It was very exciting to be back on the World Cup circuit for the final race of the season in Winterberg, Germany. I have won there twice in the past so I was feeling some confidence going in even though I had not raced at that level with those competitors for more than 14 months. I pulled out the pair of runners I won on a few years ago in my last race here. After the first training run I remembered why they had been retired to the basement – they were bending! I knew they would be better than the other set I had with me so I straightened them as much as I could and used my other set for the remaining training runs. In the race I knew I would lose some rock on the first run but hoped they would hold out enough for me to compete. Training went well with some good but not stellar training times.
This was the first time all year I would have a day off between the last training day and the race – I did not handle it well! On the World Cup Circuit this day off is a normal occurrence, but I had not experienced it for 14 months and I was very rusty. I did my normal race preparation the night after training and a bit more during our day off, but I found myself with most of the day off with ‘nothing to do’. Having been fighting off yet another cold for the past few days I decided to lay really low and maximize my time in bed – the more energy the better right? Wrong. My nervous system crashed and then I compounded the mistake the next morning by going for a track walk (our race was in the late afternoon / evening) during the Women’s race. Subconsciously I was so excited to be back in the World Cup that I didn’t consider what a track walk might do to my adrenaline and nervous system. As I walked down the track I could feel my heart rate rising much like it does during warm-up and right before the race begins. Uh oh. My nervous system went up like a rocket and an hour later I was as flat as a pancake – and my race wasn’t for 4 more hours!
The race came along and I did everything I could to try and fire myself up at the start, but to no avail. It was my worst pushing performance of the year by far and this is the track where I needed it the most! However, I did have a very good first run and found myself in 5th place – a nice start to my ‘first race back’. I started the race in 12th position so I knew going in my chances were very small for a podium result (Winterberg ice deteriorates very quickly and if you are not in the top 2/3rds of the first seed you have basically no chance to win the race). Being in 5th spot though I felt as if a podium was well within reach if I could just nail my second run.
I did improve my push on the second run, but I got kicked left out of the groove very abruptly and I did not react fast enough to minimize the damage and by the exit of the 1st corner my race was essentially over. I fought my way down, but I did not perform well and the net result was an 11th place finish. Very disappointing for me to be sure. Lessons learned and packing to be done – we were leaving the next day for Altenberg, Germany and the World championships.