World Junior Championships Day 1 – 1.3km Classic Sprint

We awoke to about 3cm of fresh, cold snow this morning after several days on man made snow. A refreshing view but throwing all wax techs off the scent with the exception of maestros Nick Grimmer and Finn Marsland who gave up both fantastic grip and glide for today’s event a 3-hilled, 1.3km Classic Sprint.

The girls kicked off at 10am with the highest seeded racers starting first.
Xanthea Dewez was the highest placed girl in 46th, followed by Casey Wright in 50th and Anna Trnka 57th in the field of 68 starters.

The boys started soon after on a well chopped up course. Alasdair Tutt led the Australian results in 64th, followed by Jackson Bursill in 78th closely backed up by Nick Montgomery in 79th out of 81. Much to Jackson and Nick’s delight they found they would’ve finished in 15th and 16th place in the girls. Surgery updates are to follow soon.

Tomorrow the U/23 Boys are hitting the same sprint course. The starters are Phil Bellingham and Paul “PK” Kovacs whilst Alex Almoukov arrived last night prior to starting his race on Thursday.

The next competition in line for the juniors is the much anticipated 5/10km Freestyle. A large number of our strongest results this season have come in this style and distance so expect great things.

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Oberwiesenthal Race Reports by Nick M and Anna T

Oberwiesenthal OPA Cup Race Report by Nick M

After a week of training which for some was very difficult and was part of a larger buildup to the World Junior Championships (WJCs) and for others involved tapering off to target these races, we decamped from Klingenthal, Eastern Germany and moved to nearby Oberwiesenthal for a successful long weekend of racing. Continue reading

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Sunrise in Oberwiesenthal

A full blog post from the past week will hopefully be uploaded shortly. We are having Internet troubles here.

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Waiting for the van before our race this morning

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#europeanskifast

Hey all!

Sorry it has been a while since our last post, things have been hectic with lots of training and preperation for our first race of the trip!

Continue reading

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Seefeld in Tirol – Austria – Week 1

The eagle has landed. The Australian Junior Team has now been in Austria for 6 days.

A few members of the team went for their first ski on Tuesday morning. Some for their first time skiing in Europe, others experienced Euro-trippers. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon after another 10 hour travel day beginning in an Oslo Youth Hostel at 5:30am.

On Wednesday morning we went out for some early morning running before getting out on Classics for some technique and speed work under supervision from Coach Grimmer. In the afternoon we then did a bit of skating in various groups.

On Thursday morning we had a double poling speed session followed by a section of skating without poles making for the interesting combination of skate skis and classic poles. In the afternoon we ran off to the local gym for our last strength session before reaching Klingenthal in 2 weeks time. We held the awe of the locals and visiting nordic combined teams as hugely strong cross country skiers. The Tyrolean Championships in Nordic Combined and Ski Jumping are on over the weekend in Seefeld.

Friday was a rest day with the majority of the team heading down to Innsbruck for some shopping and touristy things whilst Xanthea had some different training due to her late arrival on Thursday. I remained in Seefeld to try and recover a bit better prior to intervals on Saturday.

Saturday most of the team did 5/2/5/2/5/2 minute intervals with the 5 minute intervals done fairly easy and the 2 minute intervals at race pace. Myself and Linky had some different intervals due to our being on snow for the past few weeks. We contented ourselves with chasing the Japanese World Cup team who are training here as well.

In the afternoon we had optional skiing with the girls going for a bit of technique and the boys heading out on an “adventure” on Nick and my favourite classic-only trail which goes above the Seefeld village and twists and turns its way around a few meadows. Unfortunately it wasn’t well groomed or covered so we went the opposite direction and skied to Moesern (about 3km from Seefeld).

This morning we drove to Leutasch to complete another “adventure” skiing from there to our home in Seefeld. We arrived to -14 temperatures and really cold snow, deceiving most of the team who’d woken up and thought the sunny weather would bring warmth. 2 and a half hours of skiing later we finished with the girls skiing around 20km and the boys 27.5km after a few side-trips.

Pictures to follow soon.

Alasdair Tutt.

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BUL-Sprinten Race Report

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Hi Everyone,

So this weekend was the first FIS race weekend for the Australian juniors across Scandinavia, myself in Gaalaa, former team member Alex Gibson in Idre.

My journey started at 5:30am on Friday morning, catching the train from Porsgrunn to Moelv, where my train broke down, before switching trains to Lillehammer and then further on to Vinstra. From there I walked around 2km carrying all 55kg of my gear before sitting down for a coffee and cake extremely sore. Mikael (one of my training partners from the past few months) then drove up from Lillehammer after finishing uni and picked me up for the last 15km to Gaalaa. We got settled in and the went out for 30 minutes of ski testing and sprints before calling it a night.

On Saturday was a 1.8km freestyle sprint, with official race temperature bottoming out at -16. To the uninitiated the Gaalaa Sprint course would be more suitable as a cross country distance course with three hills, two of which approach 25% in average gradient. In the end I struggled as normal after 10 hours of travel the day prior and after inhaling a year’s worth of fluoro powder whilst in the cramped wax tent. Final result was 68/84 with FIS points unconfirmed, but either 255 or 286 depending on whether they combine the senior/junior results or keep them separate. My training partners for the past months finished in 14th, 50th, 78th(ish) and 80th(ish). The 14th was a huge surprise for Mikael as he’s a) a classic long distance specialist and b) has missed out on lots of training over summer with mono and shoulders that dislocate at inconvenient times. I felt as though under normal circumstances I should’ve been up in the top 20-30. But my fatigue-meter was through the roof. Competitors today ranged from no-namers like me all the way up to Anders Gloersen, multiple World Cup sprint winner.

