Post U26 Championships

I know my favorite part of reading other peoples blogs is looking at their pictures and unfortunately I don't have very many pictures for this post, so hopefully my many readers (I think that total is up to 5 or 6 now!) are not to disappointed. In Nove Mesto there were three races an individual, sprint, and pursuit and they were a success not only for me but for the entire team, it started out with Anna Kubek placing 6th in the junior women's individual. In the mens 20k individual I placed 22nd with 2 misses which both came in the final stage. This was a solid race that I am happy about but at the same time I am a little bit frustrated because it is the third race this year that I have been unable to close the door in the final shooting stage.

Next was the sprint race which I was nervous about because it was very windy and I wanted to qualify for the pursuit race. Despite the nerves and wind I stayed focused and had good shooting with only one miss in prone I felt good skiing and finished in 30th place 2:12 back from the winner. Similar to the sprint, the pursuit came with lots of wind but my shooting was not as good. I had 5 misses and felt pretty tired skiing because of this I moved back 10 places from 30th to 40th. Despite missing targets and not skiing super fast I was able to ski with people on every lap which is unheard of in any race in North America. Being around other people for the entire race makes it much easier to push myself harder and will defiantly help me racing in the future.

Overall I had lots of fun racing in Nove Mesto!

I am now in Munich where most of the athletes from U26 championships will fly home and I will meet up with some athletes arriving from the US to compete in an Alpen cup and Austrian Nationals. The Alpen cup is in Polkjuka, Slovenia I have never been to Slovenia and am excited to visit a new country.

One more highlight is my 22nd birthday is coming up on February 5th. This will be the 4th consecutive birthday that I have celebrated while racing in Europe.