Tahoe Rim Tour - 25k skate.
Clear and 18 overnight, so everything set up awesomely and the trail was super fast. Had to pee so I got in the start lineup way too late, and started too many rows back, so I doubled poled my way along the side up to the main pack pretty quick, then got in front of them after about the first km. Jonis and an old guy had a hundred meter break already, so I took off after them and only one guy came along with me. Kept them in sight until about 5k when the climbing starts for real, then they just disappeared. Had a good gap over my guy through the first fast downhill at 8k, then he gradually got right onto my tails going up the main climb. I couldn't get any gap on him at all going up, and he finally passed me and took off at a solid V2 right at the 12k bend, where the grade flattens just a bit with two km left until the summit. I tried to hang with him as much as possible, but he had about a 300m lead over the top.
Fortunately gravity generally works in my favor, so eight minutes and five km later I was right back on his tails. There's a hairpin turn right at the bottom of the hill that you hit really really really fast, and he took it badly and I jumped in front and tried to get as much distance as possible. I held him off all the way around the Northstar loop (including that lovely 1:07/km downhill!) until we got to the final climb coming home from the caboose, where he pulled out some leftover uphill V2 and got ahead by a couple meters. The switchbacks down to the finish line are super sharp, so I couldn't hold any speed going through them and couldn't make back any time before the finish.
So the old guy won with Jonis second (apparently Jonis was leading until 10k, when old guy passed him and V2'd the
entire rest of the climb, four more km and a couple hundred meters up, at 8000'!). My dude was third and I was fourth. Fifth was nowhere in sight. Super happy with my race, both the climbs and the descents, and felt really strong for all of it. Looks like I did a pretty good job of flatlining the hr for the whole thing too.
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