Two Andrews reflect on Beitostolen
The weekend at Beitostolen finished today with the men's classic 15km. After the race Andrew Musgrave sent his thoughts on the weekend :
"In the week leading up to the Beitostolen races I had trained well and felt in good form. Friday's 15km skate was a good race for me. I opened with a fairly even pace and managed to increase my speed throughout the race. After 10km I was leading but I pushed a bit too hard after that and faded a little in the last few kilometres.
Saturday's sprint was hard. My legs were fairly beaten up from the 15km the day before and I didn't feel I performed my best. However, I managed a decent enough prologue but the effort from that left me drained and unable to advance further than the quarter final.
I was unsure what to expect from Sunday's 15km classic. It was my first classic race of the season and I tend to be a bit stronger in skate races but I knew my distance form was good after Friday's race and was fairly confident. But as soon as I started I knew I wasn't in for a good race as I was way off the pace. Towards the end I felt stronger, managed to pick up my speed and made up a lot of positions in the last 3km which was a good sign, but my poor start meant I had too much ground to make up."
He finished 30th out of the 117 skiers who completed the race.
The Junior Men's 15km classic was the last race of the day and Andrew Young went out hoping to follow up on his success in the sprints. Finishing in 5th place (out of 65 starters) seemed pretty good to most people but obviously he had expected more, commenting afterwards "It was an ok race. It was quite hard - the first lap went well then I had a big section in the middle where I wasn't so great before a good final few kilometres. Fifth was ok and I got some good training from racing this weekend and I'm in a good position for this time of the season".
The "ok training race" did however earn him his second best distance FIS points.
