Christmas Break

I took a Christmas break from blogging as well......

I traveled to Canmore, Alberta for 2 back to back classic sprints the weekend before Christmas. I didn't have the best results, but learned so much and am very glad to have worked many kinks out before heading to Nationals. Canmore is a beautiful place! Everyone should make a trip to the Canadian Rockies at some point in their lives, it is really spectacular. Ida, my Dartmouth teammate joined me out there, which was great. I miss traveling and training with Dartmouth! At the end of the weekend, I do believe we came out top Americans, despite neither of us having our best races so that as encouraging! The Canadians were on fire as that was the last of their Olympic Qualifying races.

Christmas in Park City was wonderful. I had a busy social schedule with all kinds of Christmas parties, but still got in a few hours on snow. There is not a ton of snow here, but it has been cold so the skiing has been great! My mom and I attempted to ski up Mill Creek Canyon the other day, but a moose had tromped all the way up the trail leaving enormous holes and big chunks of snow. It was a frustrating ski to the top, but we both made it!

Tomorrow I head out for the rest of the season...........

I am flying to Anchorage, AK tomorrow for Nationals then I head straight to school from there. Packing is a nightmare as I have to pack up all my skis and ski stuff for Nationals as well as ship some boxes to school for the rest of the winter.

Here is the race schedule for Nationals:
Jan 2nd: Freestyle Sprint
Jan 4th: 10k Freestyle
Jan 6th: 20k Classic (I think mass start!)
Jan 8th: Classic Sprint

All other information and results will be posted here: http://www.anchoragenordicski.com/nationals10/index.html
They might even have live timing...

This is my last chance to really shine and maybe get lucky so I am getting quite pumped for that, as well as being reunited with Dartmouth!


The Dartmouth Hotties

BZN BRRRRRRRRRR

The cold weather has taken over the west! After a small celebration for my 21st birthday in West Yellowstone, we headed even further north to Bozeman and the cold weather followed, unfortunately. My silly knee has been quite sore and as a result I only raced in the qualifying round of the sprint on Saturday. I thought I was skiing pretty well but I was just not quite as fast as I had hoped. The qualifying round of a sprint race is skied solo and for some reason I just struggle to reach my top speed skiing alone for such a quick race. It's something I have been working on, as qualifying is actually very important, especially in the higher level racing, but apparently I need to do a bit more work. Sunday brought frigid temps and a crazy course. When the girls started it was about -2 degrees!!! The course weaved in and out of the trees for about 3k and then hit the steepest hill I have ever skied into a crazy downhill with a nice 90 degree turn at the bottom into another crazy steep and longer hill, making the last 2k rather exciting. I struggled getting my muscles warmed up and I still have a lot of work to do on the technical side of things when it comes to skiing corners and the gradual downhills. Both those things took a toll on me and I ended up in 9th place.

With little to no snow in Park City, I debated continuing north to Canada with the rest of the team, but after having a sub-par weekend of racing I thought it would be best to come home, regroup, get some hard training in, and head to Canada for the last weekend of racing. Fortunately a storm hit Park City with just enough snow to open up some skiing! I have a nice week ahead of training and enjoying Mom's good cooking!!!