NYSSRA Champs

This past weekend was the New York State Ski Racing Association championships in Day, NY.

The weekend consisted of individual biathlon and cross country races on Saturday then biathlon and cross country relays on Sunday. Frenchy, Chad, Jason and I all entered all four races.

The individual races could have went better. I didn't feel great in the biathlon race, but still could have won if I had shot even reasonably well (which no one seemed to do). I ended up 3rd, with Jason taking the win. The XC race was kind of a disaster (or at least it felt that way) for me. Not sure what was wrong, but at 3km I knew I was in trouble, and at that point I still had 14.5km to go! It was a long slow slog to a 6th place finish. I've had slower races for sure in my skiing career, but I don't know that I've ever felt that awful. I was seeing stars, felt overly hot, my stomach was doing some strange things and I was having problems concentrating. I almost fell a couple times just from tripping for no reason. It could have been a combination of a lot of things, but who knows. Nancy took some video with Frenchy's camera during the race, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure it's pretty ugly! I'll chalk that one up to a character-building experience. In hindsight, something was off all day, usually I'm fired up before a race, especially this year, but on Saturday I had nothing all day. Oh well, sometimes it's just not your day, worse things can happen!

The next day, I was feeling more like myself and ready to race. The biathlon relay was first and the Western NY team was Jason, Chad and myself skiing in that order. The three of us collectively shot pretty well (much better than the previous day for all three of us) and we were able to ski away with the win.

In the XC relay in the afternoon, the RNR members decided split up the relays since there were five of us (Adam Swayze was also there to compete). Jason and Adam teamed up (with Jason skiing two legs) and Frenchy, Chad and I teamed up. We ended up finishing 1-2, with a pretty decent battle for most of the race with the third place team from the Hudson United Racing Team (or HURT for short).

Both relays were a lot of fun and totally different than most of the races that we get to compete in. It was great to team up with my training buddies in competitive races, but it's also fun to be able to watch your buddies' race, which usually isn't possible since we're typically all in the same races.

Here are some pictures from the weekend courtesy of Marque Moffett:

This is from the Sprint biathlon race. This is easily the closest picture of me ever taken during a biathlon race. That's either an awesome lens or she was on the mat next to me and I didn't realize it!
This is the start of the XC individual race. There's Jason (in red), me and Adam Swayze (all the way to the right).
That's me with a few km's to go. I was hurting at this point, and just trying to make it to the finish.
Frenchy and I on the range during the biathlon relay.

Jason and Chad at the beginning of the XC relay setting the table for an RNR 1-2 finish.
Frenchy (in the black) and a member of team HURT during the XC relay. He made a big pass before tagging off to me for the final leg. This was huge as I didn't have to make a pass to move us into 2nd.
There's me and Dave Kvam from HURT. Dave previously skied for Peru Nordic, but started up Team HURT this year and recruited a bunch of skiers including several fast juniors. It's definitely made the statewide ski races more competitive and fun with HURT in the mix. It also added some light-hearted trash talking throughout the year, which is good for everyone involved!

There's Swayze, Jason, Chad and me (Frenchy was skiing with his daughter) after the XC relay.

Another highlight of the weekend was that Nancy was able to go. It's not often that she's able to check out ski races because of grad school, but it's cool when she's able to make a weekend trip to see what it is I'm doing all these weekends that I'm out of town! I think she had a good time watching the races and met a lot of the people that make the NYSSRA crowd a great group of people. She also rang her industrial strength cowbell with all her might throughout the weekend!