Very late end of season post!

Okay, so the last few weeks have been pretty busy. I've had Eastern Cups, Fun Races, Championship Races/Jumps, and school (okay, maybe not as much of the last one).





Quick Recap:

Geschmossel Classic at Bretton Woods
1/21/2013
7th Overall

NHNCA Classic Qualifier
1/26/2013
7th High School Class

TD Bank Eastern Cup at Trapp Family Lodge
2/02-03/2013
63rd 10k Skate
114th 10k Classic

NHNCA Skate Qualifier
2/10/2013
4th High School Class

NHIAA Men's Alpine Division II State Meet:
2/12/2013
60th GS
38th Slalom
Kennett: 1st

NHIAA Division II Nordic State Meet
2/13/13
1st Classic
1st Skate
2nd Divisional Skimeister
Team Champions

NHIAA Ski Jumping Championships
2/15/2013
T-3rd overall - 119 points
PR 33.5 meters (K38) - T-Longest of the night
1st State Skimeister
1st Nordic Combined

TD Bank Eastern Cup at Quarry Road
2/16-17/2013
25th Mass Start 15k Classic
17th 10k Skate

NHIAA Meet of Champions
2/25/2013
1st Classic 6k
2nd Skate 6k
Kennett: Swept the Classic Podium, 4 in the top 6. Two in top 6 for Skate.

Phew...

Details details...

The Geschmossel at Bretton Woods was a very cold day. I got a slow start but held on to the front of the second pack fairly well, culminating in a sprint finish with rival Joe Smith of Moultonborough.

Alpine State Meet: Cold, starting last. Not my kind of race. But I managed, and placed fairly well considering my lack of experience this season.

Nordic State Meet: See here.

Jumping State Meet: Was a great way to end a High School Career. As the last jumper of the night, I put up the longest and best styled jump of the night, en route to my best finish in a jumping competition: a three-way tie for third with 119 points. As a trio, we were still only one point out of the tie that was first place already, with two placing with 120 points.Local sportswriter Josh Spaulding (Salmon Press) put it best in the first sentence of his article that week: "Torin La Liberte saved his best for last."

Eastern Cup: Quarry Road is by far one of the hardest courses I have skied. Part could have been the Zero conditions, part could be the A-climb that made college kids drop out at the Colby Carnival earlier this season. Either way, I put up some of my best points races of the season, but they were not enough for me to make it to Fairbanks. I ended up less than 5 points away from making it, and am currently the first alternate for the team. As of now, I am headed to Presque Isle with Team New Hampshire for the Eastern High School Championships. It's go time.

Early Season and the snow is coming!

So last time there was an update, we were only doing dryland. Well, that has changed. A week after the post, the generous General Manager at Cranmore Mountain Resort let us ski around the base area, a good 1.4km manmade loop. The team has been training there for the past 2 weeks, as we didn't get a decent snowstorm until just recently.
Hannah actually smiling during training!?!
We mostly skated, doing long loops around the base. Traffic got interesting at times, as some of the newer kids hadn't quite gotten the hang of skiing yet.
Eh?
Sean came back from his Sweden trip and skied laps around us for a bit, but everyone liked seeing him again.
An Olympian at work
But, I was only on snow for a week before the first Eastern Cup, which was able to be held thanks to a tremendous effort by the folks at Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Timing was a tad off for the Classic Sprints (it's okay, I'm not a huge fan of them anyways), and Chelsea Little wrote a great article about that here. I came in 117th in the 1.4km sprint, landing me in the top 15 J1's from New England. 

Sunday was a different story. I had done no distance skate training to date aside from rollerskiing in preparation for the 11.25km race, and I was seeded in the middle of a pack of OJ's from Quebec. I managed to slip in behind Jack Hegman from UVM for my first 2 laps (out of 7, and I did count correctly this time), and then behind a Quebequois OJ who started behind me. I held onto both of them, and finished in 70th overall, the #3 J1 for New Hampshire (13th overall including Quebequois, 7th sans Canadians), and ahead of the entire St. Michael's Ski Team. 

Since then, I have been on snow exactly once for nordic training. 
The Eastern Cup was last sunday.
Monday: practice was cancelled due to inclement weather, after having a 2 hour delay at school.
Tuesday was supposed to be our first race: Cancelled due to weather, after another 2 hour delay.
Wednesday: My first Alpine race of the season at King Pine (also my first day on skis), rocked it on tele skis. Ended too late to go to practice.
Thursday: Chip made me go to jumping practice. Stair jumping for an hour wasnt that bad.
Friday: Non-mandatory practice, which was called off, again, due to weather after having a 2 hour delay.
Saturday!: Went skiing for 2 hours at Jackson. Conditions were marginal at best, due to an epic downpour the night before. The International Course was rough. and the Yodel ungroomed. The Ellis River Trail was good, and I'm looking at hitting up Great Glen Trails today.
Snow is in the forecast, so things are looking up. Hopefully conditions all around improve for some good break training.
SNOW!!!!!!!

A week of Races, Tests, and PR's.

Let's start off with the mayhem that was scheduling this Tuesday's Thursday's Skate Classic Skate race at Moultonborough Sandwich. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is apporx. 3000 words worth of pictures of words:





  

And that, my friends, is chaos.
The race went off as "planned"with the Kennett boys winning the race by 20 points, with myself winning by :50 seconds. Hannah also won her race in spectacular fashion, coming in first by over a minute. The Sandwich course is, for the most part, a rather easy course, with a couple of narrow 2-way stretches. The course only has 2 major hills, and takes place around the fairground. Results are here. 
Donovan Spaulding (Photo courtesy of Josh Spaulding, no relation)
Then, on Friday, came my first day on Alpine skis all year. And also my first race. It was an afternoon Slalom (had to go to Midterms first, which went well) at King Pine Ski Area, and had about 5 schools in attendance. I had to take a few warm up runs before I got on course, and was in relatively good form for having not been on skis since last February. After my 2 race runs, I was 12th overall, and the 9th Kennett skier. Not bad for having taken 5 runs all year before my race.
Image Courtesy of Josh Spaulding
After the Alpine race, I drove over to Proctor Academy for a Jumping meet, and boy was it fast. After we had all practiced from top bar, they set a 3 bar limit, dropping us all down to bar 3. When the meet came around, I immediately set a new PR of 30 meters, only to be broken 2 jumps later at 30.5 meters. I came in 13th overall and Kennett came in 4th as a team.
That was the extent of my week, and next week brings us a Jump at Plymouth and XC at Gunstock for a NH Coaches Series race, which is an Eastern HS Qualifier.