The Factory Team Race Season is Underway! 

This weekend kicked off the first race for the Enjoy Winter athlete Annika Landis, at the Ski de She Gear West 30k. The Ski de She is a unique all-female event that combines a race day with a 3-day camp full of informative speakers, activities, and ski clinics. Annika details her experience below: 

All photos courtesy of the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. 

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This is my third year participating in the Ski de She Camp and Race, and as with previous years, I really enjoyed the experience both as a coach and as a participant. The camp is Friday-Sunday, with the race on Saturday. Friday is on snow, and I got to coach an intermediate group with Katie Lindquist (one of 3 women who run a coaching service called Nordic Link). I find it intriguing to watch more experienced coaches explain technique, since we all have different cues and advice, and I end up learning so much that I can incorporate into my own coaching. I also love how eager the women are to learn, and watching their confidence in their abilities grow brings me a lot of joy. 

Each year I come away feeling so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had throughout my life to be involved in sport and have my right to be there not be questioned. I am reminded that many of the women in the room around me did not have the option to participate in sport when they were young and that so many had to carve out that space for themselves without the support that I have always enjoyed. 

I like how the focus of this camp is holistic, and not entirely centered around the race on Saturday. The talks and activities focus on nutrition, recovery, aging, ski selection and prep, race & training strategies, and community building. I like starting my race season with the reminder that racing is just a small part of what I do. It helps set the tone of the season as one of gratitude, joy, and humility.   

The race is still an important component of the weekend for me. It is usually the first official race of the season and an opportunity to shake out some cobwebs. Even though this race is generally low key compared to, let’s say the Birkie, that doesn’t mean it isn’t competitive. This year the field had many strong competitors, and I was curious to see how I would stack up. It had snowed quite a bit after the grooming, and there were a good couple inches on the course making for some tough skiing. I wasn’t looking to be a snowplow, so I settled into a good rhythm towards the front of the group, sticking to my race plan of not leading. About 5km into the race, Chelsey Youngberg took off and Karolina Kaleta (Team Birkie) and I just couldn’t quite match it. So we skied the rest of the race together, trading off leads, and sprinting it out for 2nd and 3rd. I finished 3rd and wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the result, but not disappointed either. 

The first race of the season is always a bit of a toss up when it comes to how my body will feel and it also provides a great opportunity to dial in pre-race prep, mental strategies, and all the other little things that go into a successful race day. This paired well with one of the speakers from the weekend, who talked about how to prepare for races mentally. The speaker touched on the importance of your attitude during a race and emphasized that the only thing you can effectively change on race day that will help you perform better and that is your mindset. She shared some statistics about how feeling off physically affects performance, vs. having a negative mental attitude. I apologize if I don’t accurately recount the number but it was something like a 2-4% decrease for physical tiredness/other physical negatives and 5-8% decrease in performance for negative mental adaptability. Over a 3hr race that is about 3-7 minutes lost, vs.9-25 minutes. So yeah, it's pretty important to have a good attitude even if you don't feel your best physically. 

Her advice was to make a race plan and have a mantra (or multiple) for when things get tough. Especially in a long race, it is helpful to divide the race into sections in whatever way makes sense for you, and give yourself a strategy for each section. I made a plan for my race with some general thoughts for how I wanted my race to go, knowing full well that races are dynamic and a plan can get tossed out the window as soon as the gun goes off.  

• 1st 5k - Have patience, settle in  
• 1st Lap - Gauge the group, find an opening. 
• Last Lap - Make a move, commit, but be smart. 

I like to make a list after each race of what went well and what I can improve on for next time. This is focused on things I can control, not on something like results, which I ultimately cannot control. This was my list for this weekend: 

What I can Improve: 

• Warmup: I didn’t have time to finish my full warmup, mostly because I started late after getting distracted. 
• Skis: more attention to taking care of skis in advance, carving out time to test and dial in race wax so I’m not as stressed pre-race. 
• Mindset: Was feeling some anxiety about being underprepared, and had a passive mindset during the race that was trending negative and felt disconnected from my body.  

What went well:

• Mindset: despite feeling “passive” I felt like I did a good job redirecting frustration/inability to access mental race gear back into neutral thoughts.
• Pacing: didn’t go out too hard, didn’t lead too much, tried to make a move, and covered moves made.  

• Stayed Warm: seems small, but feet stayed warm, and so did most of my body except my legs towards the end.    

I was using this 30k as a training race, and therefore I didn’t taper specifically for this weekend, and instead decided to train through it. One of my goals for the weekend was to practice process, and get a feel for how my training would translate into racing. Sunday morning, the last day of the camp, was bitterly cold, (or as midwesterners would call it, balmy) and we started the morning with some gentle yoga and a big breakfast. Afterwards, we bundled up and went for an easy ski on the Birkie trails, and enjoyed some of the best snow I've skied in Hayward in a few years. It definitely made me pretty stoked to be back in a month!