Racing & Other Holiday Pizazz

Hey everyone and happy new year! It’s been a couple weeks, but we are feverishly catching up on races and events from the last decade. A few daring individuals made the choice to subtract a couple days from our already short break and race at the North Creek Ski Bowl (Gore Mtn) for junior national spots, or just a little friendly competition. On Friday while the team drove from campus, I decided the Freshman HQ in Queensbury needed to have a little bit more holiday pizazz. I recruited some local laborers and we ventured into the wilderness to find them a gorgeous Christmas tree in hopes of inspiring some stellar performances. After lugging the best tree in the forest back to my house we shoveled feed for a couple hours and awaited their arrival.

Final Product

Saturday’s races included a 5/10k classic individual start. Gore did not have a ton of natural snow to work with, almost all the snow was man made and the racecourse was a 1.7k loop that we raced 3 and 6 times respectively (things got a little dizzy). The race atmosphere was definitely more like a high school meet which brought some of us back to the glory days. It was great for me to reunite with a bunch of my NY friends, and it seemed like everybody was in high spirits after some solid performances on the snow. Natalie and Jaden were 1-2 for U20 women, and Cam was 6th place for U20 with some really solid competition on the men’s side. All (to my knowledge) were under points standards for qualifying for junior nationals. Kai wisely was held out of competition due to a head injury which he suffered not too long ago :(

After a good morning of racing the team took a much-needed afternoon nap, then hit the town for some winter sightseeing and general ruckus causing (featuring Ian who came for Sunday's race and special guest Frago)

Sunday’s race was a mass start 10k skate, one I think many of us were excited for (especially me). Mass starts are generally much more exciting, and these races lived up to the hype. Even the u16 races were battles to the finish with just fractions of a second between first and second. The men started first at 10:00 and the race quickly separated into a front pack of four with a larger chase pack not too far behind. It was definitely fun to ski with some fast guys, and once again SLU had some solid results with Ian 5th place for U20, Cam 8th for U20, and myself performing as expected. On the women’s side we had an absolute cracker right from the gun. Some of the speedy high school girls instantly began laying down a strong pace with Jaden and Nat skiing strong in the pack. After the first lap there was a collision going around the backside of the timing booth, and to my unfortunate surprise I saw poor Nat laying in the cold snow. After a thundering howl of encouragement from the tumultuous, engaged band of spectators and parents, Nat sprung up (bloody knee and all) and kept pushing through the race. A true warrior. A model human. An example for all. The rest of the race was somewhat uneventful except a tight race for the W. Nat finished the day 1st for U20 with Jaden 2nd.

Just want to give a big thanks to Dana and ETown who came down Saturday and Sunday respectively to help with waxing and to Santa for putting Ian on the ‘Nice’ list this year. Also, good luck to everyone racing at the end of break (if not then enjoy your free time) I’m really excited to get back with the team and kill it this year.

- Brian

Find photos here! There are some great ones of the men's mass start.

I also want to thank the Beyerbachs for hosting the team all weekend! Also, Brian won't write about himself, so I'll add that he did very well, coming in 2nd for the U20s both days. He has also been racing at Senior Nationals this week, and we're all glad he's reppin' the team well. Other than that, I hope you keep an eye out for an update from the Christmas break biathlon races Tim, Jackie, and I went to. We're also about to head up to Mt. Ste. Anne, which should be awesome! Hopefully, by the end of this week we'll be caught up on the blog, caught up on rest/training, and be ready for race season to start! (and school of course... haha)

-Lucy