Canadian World Cups

After racing poorly in Europe for 6 weeks with my broken hand, I flew back to Canada to race the World Cup races in Quebec and Canmore.

The early season races were pretty much a write off with my broken hand. The only good memory I have of the fall World Cups was my 11 week old mustache. 

My individual race in Quebec went really poorly. Not sure what happened there, I guess the conditions were a little too soft for my liking. I missed qualifying by a lot. Quebec wasn't a complete failure, Jess Cockney and I teamed up in the team sprint and both skied good races. We advanced to the final with no troubles and skied with the leaders until the final two laps. Jess ended up getting caught up in a crash around the last corner and we lost contact with the leaders and we finished the day in 10th. I had a great time racing with my new sprint partner Jess and I look forward to racing more WC races with him in the future. 

Devon leading Jess in sprint relay

Our techs working hard in the exchange zone (Sprint Relay)

Roller ski warmup Quebec (Alex & Devon)

Canmore races went much better for me. I was finally given the green light to take the cast off my hand during races. It felt so nice to have full mobility poling again. I finished the Classic 15km race in  24th place. I was really happy with my result considering how tough the Canmore course was. A couple days later in the sprint I finally started to feel like I was getting my speed back. The hand was feeling good and I was really enjoying using both my arms again poling. My teammate from the past weekend Jess, had an absolutely ridiculous qualifier finishing 2nd behind the best sprinter in the world this year. Jess also skied the heats very well and ended up with a really impressive 9th place finish! I had a good day myself finishing up in 7th. I made a tactical mistake by leading the last downhill and letting everybody use my big draft to pass me. I really feel like that cost me making the final... 

Cruising to finish in 1/4 final