By Angie Kell
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U.S. Nationals kicked off today at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, Alaska, with the first event, the 10-kilometer interval-start skate. The locals with Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (NSAA) are darned PROUD to host Nationals in 2025, and have been preparing for this event, according to news reports, for about two years.
Preparing these days also includes prepping for what Anchorage resident and NSAA director Kikkan Randall describes as the “Nationals curse,” a concerning dearth of snow just in time for the U.S. Nationals races. This curse was last experienced the last time Anchorage hosted this event, in 2018, when the first day of distance racing occurred entirely over a 2.5-kilometer loop of manmade snow amidst, ironically, a driving blizzard.
But fear not, the 200+ veteran volunteers in Anchorage (the club hosted Period 1 SuperTour racing last year, Junior Nationals in 2019, Senior Nationals in 2018, and Spring Series in 2014, among other events) created fast, firm, and, according to the men’s podium winners, consistent conditions. The course saw a mixture of in situ natural snow, shoveled natural snow, and manmade snow for two laps of 5km each.
The course was first used for 2019 Junior Nationals Course. A comprehensive overview of the distance course can be found here.
While this author regrettably wasn’t on site, upon reading about today’s 10km racecourse, it became clear that the races would be fast owing to the firm snow conditions, and that the course terrain would lend itself to sustained efforts making for a hard day.
Temperatures were dropping at the start of the women’s race; the first starter went out at 2 p.m., and the last athlete finished after the sun had set. It was all of 8o F at the start and fell from there. With it went the precious daylight, creating long shadows at the start, giving way to darkness and stadium lighting for the final racers of the 181 names on the start list. Many of the women were adorned in blankets in the start pen in an effort to conserve energy — it was cold.
[Does everyone not do that? We do that at Kincaid all the time. It is always cold here. But also windy. But also humid. –Ed.]
Despite the unforgiving temperatures, the snow remained blazing fast. It was Montana State University skier Kate Oldham who crossed the line first in 24:29.8, followed by local favorite and U.S. Ski Team athlete Kendall Kramer in 24:41.0. Kramer is in her final year of skiing for her hometown school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Third on the domestic podium and fourth overall was Team Birkie’s Luci Anderson in 25:00.04. Third overall went to University of Utah freshman Erica Lavén of Sweden in 24:58.3.
It was 22-year-old Oldham’s first podium and best finish at a U.S. Nationals event. When Nordic Insights asked how she felt about the win, Oldham said, “It felt awesome and surprising. And awesome. This is my first start of the season, so I tried to come out swinging, and I think that this is a testament to that.”
Oldham stated that she felt nervous about the day. “I trained over Christmas a lot by myself so it’s kind of hard to test where you are like that”, she stated. “And showing up here to the national championship with no racing prior to the start was a little nerve-racking but part of the plan. It was intentional and I am more than pleased with how it started, but I did not expect this.”
When reflecting upon what will be a memorable experience, Oldham had some advice for junior skiers: “I think just remembering that doing what works for you usually works out well,” she said.
Oldham added, “For me, going home, spending the holiday with my family and just enjoying the skiing at home instead of trying to get those early-season races really helps me relax, and I ski well when I feel relaxed and happy.”
Kramer, a dual-sport athlete at UAF, was tabbed in advance as a podium favorite. She has raced on the Kincaid trails since high school so she knows the course and her form is good right now; she won a 10km mass start skate race here in a Besh Cup slightly under two weeks ago.
Kramer spoke to the how she felt going into the race, both emotionally and physically.
“That was really awesome,” she told Nordic Insights in an expansive post-race interview. “I was feeling confident going into it. I think that I can have finally some fun on this course, because I’ve done it so many times. I’ve been doing it since high school. Honestly, I’ve told the other interviewers this as well, but this is a really unique ski experience for me in a race, because I was completely frozen.
“I had taken off my headband, because it was annoying me. It was just flying up my ear, so I just took it off. But I was so cold, and my bones were numb. So I was trying to grapple with the challenge of controlling my limbs by the end. So that was fun, because it wasn’t so painful. I didn’t feel so much pain and lactic. I just was — my body was just so numb from the cold. And so it was kind of comfortable for me, because I’m from Fairbanks, and I ski like that all the time.”
As a student of Alaskan winter temperatures, Kramer expanded on the humid cold as experienced in Anchorage, where the Kincaid stadium sits well under a kilometer from the Pacific Ocean
“I think that this was interesting,” Kramer mused, “because the Anchorage cold goes to your bones, because it’s so wet, as opposed to Fairbanks, you can layer it up, and then you don’t feel it. But this actually seeps into you. And so it was interesting,” she lamented.
“And my contacts were freezing, of course. And so I was kind of in a sensory deprivation chamber out there. So that was a new element, and it was fun to navigate.”
Kramer is somehow still just 22, but it feels like she has been doing this for ages now.
“I realized literally this morning that I have been in the junior category for so long now,” said an athlete who was fourth at World Juniors at 16, and who made her World Cup debut not long after. “I was like, Me and Sydney [Palmer-Leger] have been rocking this junior category for actually so long together.”
Speaking to what she had gained from experience, Kramer said, “College forces you to do this, and being in this so long forces you to do this, but I’m taking it more casually now in the sense of letting go of superstitions, letting go of things that I feel like I have to do, because I realize that things can go well even if you aren’t wearing a certain thing or you didn’t do a certain thing or whatever. I think that I’ve made a lot of friends and community in Anchorage, and so that makes me feel a lot more loose and carefree here now. And I think that I’m not putting so much expectation on myself because I just have raw confidence that it’s going to go well no matter what I do.”
Kramer now plans to continue skiing after this spring’s college graduation from UAF; she will be a full-time skier with APU next year.
“I think that I was unsure for a long time, but I think that I would — I realized after reflection I would have regrets if I didn’t try out skiing 100 percent,” she said, “at least a little bit, with the talents that I have and the young body that I have. So I do have plans to continue with APU next year. And so that’ll be super fun. I made a home here, and the team is just genuinely so awesome.”
Luci Anderson is just one year ahead of Kramer on this career path. The Team Birkie athlete has been having a busy and productive racing season, her first as a professional skier after graduating from the University of New Hampshire. Anderson, who rounded out the domestic podium in third, was primed for a strong finish despite transitioning to biathlon this past summer.
“I’ve been in Europe doing some biathlon IBUs and World Cups and now I’m here,” she stated. “So this is like my only week this winter of just cross-country racing.”
Anderson added, “I feel like this past summer I’ve put in a lot of good work and it’s really nice to not be in school anymore and not have to focus on that. So focusing on skiing full-time has been really good for my speed and this was the one race I was most excited to be here for. So yeah, I’m not too surprised” about the podium finish.
After this week of racing, Anderson will continue with her biathlon career in Europe. “I’ve qualified for the next three biathlon World Cups,” she said. “I’ll be flying to, I think the next one is in Ruhpolding or Oberhof maybe. I’ll be flying there on January 13th and I’m hoping to qualify for maybe some cross-country World Cups.”
Racing continues in Kincaid Park on Saturday with the classic sprint.
— Gavin Kentch contributed in-person reporting from the venue
Results: Thursday skate | seed list for Saturday sprint
Other coverage: Anchorage Daily News | Alaska Sports Report
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 years one and two of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year three 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.
