The next race, two days after the sprint, was the 10k classic time trial. I was wearing bib 50 and started at 11:50, right when the sun was starting to warm things up. The snow that was icy and fast in the morning would turn to slush in the middle of my race. My first lap ended up going really well and I passed through the stadium on the edge of top 30. The second lap however was a whole other story. The snow really slowed down, my kick started slipping, and I hit the wall. At 7k I reached the longest hill in the course. It was a brutal south facing slope that never seemed to end and had tracks that resembled wet piles of slush. Actually they didn’t resemble slush, that’s exactly what it was

After the first week of training and sleeping I was getting pretty anxious to start the races. We had been skiing up at the race venue for over a week and I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. All the courses were marked and the venue was littered with advertisements, race volunteers, and the wind-blown flags of 30 countries. As the days ticked away, I grew tired of waiting for the races. I was as prepared as I was going to be for the Junior World Championships of 2008.

My 2008 World Junior trip began with the 24 hours of traveling to Munich Germany. Upon arrival, I thought that our long flights and tiring delays were over, unfortunately the coaches would not arrive in Munich for another 6 hours. So we burned daylight in the Munchen airport, eventually met up with our coaches and proceeded to drive 3 hours to Italy. As we descended into the valley of Males, Italy, I attempted to stay awake by starring out the window and taking in the amazing Italian landscape: there were huge ice covered reservoirs with ice skater and kite sailors, dozens of ancient castles that dotted the valley floor and finally World War II war bunkers riddles with bullet holes. It’s amazing how much history there was in such a secluded european valley!