Sorry for the delay in the blog post; the internet at our hotel has been down for a couple of days. We arrived in Hinterzarten, Germany a week ago to race in the World Junior Championships. Hinterzarten is a really nice small town in the Black Forest. The venue is about a half an hour drive up a steep road in the mountains. I had my first race Monday morning, the 1200 meter skate sprint. The course had two significant hills: the first one is really steep and the second is less steep and pretty wide, a low enough grade to V2. I had a decent qualifier and placed 22nd, but definitely felt like I had a lot left to push it harder in the rounds. My qualifying time was two seconds back from tenth and about six seconds back from first.br /br /The heats started two hours later, enough time to refuel and get a little bit of rest before starting the rounds. I was in the fourth heat with 5 other guys, two of them being top Norwegians. I had the far-left starting lane and the course had a right-hand corner 100m out of the start into the first hill. So I ended up in 5th place going up the first hill. At the second hill I made a move up into third place. After the second hill there is a pretty big downhill and I was gaining on the second place guy so I went for the pass on the left and it was a right hand turn, I got boxed out and two people passed me on the right. From there on I skied in fifth place to finish a tenth of a second behind the fourth place person, and maybe a second behind the first. My heat ended up being the fastest so all four guys in front of me moved on, the third and fourth guy as lucky losers. I skied that heat 6 seconds faster then my qualifier. I was really happy about how good I felt out there, but was disappointed I didn’t move on to the semifinals. I know I was feeling fast enough to ski in the top ten, It is a really tight group of guys and I am excited to get the chance to race some of them again in the OPA Cups next month. More later!div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2910103639238326543-4440173568282187434?l=methowolympicdevelopment.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div
