That’s a Wrap… I guess?

I believe when your team mate skis up to you. Pulls a beer out of her vest. And hands it to you.  You can call the season done.  Pat yourself on the back…. because pieces of you survived that emotional roller coaster they call winter.

Although I’m not sure my season really ever got off the ground.  I can firmly say with the conclusion of Nationals Sunday my season has come to an end.

Here’s a quick little wrap up of Nationals:

After my super fun trip to the emergency room thursday afternoon I pulled myself back together, pain meds and all, and got myself back on the start line saturday morning.  Minimal abdominal pain aside, the pursuit was chaotic at best.  Despite the race organizers best efforts, trying to have 85 or so athletes shoot on 20 points… is well… it’s just a bad idea.

Oh did I mention it rained and rained and rained? Yup. Staying dry? yeah right.  Minimizing dampness was about as good as you got!  Although I skied fast I missed… oh lets say 8 too many targets. Question: At the end of the day though was I more jealous of the 7 more targets Annelies hit or her rain jacket?  ….yes, I’m going to have to go with rain jacket.

The mass start was fun for one lap… Annelies, Laura and I skied altogether.  It was painless and fun.  It felt just like another day training.  Then I missed more targets than them and got to play my favorite game… let’s go ski by ourselves!  Sunday was our last race and our only day of sunshine… and it was really hard.  The course conditions broke down rapidly…   Imagine skiing in sand.  really heavy nasty sand… your poles sinking at random another 6 inches through the slop.  Your skis a mixture of suction cups and sandpaper… Doesn’t that sound like a blast?  Ok Ok… in a sick twisted kind of way it was.  Although it was a suffer fest for everyone involved the rush of relief once you crossed the line, combined with the satisfaction of knowing it was over was nice.

The results from the pursuit are a little confusing.  Because of the problems on the range they had to give out time credits to athletes who got held up on the range.  Unfortunately when you are out on course this is something you don’t really think about.  Although I crossed the line in second ahead of Laura, she received a larger time credit than me (and rightly so)… just large enough to beat me by 0.3 seconds.

You can find the results here:  WYSEF

A special thanks to Marc Sheppard, Kimberly Del Frate, and (BIG) Sam Dougherty for the pictures below!

I’ve made myself a nice cozy corner in Bozeman for a few days before I hit the road for one last biathlon event. I’ll be flying to Mammoth Lakes for their annual biathlon race.  They do their best to bring in an elite field to put on a competition and clinic over the course of a few days.  I’ve been promised snow and sunshine, and will hold them to it!  Here’s to the last few winter adventures of the year!