Senior Nationals

After an amazing two weeks of skiing in Quebec after Thanksgiving, a solid weekend of racing at the opening Eastern Cup, and a relaxing Christmas break, it's finally race time at Senior Nationals. The venue has been struggling with snow cover, and the 40+ degree weather hasn't helped, but thanks to lots of shoveling, they managed to pull of the classic sprint race! Over the last year, classic sprints have become one of my best races, so I've been looking forward to this race for a long time. My ultimate goal this year is to qualify for World Junior Championships, and I knew that the sprint would probably be my best chance at a top result. I ended up qualifying 15th, second Junior of about 10 to make the open women's heats. I didn't feel like I had a stellar prelim, so I was happy to make it in. I ended up second in my quarterfinal, and moved on to the semis. I started out hard, trying to stay in the top three, but over the top of the last hill I couldn't keep up, so I decided to save myself for the B finals. Jessie Diggins and I were the only juniors left, and we were both in the B final. The heat was fast, and after hammering down the double pole sprint, I ended up 2nd in the heat, first junior, and 8th overall for women! All fall I had been hoping that I would be able to ski fast in this race, but I never expected that it would actually happen! Generally, by winning a race, you can secure a spot on the World Junior team, so everyone was saying that I made it, but I didn't know for sure until I saw the email from Matt Whitcomb this morning, congratulating me on making the team and preparing travel plans!!!

I had a really fun day of racing, but by far the most inspiring part of the day was having all of SMS and some of Dartmouth running back and forth on the course cheering for me, they were definitely the best cheering squad out there!!!

Starting out for my qualifier

Flying Point Road photo