Anchorage Daily News

The sun dipped below the Turnagain Arm bluff to the south and the thermometer, having peeked above zero for the first time in days, was plunging back into the negative territory Monday afternoon as the last racers in the men's 10-kilometer freestyle national championship cross-country ski race left the Kincaid Park stadium at 15-second intervals.

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At the same time, a small army of volunteers was performing triage on the first of the 200-plus racers in the finish chute. Wool blankets wrapped cold bodies. Warm hands thawed freezing cheeks and noses. Chemical heat packs helped bring life back into nearly frostbitten toes.

No one complained, though.

After being frozen out of a planned weekend of competition, everyone involved with the 2009 U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships seemed pleased to be on course at last.

Anchorage's own Kikkan Randall, a two-time Olympian, used the word "happy" to describe her reaction to the first day of racing at Kincaid on a trail she called "surprisingly fast."

Randall took second in the women's 5-K freestyle championship that preceded the men's race.

"It was pretty good," she said, although she noted that "when Anchorage gets cold, it's that real cold. In Fairbanks (where subzero temps are a winter norm), it's that dry cold."

The women's 5-K went off at 1 p.m. in the sun-blessed heat of the day. The temperature was 1 degree above zero, making Monday the warmest day in almost a week.

Though the air was nippy, the temperature was five degrees above the internationally mandated standard of no less than minus 4, and the sunny, Christmas-card-perfect scene at Kincaid made it feel more hospitable.

In dead-calm air, thick layers of frost hung snowlike on the trees while a half moon rose into a pale blue sky to the north.

Women's 5-K freestyle champion Caitlin Compton seemed to enjoy it most, but she couldn't have come to Anchorage much better prepared for conditions like these.

A one-time biathlete who grew up in Vermont and now calls Minneapolis home, Compton reported training in temperatures of minus 12 and wind chills of minus 35 back in Minnesota during the Christmas holidays.

On her Web site, she joked that she had to wear so many layers to survive that "I looked like a marshmallow with a water belt on, but I was warm and happy."

Decked out in a nylon and Lycra speed suit on Monday, she didn't look at all like a marshmallow in defending her 2008 5-K title and picking up a $1,200 check for winning the first big race of these championships. She credited the weekend weather delay in part for her success.

"I think there was a little bit of pent-up energy," she said.

Anxious to get racing, Compton went out hard in pursuit of eventual third-place finisher Elizabeth Stephen from Vermont and hung on to win. On a hill near 4 kilometers, Compton said, "my legs went to Jell-O, and I thought, 'Oh-oh.' "

But she managed to make it over the top, and recovered enough on the subsequent downhill to stage a give-it-all sprint to the finish.

"I don't collapse too often at the finish line as I did today," she noted.

While Compton struggled at the finish, the eventual winner of the men's 10-K freestyle championship -- two-time Olympian Kris Freeman of New Hampshire -- said his difficulties came at the start.

A Type 1 diabetic, Freeman has to check his blood sugar and adjust his insulin levels before racing. Those things cost him time and cut his prerace warm-up short.

"I wasn't able to get to the line quite as warmed up as other guys," Freeman said.

As a result, the top American distance racer went out slowly. A couple kilometers in, though, he was picking up the pace and went on to top second-place finisher Leif Zimmerman from Montana by 50 seconds. Freeman also collected a $1,200 check for winning.

"The cold didn't bother me at all," he said.

That might have put him in a small minority at Kincaid, where the few dozen spectators on hand spent the day stomping their feet in an effort to keep toes warm. A few racers sported spots of white where flesh had begun to freeze on cheeks and noses, and more than a few appeared to be experiencing painfully cold fingers and toes.

Some took extra post-race protections against the cold.

Randall was quick to add several layers of clothing and a sophisticated mask that covered her nose and mouth to protect her lungs from the winter air. The bulbous mask with a protruding filter made her look a little like a worker at the scene of a nuclear accident.

The filtered mask is designed to help protect the lungs from the dry winter air as well as from the cold. Subzero air can hold only a fraction as much moisture as air at room temperature, and dry air is among the triggers for exercise-induced asthma.

That's one reason why racing is banned at temperatures below minus 4. Frostbite risks also go up at the lower temperatures, and racing starts to become more like plodding. In warm weather, skis slide over the snow on a smooth, microscopic layer of moisture. As the weather gets colder, the snow becomes drier, rougher and slower.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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