Last Ski of the Year (probably)
On my way to Maine yesterday I stopped at Great Glen Trails for what will most likely be my last ski of the year. It was raining the entire way there, with not a patch of snow in sight, so I wasn’t holding my breath for amazing skiing. However the scenery started to change after turning off Rte 2 and heading up 16. Suddenly there was snow in the woods, which boded well for the trails. It was still drizzling and the trails hadn’t been groomed for a couple days (Great Glen closed on Sunday) but the skiing was surprisingly good! Sorry for the lack of photos, I didn’t want to take out my camera in the soggy conditions. It was a fun ski and I was happy to end my on-snow season with something other than that brutal hill climb in Fort Kent.
Speaking of Fort Kent, our adventure in the County deserves a mention. We were there for 10 days and I did 5 races, including a mass-start US Nationals biathlon race, which was quite an experience. My goal going in was to hit at least one target at each stage and I managed to hit two at each, so I was very pleased. Actually, that’s an understatement. I had a great time in the race and was totally psyched! Probably my favorite part of the race was in the middle of my second stage of prone shooting hearing Ida happily exclaim from a balcony overlooking the range, “Look! She hit two!!” I hope that as I do more biathlon I never lose that feeling of surprise and satisfaction at hitting a target. After Sunday we had a couple days off before heading into the cross-country races. Between Wednesday and the next Sunday we had a 30 km skate, 7.5 km mass-start classic, classic sprint, and 5 km skate hill climb. I was happily surprised with how well I recovered after the 30 km and I was particularly pleased with the distance classic race. It was a super fast, fun course and with such a stacked field there were plenty of people to try to keep up with. Pepa worked super hard all week to give us awesome skis (thank you Pepa!) and Ida kicked butt, getting 2nd in both the mass-start and sprint classic races.
On the Thursday in between races Hannah, Chelsea, Ida, and I headed over to Madawaska to volunteer at a Fast and Female event. It was a great day and I think we were all excited to take part. Fast and Female is a really cool organization and it’s always fun to be surrounded by such enthusiasm and energy. We played games on skis and ate lunch with local elementary and middle school-aged girls and I got a kick out of how psyched they were to have a no-boys-allowed day. There were multiple exclamations of “It is SO cool that we don’t have to see any boys ALL day!” Check out the NENSA report here.
Finally…if you haven’t seen a stork yet, today is April 1st, so don’t forget to hang your Bulgarian Independence Day bracelet on a tree.
