Welcome back to the race series update of the BSF Pro Team. In this update, myself and Simon Zink along with BSF collegiate members, Jonah Steinberg and Emil Bratbak head to Aspen Colorado for the 3rd weekend of the RMISA college circuit. The races this weekend were a skate sprint and a classic 10k. The exciting part about the sprint, was this was the first sprint to be followed with heats.

After an early but easy travel day to Grand Junction, where we picked up the rental car, and then a short drive up to Aspen, the boys made it! We were greeted with a classic Colorado snow storm, and fresh cookies at the Mountain Chalet. The boys were once again back to cooking food in the microwave. We had gotten pretty good at making gourmet microwave meals if that can even be a thing.

We went to bed in a huge snowstorm and after waking up a few times to the sounds of the plows, we eventually woke up to another classic Colorado weather pattern, the “Bluebird” day. We took to the trails and tested our skis, found a fast pair and were ready for the skate sprint.

The sprint went well for all of us, we all qualified in the top 30 with Simon qualifying the best of us. A quick 30 minutes later, the heats started. Normally it would be 3 hours between races, but with Covid we had to be in and out quick. Simon, Emil, and Jonah were eliminated in the quarterfinal and I was able to place second in my heat, advancing to the semifinal. I had the quickest turnaround time between heats. I somehow was able to get the lucky loser place in the semifinal, advancing to the final. I was definitely out of my element in the A final of sprint, as a distance specialist. I finished in 5th, and 2nd American.

Moving on to the classic distance race, Emil had the top BSF result finishing 3rd overall! His best performance of the season so far. I was not far behind in 4th, finishing with the top American result! The others I don’t think had the result they were looking for.

The boys packed up, and headed back to the airport, and safely made it home back to Bozeman. A successful weekend of racing without a coach or wax techs. Stay tuned tomorrow for the last race update before the teams toes to the line at the American Birkebeiner.