Spint Classic!

Today was an excellent day for me! I achieved goal goal #1 for the trip, beat Harald Kvaerner. He is a Norwegian who I met in 2008 and has been very helpful to me. It was pretty crazy in Rjukan today. There were banners and flags all over the hill, the local schools took the day off and came to watch the race, I signed about 20 autographs, and Madi signed a girl's forehead! Pretty cool! Here comes the kicker, tomorrow the race will be broadcast on the Norwegian channel NRK2. Unfortunately it is not available on the internet, but Roy did get some good video of my run. It was pretty cool to have the camera man run up to you when you finished your run and to see yourself on the big screen. On to the race. I love this hill! It has excellent terrain, little dips and rollers all the way down the course. I especially liked the snow here in Rjukan, it was rock solid ice. Everybody seemed to be having trouble on the course, however I particularly liked it. I am well suited to skiing on ice and laid down two solid runs. I ended up in 21st position. If I had made both the jump lines, I would have been somewhere around 16th or 15th, which would have been fantastic. The four skiers in front of me all were in the same second tier as I was although they all had less penalties. So it basically comes down to the fact that I ski really fast then get nailed with penalties.....So my goal for the rest of the year and especially tomorrow in the classic is to ski clean. If I can do that then I should end up with some very good results! Tomorrow is my best event so I am very much looking forward to a grueling classic to test myselft!