modeling opportunities as well. I'll ask him to get busy with posting those.
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