Erin Moening

A question that is asked commonly here at Junior Nationals, is: What event are you most looking forwards to? For me, this is a difficult question, because I enjoy all of the races, and because of the shortage of racing this year, I don't really know what my strengths are. But one thing that I know I truly excel at is being able to push myself as needed: so if I'm in a group of girls that are going hard, I can stick with them, working harder than I normally would be if I was by myself. So in my view, the race I was most nervous about was the 5k individual start, where I'd have to push myself without anyone around me. One thing I learned a long time ago: You can push yourself and still have fun! As I mentioned in my last post, the Midwest has a big advantage of already racing this course several times, and I believe that really helps, because I knew where I could go hard, with the help of built in rest, or where I needed to conserve a little speed, so I could make it ar...

Cover the past couple years, I've completed many routines, all part of the life of a teenage nordic ski competitor. One of these routines is ski racing. I've done a whole lot of skiing racing. Through high school races, JNQ, Junior Nationals, Senior Nationals, and just ordinary citizen races, I've gained confidence in my ability to adapt to different courses, different living situations, race starts, snow conditions. I have race warm ups engraved in my head, day-before-race-day-workouts. I'm started to learn all the preparation it takes to get everything ready for race time, from my body and head to my skis. I have mental checklists of what I have to do, and having the confidence that everything is going to the way it's suppose to is a big bonus on race day. Part of the routine is previewing the course- one of Mt. Telemark's large climbs The Midwest Junior National team arrived in Cable, Wisconsin Friday night. This is the 3rd Junior Nationals I've com...

One of the biggest things that I have learned as a competitive skier is that you can't let past results affect your current races. This has been especially relevant for me for the past couple weeks, and I'm excited to share my experiences. It all started out with my Section 3 meet; the qualifying meet before the state meet. My plan was fairly simple and straight forward. I was heavily favored to win, but my plan was to race it like I would at the State Meet, put it on the line and race hard. It was the last meet before the big races, and I was using it as a tune up for the State Meet. Girls Team won sections first time in 6 years I started out hard in the classic Individual start, and I definitely paid dearly for that on the second lap. I suffered, but held up and tried to finish as hard as I could. I wasn't pleased with my results, I only had a 30 second lead, and I had been expecting much more. I rested up to pull through with a win in the state race, something I...