Ski Season
The racing season started in December with the Houghton JNQ. It was a tough first day as it was sprints (not my strong suit necessarily) and I was quite sick. Driving and spending the night in the hotel didn’t do me any favors either but it could have gone worse and I learned from it which is good. I had a fairly good qualifier and got into the heats. I did not race well in the heats but I for sure learned some things about sprinting and getting back into racing. The second day, racing a mass start classic 10k, I had a solid race which was a nice end to the weekend, especially because of the day before. It was a difficult race but gave me a very good idea of where I was after the summer and fall training. Both days were insightful as to what I needed to do and how I needed to train going into the next large training block and then US nationals. After Houghton, I trained at home for eight days and then went to a ski camp with the Orono Nordic Ski Team (thanks Adam and Omar for telling me not to ski too much). We came back from camp on the 29th and left for Alaska and US nationals on the 31st.
After flying and sleeping in a hotel, I didn’t feel awesome but the first day of racing (10k individual start skate on Wednesday) went fairly well. On Thursday, we drove around Anchorage a little bit and also skied the sprint courses. Friday was a skate sprint day. I qualified for junior heats and was 0.05 seconds out of semis but it was by far the best I have ever sprinted so there was nothing to complain about. After one more day off, we raced again on Sunday (5k mass start classic) which was good. I had three solid and consistent races which was a confidence booster for sure. The whole week was an entirely new experience but there was tons to learn and it was incredible.
Two weeks later was the second JNQ race weekend in Cable. First day was super fun with a solid 5k classic individual start race. The second day, I had slower skis and was pretty flat from the first day but still had a decent race and felt good about it (yay!). We just had our conference race on Thursday and our section race is on Monday which is going to be a super fun day of racing.
And that’s that on the first month and a half of racing. Stoked for the rest of the season and some fast racing in the next couple of weeks!
After flying and sleeping in a hotel, I didn’t feel awesome but the first day of racing (10k individual start skate on Wednesday) went fairly well. On Thursday, we drove around Anchorage a little bit and also skied the sprint courses. Friday was a skate sprint day. I qualified for junior heats and was 0.05 seconds out of semis but it was by far the best I have ever sprinted so there was nothing to complain about. After one more day off, we raced again on Sunday (5k mass start classic) which was good. I had three solid and consistent races which was a confidence booster for sure. The whole week was an entirely new experience but there was tons to learn and it was incredible.
Two weeks later was the second JNQ race weekend in Cable. First day was super fun with a solid 5k classic individual start race. The second day, I had slower skis and was pretty flat from the first day but still had a decent race and felt good about it (yay!). We just had our conference race on Thursday and our section race is on Monday which is going to be a super fun day of racing.
And that’s that on the first month and a half of racing. Stoked for the rest of the season and some fast racing in the next couple of weeks!
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