Reflections on Oslo 50k
The hardest 50k in the world?
The Norwegians claim it is. In training earlier this week it didn’t seem too bad. Sure, the first 3 k goes up hill with an occasional flat bit. But then you get a 1.5 k downhill to recover in (the downhill does have a couple of corners that need concentration to negotiate). Today’s Holmenkollen 50k may or may not be the hardest - it’s the first World Cup of this distance the British team has done, so I couldn’t say. What we do know is that it had 28% of the starters pull out.
Andrew Musgrave had high hopes of doing well here. He has been intrigued by the 50 k for at least a year and after the win last week and his like of hard skate courses and mass stars, we felt the omens were good. Unfortunately, he nearly had to join the 28% when a fall after only 3 k left him with a broken ski. Nothing if not determined, Andrew skied the next 5.3 k before being able to change his skis. This left him near the back of the field and totally by himself. The ideal way of skiing a long distance race is to try and tuck in behind someone else so you get an easy ride (much like someone in the peleton in a bike race). Andrew has found the hard route in both his last mass starts, the Olympic 30k pursuit and today. In the Olympics it was 27k by himself after being pushed over by an Italian, today it was 47k alone (he knew those Norwegians who thought the race ought to have stayed as a time trial were right). Andrew said the worse thing about today was realising as he was skiing the second 8.35k loop that once that was completed (16.7k) he would still have the whole of the pursuit distance to go.
As the kilometres ticked by 2 epic battles took place. Apparently there was a fantastic race at the front with 2 French skiers trying to break away from the skier of the moment Petter Northug (see http://skierpost.com/index.php?/20100313697/News/a-norwegian-day-in-holmenkollen.html). In our camp we had no idea about this as we watching the epic Andrew was having as he battled his way round. Northug won (just from the Italian Piller-Cottrer) and Andrew controlled his technique to keep in the race. On the final 4 k Andrew moved closer to the guys who had got away by skiing in a small pack and on the final climb caught Jens Arne Svartedal. He finished in 49th, further behind the winner than he would have liked. But there had been 69 starters and this had been a gutsy performance.
We can’t say this is the hardest, but we can say that the atmosphere and racing were incredible. I noted last night that the Canadian’s had around 20 support crew for their 4 skiers who all reported struggling in this race (http://fasterskier.com/2010/03/canada-struggles-in-50km-arritola-and-gregg-lead-us/), so we should very much like to thank the supporters who helped Andrew today. Andrew Young (obviously) for drinks, Peter the Luxemburger for juice, Geir-Endre Rogan for wax, Mika Polson and Frank Hegaboe from Hoveden and Per Nymonen who did drinks while directing the feed station.
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