We've been up to a lot lately and it's been a whirlwind of fun and surprises! We had a nice long break and were at Gore Mtn, MSA, and Quarry Road in Waterville!
Winter break was winding down and Jackie, Lucy, Dani, Waters, Matt, and Kate all went to Gore Mtn to race in two NYSSRA JNQ races. They all did really well!
Day 1: Results
Day 2: Results
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| L-R: Jackie'20, Lucy'20, and Matt'19 with medals and prizes |
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| YAY, Good Job! Kate, Waters and Dani in the back, photo bomb the picture |
The rest of us were making our way to Mont- Sainte- Anne in Quebec, Canada, where we would all end up that evening of Sunday the 8th.
(I do have to mention that we had to say goodbye to Ruben Castren for the spring semester because he is abroad right now in Kenya. He would've had a hell of a season, but we wish him the greatest adventure out there and hopefully he'll send us a blog post sometime during the season!)
The girls team and the coaches were lodging in the base in temporary housing for the first night because there weren't enough houses available yet due to some kind of big event. I was so excited because I got to reunite with India Harvey, back from Prague! I had been waiting for so long to see her! It's nice having her finally back with the team and I think she thinks so too.
We all went over to the guys house and made spaghetti and meatballs. On Monday, we endured the negative degree weather and went skiing in the morning. MSA has beautiful snow, and lots of it! It was amazing! It was cold, squeaky snow and a little slow but that didn't stop us. We ended up going back to the guys house for lunch and hanging around until about 3:30 to move into our other houses next door. It took them awhile to clean because the people before us were partying it up and had done some damage.
The skiing all week was spectacular and awesome! It rained twice, but by the time we got to the venue, it was snowing. We did a time trial on Wednesday, for those who didn't race that previous weekend. It was a hard 5k skate race; the snow was so slow, it wasn't easy to push forward. Dana might have tried passing Emily and made her fall.. sorry. ETown even made the start surprising by having us do laps around the terrain park until he had decided which person was going to lead out of the start; the start was a mystery for awhile. Here are the results:
Men
Calvin 17:18
Dustin 18:04
Blaine 18:25
Ryan 20:34
Women
Dana 21:24
Madi 21:56
Jordan 23:05
Emily 23:12
India 27:30
It was a good race to 'shake out the cobwebs' from winter break to get back in racing mode! We stayed at MSA for a total of 6 days.
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| Beautiful conditions at MSA |
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| SO glorious! |
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| Dani, Jordan and India practicing downhill corners |
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| Team getting prepared to practice some herringbone and downhill turns! |
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| Downhill to the lodge at MSA |
We had a lot of fun: bonding, getting back in the race mindset and doing a lot of skiing. Alum Erin Perryman came back to help make meals for us hungry skiers and it was so wonderful! She made us lasagna, burritos, soups, salads, and spaghetti; it was so nice not having to do a ton of meal prep work, leaving us with ample free time to relax. We even did a yankee swap which was very funny and actually quite successful. These were some of the gifts:
Mini maple syrup
Chocolate
Honey spoons
Bubble bath soap in mini champagne bottles (Matt got these)
A mini sled
A snowball scoop
A piñata filled with candy (Dana got to hit it with a broom hanging from a ski pole inside the living room!)
Honey and spandex boxer shorts with hotdogs on them (look for Ryan sporting these)
Vanilla sandwich cookies
Princess Toiletry Set
Marshmallow pop and fake teeth
A McDonalds happy meal
Dustin's book (wrapped by one of the boys and picked by Dustin..funny that!)
We left Friday morning and journeyed to Quarry Road in Waterville, Maine. (My home state!) It was an uneventful ride despite the fact that Dana had to go pee soooo bad that we had to stop on the side of the road in Canada...
We arrived at Quarry road around 2pm-ish and it was extremely windy. We skate skied for about an hour and discovered the snow was very icy and the sprint course was going to be tricky. The captains took the transit to the Best Western in Augusta, where we settled into our rooms and headed out for dinner at the Olive Garden.
Saturday was a longg day. Girls woke up at 6:30am and we didn't get back to our hotel until 6pm. However, it was an exciting and astonishing day. We had one person qualify in each kind of heat. Lucy and Dustin qualified in opens and Matt and Dani qualified in the junior heats! They all put up a good fight, as the sun started to go down and the temperature started dropping. It was a frigid day; we often kept popping back in the van and then stepping again outside as our teammates got back on the line for their heats. We stayed for awards and then headed out on our way back to the hotel, for BIG G's for dinner, where we got massive sandwiches and fries. We all slept really well that night.
The results were funky all weekend and were changing every second, which was frustrating for all of us. The results say Lucy ended up in 2nd, but she was still 3rd in the qualifier. However, the qualifier times were messed up which made the heats all messed up, so we will take the results with a grain of salt.
| Waters and Kate in our new puffy jackets! |
| Waters snapchat photo after she fell during the skate sprint at Colby (notice scratches on chin, nose, fat lip) Way to stay tough, Waters! |
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| Lucy Hoch. third in the Skate Sprint!!! WAHOO |
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| The sun setting as heats were wrapping up
Sunday was much warmer and again quite sunny! The women's mass start 10k classic started at 11am and the men's mass start 15k started at 1pm. The women's mass start was a little bit of a catastrophe as people started going down pretty quickly. I don't think there was one person on our team that didn't fall on both the men and women's sides of the team on Sunday. It was yet again, very fast and icy snow on difficult downhill switchbacks. However, we still had a decent showing all around.
Men Results
We hurried out of Maine and drove a grueling 8 hours home. We didn't get in to Canton until after 11pm and we unloaded the trailer right then and there. Unfortunately ETown was in the truck by himself and none of us knew he was feeling very sick. He realized he got food poisoning, making the trip feel just a little longer. Waters and I didn't get to bed until 12:30am; we were so tired we forgot what our room code was... Luckily, classes didn't start until today (Wednesday)- lots of time to rest back up! |
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Waters cruising up the last hill in the 10k classic race
Ryan moving up in the 15k classic
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Men's start of the 15k classic
Dustin hammering to catch a pack to finish in 26th!
Also, check out flyingpointroad for more photos from Quarry Road!
Here's a quality photo of Dana from the site:
It was a successful week and weekend. We are looking forward to our first carnival in which we are hosting at Mt. Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, NY this weekend Friday- Saturday! We hope to see you and all of your friends there!! Some of us will be there Sunday for another NY JN qualifier race.
Thanks again for all of your support and taking the time to read all of this!
See you on the trails,
Dana and SLUSKI
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