Our last week of racing took place in Anchorage. Being home made it both fun and hard at the same time. The last races of the year can be a tough thing to motivate for and I felt it even harder to motivate with the feelings of being "home" and ready to relax, but it was also great to not feel the stress of being on the road and to have so many people cheering for me everyday. I wasn't very excited with any of my races during the week, but I did have some fun. We started with a 10k skate, which is probably one of my least favorite event, but we quickly moved on to a classic sprint, RELAY, and 30k classic, all events I much prefer. It was fun to race in the sprint with all the girls fresh off the Olympics and the World Cup. The highlight of my week however, was undoubtedly the relay. It was the first time we have had a club relay at Nationals and it was a huge success. It was awesome to get to work with my teammates instead of race against them and to really have some pride on the line for the best club team. I was on APU's 2nd team, so what's so great about being on the 2nd tier team? Well, what's cool is that the 1st team had 3 Olympians and they totally smoked every other team out there, then my team still scored a podium coming in 3rd. So APU had 2 teams in before every other club aside from 2nd place Stratton had even 1 team in, making us the best club. It was a really fun day and I hope we continue to do such events. Now lots of pictures:
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| Tagging David in the relay |
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| Leading Sophie in the relay |
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| 3/4 of the relay team |
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| Striding out in the relay |
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| Gritting out a tough 30k |
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| Getting my sprint on |
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| We celebrated Sophie's birthday by dressing up and waiting at the finish for her, then attacking her upon finishing |
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| Singing Sophie Happy Birthday as she crosses the line |
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| More relay fun |
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| Cheering Holly in for our 3rd place relay finish |
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| APU Team 1 and 2 |
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| Start of the 30k |
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| Cresting the massive climb in the 30k |
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| Relay Podium |
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| Team Love |
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| Trying to sprint like Kikkan |
It's a great feeling to be done. I will now spend the next few weeks evaluating my season, making goals and plans for next year, and doing some active recovery with things like backcountry skiing, biking, and hitting the slopes.
