By Gavin Kentch
This article was initially written in January for U.S. Nationals. The context and framing are, obviously, now slightly different, but the race course itself remains unchanged. This is relevant to the SuperTour distance race on December 7. Enjoy.
KINCAID PARK, Anchorage, Alaska — 2025 U.S. National Cross-Country Championships kick off here on Thursday with a 10-kilometer interval-start skate. Sunday brings more distance racing with a 10/20km mass start classic; U20 athletes contest the shorter distance, and everyone else the longer.
There are currently a healthy seven distinct homologated distance courses at Kincaid, the 1,500-acre park at the western edge of town, ranging in length from 3.75 to 10 kilometers. Soldier Hollow still has 11- and 15-kilometer courses on their books, Craftsbury has the 11km version of Ruthie’s, and Michigan Tech has a 12km course, but a homologated course of 10km or longer is definitely a rarity in this country.
Unfortunately, low-ish snow conditions in Anchorage this year have forced a change from the single-lap 10km course and three-lap 20km that were originally on tap for this year’s U.S. Nationals. In their place is a 5km loop that still feels “new” to me, but that by now dates to 2019 Junior Nationals held here nearly six years ago — Gus Schumacher won everything, if that helps date it for you — so shows what I know.
(Conditions are hardly thin on the ground; bring your race skis. The issue is more that the latter half of the 10km course, particularly over outer Lekisch, is more exposed and can get pretty bony in marginal snow years. We had multiple rain events here in December, and roughly two-thirds of this winter’s total snowfall came in October (!), so that’s what the current snowpack has borne. For perspective, a weekend shoveling party brought snow from the woods out to those portions of the 5km course that needed it last Saturday. Moreover, roughly 2km of the 5km course, centered on the main stadium and biathlon stadium, falls within reach of snow lances, so there is a consistent manmade base on that portion of the 5km course that is not present over most of the 10km course.)
Here is organizers’ map of the 5km course (same map applies to the mass start classic race three days later):
Here is one of several Strava segments showing this course:
And here is (part of) the homologation certificate:
(cites: race website, Strava, FIS)
This course has 152 meters of climb over 5.12 kilometers, according to the FIS certificate. This is 29.7 meters of climb per kilometer, just at the low end of the homologation-licit range. The would-be single-lap 10km course clocked in at 36 m/km, so some climbing has definitely been lost with the move to the shorter course.
This week’s 5km course — which you may remember from Junior Nationals here in March 2019, SuperTour racing here in December 2023, or Besh Cup racing here last weekend, among several other occasions — is, in a word, punchy. In two words, it is punchy and working.
*narrator voice* Let’s take a closer look, shall we.
The course starts with a roughly 3-percent downhill through the cavernous Kincaid stadium, leading into a downhill downhill out of the stadium to the north, which segues to first 250 meters of false flat and then another downhill. By this point it is 750 meters into the race and you have yet to encounter a single real uphill. Don’t be afraid to go out hard.
Climbing starts at the 754-meter mark of the course. The ensuing climb, Elliott’s Climb, homologates as a 38-meter A-climb, which is of course correct, because John Estle.
But, well, there are A-climbs and then there are A-CLIMBS, and this one is definitely the former. I’m DNS on Thursday due to recent illness, unfortunately, but were I to race this week I would be ecstatic with anything above a bottom-ten finish (am old). And *I* can V2 the large majority of this course, including, yes, much of this A-climb. For the real skiers at the front on Thursday, two laps will take them in the low 20 minutes given current conditions. Every second counts out there.
So. You’ve blasted out of the stadium, V2’ed and jumpskated your way up the single largest climb on the course, and are at roughly the 1200-meter mark of your race. There follows a false flat downhill along the western edge of World Cup Start Area (essentially a large field that was used for, well, guess what in March 1983; Gunde Svan won, with Tim Caldwell and Bill Koch second and third, if that helps place this), leading into a quintessential working downhill down Rollercoaster. The leaders are going to take under 12 minutes for the entire 5.1km lap, so you probably shouldn’t back off here.
Around the 2km mark you’re done with Rollercoaster, and into a left-hand turn to head up Dark Alley. Southbound on Dark Alley is, again, a moderate rolling uphill; with the exception of a short pitch at 2.4km (5m of climb at 21 percent), I can V2 all of Dark Alley, too.
Work the right-hand turn coming up and off of this short climb. Be sure to give a few extra pushes over the top, if you can, because there’s another 400m of descent or rolling terrain coming up right after this.
2.8km into the course, and finally it’s time to climb for real. The course goes up the back side of Gong Hill and all the way to the top, a 24-meter climb that I submit will feel far harder to you than the 38m A-Climb up Elliott’s.*
When this pitch is used on the sprint loop, Luke Jager says, “If it were just a little bit wider, this would be a legit World Cup course. … There’s not that many World Cup [sprint] courses where you’ll have a good 30 seconds of sustained V2.”
