The 2017 Fall Classic was the first serious competition of the season for me, racing four days in a row.
I started off with the massstart on Thursday (21/09). Going into the race I had two goals: to grab points somewhere along the race and to finish in the top during the final sprint. The race was one of the hardest massstarts I have raced so far. Everyone was eager to race and due to some breakways the pace was fast the whole race. I ended up snooping up 1 point during the second sprint and coming in 3rd during the final sprint.
The 1000m on Friday(22/09) was a bit of a different story, I still felt quite fatigued from racing the massstart. So I went into the race with a different plan, I decided to go into the race with one hand on my back. This usually results in a slightly slower pace, but you save some energy along the way thus being able to go faster during the second lap. This plan resulted in a slight PB (1.12.4), bringing me a bit closer to the World cup and Olympic time limits.
I raced the 500m on Saturday(23/09). Overall I felt good about the race, putting down one of my fastest race laps (26.1) resulting in 36.4. The main thing now is to work on getting my first 100 faster, as I feel that is where I can win some time.
The 1500m on Sunday(24/09) was the distance I was looking forward to all weekend, my previous 1500 felt pretty good so I was hoping to get a PB. I started off a bit faster than I usually do, but I also immediately felt that my legs were not as fast as I hoped they would be. My first lap was still within the range of what I wanted to do, but after that I couldn’t keep my lap times down anymore. I finished at 1.51.2, a bit slower than during my previous race.
Overall I’m quite happy about the Fall classic, we had been doing a lot of hard sessions throughout the past few weeks. So it was to be expected that I wouldn’t be extremely fast this weekend, but you still always want to be a bit faster. Going into a recovery week now and working towards the Oval Invitational which is in a little less than a month.
All of the results are available online at: http://results.oval.ucalgary.ca/Competition/Results.aspx (Including the splits)