By Gavin Kentch
Kendall Kramer called her shot. Earlier this week the University of Alaska Fairbanks dual-sport athlete, who is on the national team for cross-country skiing but has also been a superb runner dating back to her days of claiming nine separate Alaska track/XC state championships for Fairbanks’s West Valley High School, posted to Instagram:
“Cross country is just magic. Such simple yet incomparable joy it’s brought to my life, along with many best friends. Best decision I ever made was to pick this up. One last run this Saturday at 10:15am AK time.”
When the appointed time arrived, Kramer left the starting line at a breezy, rain-spattered Arcade Creek Cross Country Course in Sacramento, California, for the last collegiate xc race of her life, the NCAA D-II Cross-Country Championships. At 10:35 a.m. Alaska time she crossed the finish line, second in a field of 261. It was not quite going out on top — Lauren Kiley of Grand Valley State took the win — but it was close.
Kiley’s winning time was 20:28.5. Kramer was 2.2 seconds back in 20:30.7. Her UAF teammate Rosie Fordham, another accomplished runner/skier in her senior year at UAF, finished eighth in 20:43.7, after running in the top ten throughout the race. The third UAF runner across the line was Tabitha Williams, a sophomore, in 22:26.8, placing 132nd overall after spending much of the race in the 120s to 130s.
Kramer, Fordham, and Williams were second, third, and fifth, respectively, in the Race to the Outhouse skate race in Palmer, Alaska, a week ago today, in case you were curious about these women’s range. Put another way, last weekend Kramer was only 8.7 seconds back of Rosie Brennan over a 5km skate. Brennan is now in Lapland preparing for next week’s World Cup opener. Again: range.
Adams State took the overall women’s D-II team championship today, by a substantial margin over West Texas A&M. UAF was 13th, out of 34 teams. It was UAF’s first time sending a full team to D-II nationals since 2011 (last year Kramer and Fordham, running individually, were 23rd and 36th at nationals).
Race replay (free, email registration required)
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, last season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
