Finland Journal

Racing season has been running in Finland for about a month now and there are races all over, every weekend. I have raced in a few early races here and the races have gone very well. There is a huge difference racing here than in the U.S., it was a little bit surprising at first. There are many FIS races here that attract many very fast skiers from Finland and some surrounding countries, but I have also noticed the Turkish ski team is racing here at the moment too!

The race courses are very challenging, I raced in Kontiolahti which is the location of a world cup biathlon course and it is demanding. Apart from the courses the athletes themselves are impressively fast. I race in the under 20 age group and every race must be prepared for with incredible focus to place well. There is no room for error in these races. For myself to have good races here, I need to be prepared and ready for anything. The weather here is just unpredictable, it can be -8 (Celsius) and snowing here in Vuokatti then the next morning just 2 hours away at some race and it can be bit above freezing with hardly any snow but a good inch or two of sugar snow on the trail and also hard packed snow on other parts of the trail.

I also had the opportunity to go to the world cup race in Kuusamo in November! The whole scene was just incredible. There were huge packs of fans from different countries cheering all over for the cross country races and Nordic combined ski events.  There were also, big buses, vans and cars of all the different national teams (the Swedish waxing bus was, in my opinion, was the most impressive.), and the world's best skiers walking all around us getting to wherever they need to go. It was a lot of fun to watch and cheer for the U.S. Ski Team who had a pretty good weekend. Watching the fastest skiers just hammer up these huge hills was amazing, and definitely motivating.

School and training have begun to slow down now. I am currently studying 4 subjects. I arranged my school schedule so I could focus more on training here, it also allows me to get plenty of sleep here which is so important to being a good competitor at the races. I train with the Sotkamon Lukio team three times a week and now the focus is speed training. Training is just about always done in the dark now unless I have a free day from class and I can get out skiing in the small window of time the day provides light, which is maybe 10 to 2:30 and I have been informed it gets even darker. Many trails have lights on them and with the decent amount of snow here there is about 10k of really good lighted trail open and many more kilometers if I venture to put on my headlamp and explore a bit, which I have not done yet. Soon I will be returning to the U.S. for a few weeks to spend some time with my family and maybe a bit of racing.

See you on the trails!

Joe Dubay