On Sunday we woke up to -21.5 degrees at our apartment, only to see the temp drop to -24 at the race course and have the race delayed by 15 minutes to see if there was any improvement. There was, but -22 wasn’t enough to reach the -20 fis limit. A lot of racers had already planned on not starting if it was below -17 due to personal tolerances to the cold (A big thing here in Norway with some racers refusing to race below -14). My view was, “I’ve travelled 25,000km or so to get here, if the race starts, I will start.” After my warm-up finished at 10:35, the race had been cancelled 5 minutes prior and to be honest I’m glad it was. I couldn’t feel any of my nose after each downhill and the inconvenience of wearing a buff over your mouth cannot be understated.

FIS website also puts Gibbo at 142/150 or so in Idre for the sprint with 295 points and a DNS from today.

Currently on the train back to Oslo before flying out on Tuesday to join the team who are currently flying over central Australia somewhere.

Cheers,

Alasdair.

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Anna and Ash’s Training

With winter coming to an end, we were sitting in Windy Corner feeling sorry for ourselves. Tutty was heading off to Norway and we still had a few more months to wait before making our way to the airport, Europe bound. Something had to be done to keep us excited for the coming months of training here at Falls Creek and Mt Beauty… our idea; the AA Batteries Adventure Challenge Checklist! Here’s a little recap of some of the more exciting challenges we’ve completed.

 

Challenge 1 – First run of the day down summit…

… on cross country skis! We left windy corner at 7:45 and started skiing up Wombats Ramble, making it to the top of the summit chair by about 8:25am. After a little apprehension due to the thick fog and 30cm of fresh snow on the run, we began to snowplough our way down. On a scale of fluffy bunnies to Nick Grimmer’s humour, it was pretty scary!* A little ways down the run the downhillers started coming up the lift, cheering for us as we struggled to turn in the deep snow. We didn’t get to the bottom of the run first, but we were carving up some awesome turns towards the end. A few people may have lapped us, but at least we made it down in one piece!

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Challenge 2 – 6 Huts in one day

What started out as a casual early morning ski to Edmonson’s hut, turned into a slightly more epic adventure than planned. After getting to Edmonson’s we headed to Johnson’s, Kelly’s and Fitzgerald’s huts, then down the aqueduct walking track headed towards Langfords Gap. Some slightly scary river crossings and ending up on the wrong side of the aqueduct (where there was no trail) made for an interesting trip, but with some great bush bashing skills and a few entertaining falls, we made it to the SEC hut at Langfords. But that wasn’t enough! We then made our way to Wallace’s hut the 6th and final hut for the day. After 4 hours and 15 minutes, 3 river crossings, 2 Powerbars and not enough water we returned to Windy Corner for some well earned hot chocolates and jam donuts. On a scale of cleaning toilets at Howman’s Gap to flying to the moon, this challenge was pretty epic.*

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Challenge 3 – Rollerskiing up Mt. Hotham

Bright and early one Sunday morning, two courageous, adventurous and amazing girls drove to Harrietville, put on their rollerskis and began the long challenging climb to the top. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Hotham road, let me break it down for you. The first 10km are quite steep, and include a section called ‘The Meg’, which on a scale of the dam wall to tank trail is “like an 11”*. Towards the top of the Meg we were excited to see a downhill ahead, but as we got closer we though ‘oh wait, it’s actually just flat’… turns out it was still up hill, but compared to the Meg it may as well have been downhill! The middle 10km are pretty relaxing so we did some double poling to keep things interesting. After the gate, the last 10kms include some treacherous hills, both up and down! We only had to take off our rollerskis twice to run down the hills, and if you ask Anna she’ll tell you that on a scale of tank trail to ‘the Meg’ these hills were “like an 11”*. The top of Hotham is a poo farm, so we skied down a little further to the General Hotel and waited for Marg to drive us back down again. We celebrated with pizza for lunch at the General, which was delicious…. Anything is delicious after 3 hours and 45 minutes of uphill skiing!

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Challenge 4 – Mitta Mitta to Mt Beauty

Another early morning start had us on the bus at 7:30 to drive to Mitta Mitta for the start of the annual Mountain Bike race. This race is the third leg of the world’s longest triathlon (stretched over the longest time), with the Mt Beauty half marathon and the Hoppet preceding it. The route for the Mitta to Mt Beauty starts on the Mitta footy oval, climbs up the valley of Scrubby Creek and crosses the north face of Mt. Bogong through Trappers Gap, before descending along the valley of Mountain Creek to finish in the main street of Mt. Beauty. With 37km of dirt rd, 18km of bitumen, 840m of climb and 740m of decent, it’s fair to say that on a scale of sandpaper to Frankston, the ride was pretty rough*. I had never ridden a mountain bike before and Anna had ridden hers for the first time this year the day before, so we were both a little out of practice. Anna managed to pull out a solid performance finishing 1st in the junior girls with myself a fair way behind, but still in 3rd place! More importantly we completed the bronze and silver challenges respectively. I can’t say this race was the most enjoyable of my life and I’m certainly never doing it again… unless I’ve already done the other two events in the gold challenge!

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There have been many more adventures and lots of quality training happening here in the alpine region and with less than 24 hours to go, we’re both very excited for Europe!

 

*For all logical (or other) reasoning behind the scales in this report, please ask Anna.

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And again.

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Snow Photos to get you all excited! :D

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