Erin Moening

The holidays usually mark one thing in the US ski community: US Nationals (or Sr. Nationals) preparation. US Nationals usually occurs in the 2nd week of January, and it is used to create the U18 Scandinavian Cup and U23 Junior World Cup teams, and also provides an opportunity for stand out athletes at Nationals to be recognized by the US Ski Team coaches, and compete on the World Cup. For a junior athlete such as myself, these teams are a great way to get your leg in the door to internationals competitions. Throughout, the hundreds of hours of training I did this year, making the Scandinavian cup team was constantly in my head, and I was gearing up to be a competitive threat at US Nationals.  Last year skiing at US Nationals One of the hardest things about US Nationals is figuring out how to peak for the early season races. You want to be competitive and do well, but you also want to have much more in the tank for the rest of the season. Becuase of this, my tra...

As a high school athlete, I've had my share of injuries. Since I've been a freshman, I've had tight IT bands, or pulled muscles after a cross country race, but since Nordic skiing and Cross country running are pretty safe sports, none of my injuries were very long term.  This changed last November, after Thanksgiving.  I was on a distance rollerski with my teammates and tripped over a grate.  I had a shoulder subluxation, meaning it slid out and then back into it's socket. It was a shoulder dislocation to a lesser degree.  Rollerskiing has it's ups and downs, but I still love it anyway! In the beginning, I was okay, and while it was painful experience, I used the time afterwards to focus more on my leg strength, and I went easy a couple a weeks. It was a pretty easy recovery, although I was pretty restless. A month later, besides soreness, I couldn't tell anything weird had happened. I pretty much had forgotten about the incident.  But, 2 months...