When this pitch is used on the distance course, it is probably the hardest part of the course. It is likely too far from the finish for anyone to throw down a move here and make it stick; there are still two kilometers to go from the top of Gong Hill, with plenty of downhills in which a pack can catch back up. (Johnny or Kendall, if you drop the field here on Sunday and solo in for the win, please hassle me about this when I interview you post-race.) But it is steep, and it is all man-made snow this year so it can potentially get a little sugary by the end of Sunday’s races, and it is not easy going.
If there are not a hundred people minimum lining the upper part of this climb for Sunday’s mass start races, I will be disappointed. Be sure to go hard for them here. Oh, also I’m calling this pitch “Kikkan’s Kick,” with her blessing. Help me make it stick. Thanks.
So now you’re atop Gong Hill, 3km into the course. Conditions will be firm enough all week that the left–right–left S-turn coming down from here should be fine, but be sure to stay on your feet as you head through the lower tunnel, around the back side of the biathlon range, and out to the Lekisch Loop.†
From the 3km mark to the start of real climbing on Lekisch, at around 3.6km, is downhill and, well, working V2 sections. You may sense a theme here.
3.6km and 4km into the course see a one–two punch of climbs on Lekisch. The first contains 18 meters of climbing, and the second 10 meters of climbing. Both are V1 climbs, for nearly all of the field, especially the second one that tops out at a 19 percent grade, though you can also carry a fair amount of speed into this hill coming down from the first one. They are hard.
The climb under the bridge is visible-ish at the far right of this shot. (photo: Gavin Kentch)
But you should go hard on them nonetheless, because once you reach the top of the second climb, at 4.1km, it is nearly all downhill to the finish. But not a sit-and-tuck-and-hang-out-and-recover downhill; after a brief swooping downhill there is a short, punchy climb to finish up Lekisch, a working downhill through the stadium tunnel and across the southwest edge of the stadium,‡ a climb up under the bridge that is all of about 4m gain but feels like at least 14m on the ground, and then another downhill. Finish with the canonical U-turn into the stadium and finish lanes, this one with an uphill, off-camber right-hand turn that is perhaps reminiscent of the 2022 Olympic venue of Zhangjiakou more than anything else in this country. The stadium is of course a false flat uphill, best practices for stadia worldwide.
“It almost felt as long as [the rest of] the race,” Sonjaa Schmidt once told me of this final 100 meters in the stadium. In a 10km. That she won.
file photo: This is awkward because the 5km course described here peels off about 50m before this view, but this is a view from the Lekisch Loop near the race course under discussion. (photo: Adam Verrier)
To review: there is a downhill approach to a relatively tame A-Climb; a quintessential working downhill; a gradual uphill; another downhill; one steep climb up the back of Gong Hill; another downhill; more false flats; two brief V1 climbs; then a final kilometer of working downhill and false flats to the finish. If you conclude from this overview that this is a working course with very little pure recovery, you would be right.
Put another way, the JNs 5km course is hard precisely because it is not “hard”; there is no one part of it that is impossibly daunting, and so in theory you basically just have to push all the time. In practice, winning times for a two-lap 10km mass start skate here on December 22 were 22:59 (Matt Seline) and 26:26 (Kendall Kramer); yes conditions were fast, but 22-odd minutes for a 10km doesn’t leave you with a lot of time to look around out there.
Athletes sounded similar notes when I asked them how this course skied in SuperTour races here last December.
The course is “very, like, rolling,” Hugo Hinckfuss told me. “So I think I can recover quite quickly from the efforts. And especially being at sea level, it feels like I just need five seconds of rest before I can start going again, which is really nice.”
The course “has not got a ton of huge climbs in it,” echoed Hunter Wonders. “But it’s so consistent. You can’t let off the pedal. There’s so much working doublepole, and just keep grinding even when it feels like it’s really slow. There’s speed out there; you’ve just got to find it.”
Distance racing starts here on Thursday. Go find that speed.
* * *
* Pro tip: At the lefthand dogleg halfway up this climb, even though the shortest-distance route is clearly to take the turn on the inside, consider staying a meter or so wider to the right until things flatten out, and only then cutting across to the left as you go over the brief plateau before Kikkan’s Kick. It is much steeper on the inside of this turn than the outside, is why, and the shortest distance may well not be the fastest, especially in Sunday’s classic race. Presumptively you have more space to work with here on distance day than on sprint day… but you go down to the right coming off the top of Gong Hill in a sprint heat, so it may not be crazy to go one meter farther at the midpoint of the hill in order to be on the right side at the top even in a sprint heat.
† Pro tip: When I skied the distance course late Tuesday afternoon, after a full day of course preview traffic, the upper two-thirds of this downhill were super firm, but the final third, the last lefthand curve, was much, much softer and rutted than the top part. The sprint course also covers the bottom third; the bottom third is more exposed to what passes for winter sun; and the upper two-thirds were not groomed for much of December, are all factors bearing on the snow you will encounter on the bottom part of this downhill this week.
‡ Pro tip: There will be a headwind here on race day. I’m not even looking at an extended forecast or anything when I say that, just there is always a north wind in the Kincaid stadium. I am the only athlete on the seed list, in a field of 414, born in the 1980s; trust my experience on this one.
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