By Gavin Kentch
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Today’s race at U.S. Nationals, the men’s 20-kilometer mass start skate, was less a classic sit-and-kick affair that frequently characterizes men’s distance racing, and more a gradual turning of the screws that led to a dissolution of the pack. I would call it a “race of attrition,” but our cliché budget is already getting tapped, and it’s just the first paragraph here.
Through the first of four laps around a climb-heavy course (192m of gain over 4.9km), there were still nearly thirty men within ten seconds of the lead as athletes lapped through the stadium at 5km. A lap later, halfway through the race, the lead pack was down to 13 men. After three laps, and 15km, it was just nine men.
The remaining nonet sized each other up. By 17.5km, following some surges up to the high point of the course, the lead pack was down to five.
Five minutes later, following a lot of downhill and a small amount of uphill, four men approached the stadium together. Zanden McMullen of APU, Mons Melbye of Utah, and John Steel Hagenbuch of Dartmouth sprinted it out.
McMullen took the win, and the national title, by 0.7 of a second over Melbye. Steel Hagenbuch was next, another 0.3 of a second in arrears, claiming third overall and second American. Jakob Elias Moch, of Colorado, came in a second-plus later for fourth.
Zach Jayne of Utah had lost contact with the group over the final 2km, but ably stayed ahead of the pursuers. He came in 12.1 seconds after McMullen, fifth overall and third American.
It was Jayne’s third domestic podium in as many races. “I truly believe nobody has improved more than I have in the last two years and it’s not going to stop,” Jayne had told us following the first race of the week. 🔜⬆️, as the kids these days say.
Olivier Léveillé (CNEPH) came in in no-man’s land, 26.2 seconds back, for sixth. Brian Bushey (Craftsbury), Alexandre Cormier (CNEPH), and Hunter Wonders (APU), in that order, made up seventh through ninth, all roughly 30 seconds back. There was a gap of nearly another minute to tenth; a World Cup men’s distance race this was not.
“I just wanted to have a high pace from the start until the end and just do some attacks in between,” said Moch of his strategy for the day. “See who’s coming with me, who’s not.” He added, “We had some good boys out there all pushing the pace.”
That said, Moch was also trying to win the race, and sometimes that looks like conserving energy to set up for the finish.
“On the last lap we chilled pretty much until the top,” was Moch’s candid take on race dynamics for the final 5km today. Do the work early so you don’t have to do the work late.
“The pace actually went down the last lap,” echoed RMISA compatriot Melbye, “but people got tired. I started a little back in the start, so for me it was the easiest lap maybe. And I just waited for the last finish stretch, and came in second. It’s good.”
Melbye noted that the race as a whole “was tough. I had great skis, so it was maybe a little easier for me than the rest. But tough overall.”
The distance course here is old school, not necessarily in a pejorative way, with basically one long uphill and then one long downhill. Emphasis on basically; it’s not quite Davos, which is essentially and out-and-back whose course profile looks like this:
But it does look like this:
“It’s a long way up and then you have a long way down,” was Melbye’s take on how the Lake Placid 5km course skis. “So it’s like interval training.”
Feel free to start speculating on how one Jessie Diggins will ski the working downhills shown above over the final 2.5km of her career when she contests the 20km mass start skate here on March 22. Personally, I’m going with somewhere between “well” and “brutally effectively.”
Speaking of skiing things well, here’s overall winner Zanden McMullen.
“I knew it was going to be a tactical finish there at the end,” he said. “Honestly, through the whole last lap my heart rate was rising. Not because, you know, we were going that much harder, but I knew it was gonna be decided in the the final hundred meters.”
There was definitely some anxiety creeping in, McMullen candidly said. “I knew for my best shot at the Olympics I had to win today. Unfortunately, I knew Johnny [Steel Hagenbuch] was in the same position, and I knew it was gonna come down between the two of us, and I was pleased to get the better of him. … So I’m very pleased with that and I’m glad I can focus on the the next race to come and races the rest of the season.”
When it came to focusing on this race, McMullen’s strategy was just, “conserving as much energy as I could throughout the whole race.” More broadly, he said, “I had prepared for different outcomes or different strategies throughout the race, and I think the best thing I could have done, and which I did, was just take the race one step at a time and and see how things are playing out and being conscious of who’s around me, who’s making moves, who I should go with, who I should ski behind, all those things. So it was kind of just a moving, rolling strategy.”
Last two questions for McMullen: One, what do they put in the water at APU? “Oh, that’s the fresh Alaskan spring water, that’s what it is.”
And two, how tired was he?
“I think I’m running off a little bit of adrenaline, so I don’t feel super gassed,” McMullen said immediately after winning a race with over 2,500′ of climbing (768m) in 20km. “This 20km skate mass start is maybe my best event, so I feel more relaxed than I did in the 10km classic the other day. But I’m sure once I’m able to go back to our hotel and relax, it’ll all hit me and I’ll be very tired.”
Close behind McMullen at the finish, just one second back on the results sheet but also one significant place lower on the Olympic selection list, was John Steel Hagenbuch.
“It was a really fun race,” said the Dartmouth man of his day. “I didn’t quite get what I wanted in the end, but it was a really tight race out there, and rubbin’s racing. And you can’t be too unhappy to just have a clean race and try your best.”
“I think that was an interesting race in that it was really hard to get away and no one really was able to do that,” Steel Hagenbuch mused. “So it came down to that last little finish sprint, and when you leave it that late things can go wrong. And it didn’t quite pan out the way that I necessarily wanted it to, but that’s okay. I mean, Zanden and Jakob and Mons are all really strong skiers, and that’s the risk you run run when you leave it that late.”
Last but not least on the American podium, Zach Jayne continued his unbroken (domestic) podium streak this week, as well as his streak of shouting out his teammates from the University of Utah.
“I think that was a really tough race,” Jayne said. “I was definitely a little tired from the last few days, but I’m really happy with how I skated. And my teammate Mons Melbye just killed it out there again today.”
Jayne described pack dynamics in a race like this as “unspoken” more than regimented turns at the front. He added, out there with my teammates it’s just, you gotta be nice out there, … just be a good ski racer and be kind.” He elaborated, “At the end of the day I believe the the best racer will win and I think it should stay that way, and no foul play or any shenanigans like that.”
(I truly don’t think that Jayne is alleging that anything of the sort occurred; from everything I can tell, it truly was a clean race today. But this mindset helps explain why that was the case.)
In conclusion, here is some video of the start. You can also watch a replay of the whole race on the livestream here.
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