Here are the results from Tuesday's race.

"Light and refreshing french vanilla with a tart campanion of cherry." So Leif Zimmerman described our ice cream tonight. The ice cream here is unbelievable, so creamy and rich. I'm not going to be able to settle for cheap grocery store ice cream again. The ice cream is on par with the 2^6 brix (or 26, for the non mathematical) ice cream... except you get more! Don't worry, I don't only eat ice cream. I also had some sort of applesauce cake. And the other options were strawberry pudding with whipped cream and sprinkles and some white and lemon cake with pastry top and bottom. I keep planing on trying something the next day, but then they put out something new. Maybe I will have to start eating dessert at breakfast just to keep up.

Soft cooked brown eggs and pure grapefruit juice at breakfast are the best, though. I also have Muesli and yogurt everymorning. Hotel Jelovica is taking very good care of us. Kudos to Katie Gould for setting everything up!

The finishing sprint. 

Coming into the finish in my quarterfinal, I'm in fourth here (of 6)
but I finished in third. They have every country's flag up over the
course. 

The course consists of about a foot of slush. Not ideal. All of my strengths, the skills I have that make me a good sprinter, are useless in conditions like this. Explosive power, no good, your poles or skis merely plunge deeper into the mire. Impressive strength, no good, there's nothing stable to push off of. At this point in their carreers, most skiers have had to race in nasty conditions, but none of us seem to have gotten very good at it. Conditions like this require the racer to drastically change their technique. Deep slush requires a shorter push off and quicker tempo to make up for that. If you push off too long or too hard your ski slides out from under you and you waste all the the power you applied. The really elite skiers can adapt to this; I'm still working on it.

They took 30 into the heats, World Cup style. I qualified in 24th. It shocked me how many women, even at this level, couldn't ski the course. People were simply falling, not because they got tangled up with someone else, but because they couldn't handle the snow. I had two girls fall in front of me in my quarterfinal, one 10m before the finish & I had to jump around her. I came in third in my heat, close to second but not agonizingly close. So that put me in 14th place overall.

Morgan Smyth had the stellar performance of the day, qualifing in 21st and moving up into 7th place! Sadie Bjornsen had to pass 2 people on her qualifing round because they seeded her 66th by FIS point rankings and made it in to the quarterfinals. Way to represent the Methow & PNW. Liz Stephen & Taz Mannix also made the quarterfinals for junior women. LinWilli & I were the U23 women to make the heats and Steve Scott and Mikey Sinnot made the quarterfinals for U23 men, finishing third in his heat.

Overboots: Dad, I'm not going to make fun of your overboots anymore. All the Swedish women had them & I wished I had them. I also wished I had another pair of dry boots; I changed my socks three times today, but my feet were still never dry.

Crocker attacks, well okay, we were walking that day, a hill in Turviso/Turvisio/something in Italy last week. This is where Junior Worlds will be next year (at least that's what a guy there said). 

Our wax room. Steve Scott, Mikey Sinnot & Crocker cleaning their skis. Yes, skate skis, the snow is filthy. 

Tyson Flaherty, Allison Crocker & I climbing near a cave on the way up to the Castle Grad that overlooks lake Bled. 

Those of you who have spent a winter in Walla Walla would find the weather depressingly familiar over here. We have the cold heavy fog surrounding us, but it's not actually cold so you sweat horribly while you're skiing. Since all of your outer wear is attracting the water droplets from the air and the sweat is building up from the inside, you end up soaked after an hours ski. That's why I only skied for 45 min today.

I also had my first fall of the trip today. On the course's technical downhill I got my ski stuck in the slush and since I was going so fast it spun me around & I ended up going backwards down the hill. And that was scary because manuevering backwards down a twisty hill through heavy, deep mush snow is difficult. So I dropped to my knees and jammed my fists into the ground ice-pick style to stop myself. Miraculously, no one was around to witness.

There was a dessert cart at breakfast this morning. I restrained myself.

I am staying with the US Ski team at the Hotel Jelovica Bled in Bled, Slovenija (I don't know why, but they put silent j's in everything) and so far we've had a wide selection of desserts at every meal! Ok, so we just arrived from Italy this morning so that's only been lunch and dinner, but that's a promising start! Also Tyson Flaherty, Allison Crocker & Kristina Owen and I found a bakery/cafe so we had a mid afternoon dessert as well. Delicious.

I'm skiing in Slovenia right now at the U-23 World Championships. Wish me luck!