USA's Randall finishes third in World Cup race

• Randall comes in 26 seconds behind winner Bjoergen
• American won World Cup Sprint title last season
• Holly Brooks finishes career-best fifth

U.S skier Kikkan Randall finished third in the season-opening World Cup cross country race in Gaellivare, Sweden, on Saturday. It was the first time Randall has finished on the podium in a non-sprint race.

Norway's Marit Bjoergen, a three-time Olympic champion, won the women's 10K freestyle race in 22 minutes, 31.8 seconds. Norway's Therese Johaug came second, 12.6 seconds behind, and Randall was 25.9 seconds back.

U.S. teammate Holly Brooks was a career-best fifth.

Randall is coming off an exceptional 2012 season in which she won two World Cup races and the World Cup Sprint title, the first for an American woman.

On Saturday, she was surprised by her podium finish. Her coach told her with 2K remaining that she was in position to make the podium. "Today I just wanted to go out and really focus on getting a really hard workout," Randall said. "Wow, this is something I've wanted to do sometime in my career. I definitely did not expect to be here this early.

"Having been recovering from a stress fracture since August and having done a very different training than I'm used to, I was very anxious coming into this weekend not knowing how I was going to feel," Randall said.