Well, What can I say. I think All that I can say right now is that was amazing! I spent the last week in Stowe, Vermont competing in the 2014 USSA Junior Nationals. It was an amazing experience that left me speechless, inspired, and extremely motivated. The week was amazing. Far West flew out of reno on Friday the 28th. We flew into Vegas first for a layover before our flight to Albany, NY. Our plane out of Vegas ended up being delayed and with the time change we didn't get into Albany until around 1:30AM. The team then spent the night In Albany before driving to Stowe Saturday morning. Before leaving for Stowe, we were able to watch the World Cup Sprint race live! It was awesome to see history be made with two Americans on the podium! Its a lot easier to watch European races live on the eastern time zone!
We arrived in Stowe about 12 on Saturday and got settled into our rooms. FW rented two houses and 6 condo units from the Stowe Motel about 2 miles away from the venue at Trapps. The rooms were not that bad at all. We also had Dave and Linda Dore along for catering which was as always amazing! We were able to ski that afternoon and get to know Mondays course.
Sunday: We were able to ski this morning and get to know the course even better. It was awesome to see friends from other regions and ski with them! I love the courses. They are on the challenging side but so beautiful and diverse. That afternoon the town of Stowe held an athletic parade downtown followed by opening ceremonies in the Stowe ice arena.
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| Parade Downtown |
Each team was assigned a local junior athlete as a flag bearer. They all had really cute JN sponsored clothing head to tow. After the parade downtown and lighting of the torch, we headed up to the Ice Arena for the main portion of that nights events.
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| The Beautiful (cold) Ice Arena |
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| Rust |
Opening ceremonies were really fun. One of the highlights was this old man rusty. He was a local who had lived in Stowe his whole life and has his on way of living, the Vermont style.
Monday: First race of the week! The 5k individual start classic. This is one of my favorited races because I am more of a distance skier. It was a cold morning holding in at right around 0F. I was pretty stoked for the first race of these events! I was also seated very well due to my USA points. I felt really good during the race and had some of the fastest skis out there! Even though my 19th place finish was not what I was looking for, I was stoked on my race!
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| PC: Mark Nadell |
Tuesday: Today we had an off day. I went up and skied with some friends and checked out the sprint course for Wednesday. It was a beautiful day out and some awesome skiing!
Lining all the trails were these beautiful maple trees. Each tree had a bucket that collected its sap. That sap then was taken into the boiling house and boiled down into delicious maple syrup. Trapp has a boiling house centered in the middle of our race course so we went to watch the process.
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| Trees off the Trails |
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| Boiling House |
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| Inside the Boiling House |
Wednesday: Sprint day! Today was a 1.4k Classic Sprint. I knew the course very well and was excited because it was an awesome course. There was one big hill towards the end. My racing through out the day went all right. I ended up qualifying 22nd with a pretty solid prelim. That moved me on to a quarter final. In my quarter final I was not able to quite hang with the leaders and finished 3rd. That did end up bumping my final position to another 19th place finish!
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| PC: Mark Nadell |
Thursday: Another training day. Today I tested some different skis for Fridays race. I skied for about an hour and then rested the rest of the morning. In the afternoon, one of my coaches Jeff took a group of us out to the Stowe airport to meet up with a friend of his who owns a small plane. I was lucky and able to go up in it two different times that afternoon. The first time I was sitting in the front and Jeff's friend Collin taught me how to fly the plane! That was a very cool experience!
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| Savannah and I |
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| The View of the Stadium |
After the flight, we all headed back to the Ice Arena for Midweek awards and the Ice Cream 'Social'. It was fun to see that many FW athletes on the podium!
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| The Team (minus Brandon and Casey) |
Friday: Favorite race of the week! 5K skate mass start! Todays course was the same as Mondays course. The start was a chevron start based on mondays results so I started on pin 19. We ended up having a pacer at the start who paced us around the first corner of the stadium. We were instructed to not change position in the chevron until after the pacer took off. That definitely did not happen. The first corner of the race (before the race even started because we had a pacer) there were already at least 15 kids out. I was lucky enough to get my self at the front of the pack. I was with the lead pack for most of the beginning of the race. Every corner we went around, someone behind me would crash. Once we got to the bottom of the first big climb, everyone got super aggressive and I ended up falling and breaking a pole. Once I finally got up I was towards the back of the pack. I got a pole from and Alaska coach which I broke on my second pole plant. He then gave me another pole which I finished the race on. The rest of the race I spent trying to catch up with the main pack. Doing that I fell twice more. I was pretty bummed after finishing that my race didn't go as planned but soon after finishing I got over it and have moved on.
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| Start of the Race. (Im on the Right) (PC:Stacey Herhusky) |
Saturday: Relay day. The 4th and final race of this years JNS! I was on a team with my teammates Ryland and Brandon! We were all stoked for a strong team. Going into the race, none of us knew the course it was all a surprise. We all had Ok races but non of us had the race we were looking for. Our team ended up finishing 10th. I was anchor leg and just could not pull together the race I was looking for.
That evening we had the closing ceremonies banquet and dance. The banquet was beautiful and had some inspirational speeches.
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| 400 Athletes in one room (plus coaches) |
This was a great way to wrap up the week! All in all it was an amazing week full of some amazing experiences with some awesome people!
Check out this video recap below that Julia Kern and I created together!
2014 Nordic Junior Nationals Recap
