What a day today was! Spoiler alert - Whitney finished second!! We didn't see her this morning, she was out early for practice. Bob and I walked down to the other lodge and after looking at where the course was decided we were going back to our room to watch. There was no way to walk up to it and even riding the chair lift would have been difficult. We can actually see the first part of the course from our balcony and we have live timing on the tv so we could see how the girls were running. After the first run Whitney was easily in second place. She had a kind of long break between runs since they run the women first, then the men, reset the course, then women for their second run, then the men again. During her break we walked over to the King's Grill lodge area and sat by the firepit and talked with her. She was excited but surprised to find herself in second, especially since the girl in first wasn't who she expected.
The second run was tough because the course was rutted and icier than it had been in the morning. Many of the riders were slower the second run, including Whitney, but she still had the second fastest time of the run. Bob and I saw her start but had a hard time watching live timing. It was so nerve wracking!! As soon as she finished we went down to the lower lodge to meet up with her. So much excitement! She was truly shocked at how well she did. This was the event that she didn't really care about, well she did but she knew it wasn't her best event and hoped to finish in the top 10 but did not expect to make podium.
Afternoon awards was fun today, although super nerve-wracking for Whitney. They didn't call her event until last so she had to wait through it all. All her teammates were there to cheer her on as well as other UMF parents that are out here. I think she probably had the loudest cheers of the day. She's made lots of friends here, she's been chatting with the kids from the Virginia schools, UVA, JMU, GMU and the NC schools and they all cheered her on as well as her teammates and a few other random people we've met. Even Boss Hog, the emcee for the event was really happy to see her on the podium.
Tomorrow is a day off for the snowboarders. Whitney thinks the coach from JMU is setting gates to practice for the GS event on Saturday so she's going to do some training in the morning then the three of us are going to drive up to the Tetons and see what we can see.
As a side note to the day, when we got up in the morning Bob and I saw a herd of elk in the parking lot of our hotel. They were just hanging out in some empty parking spaces. It looked like there was 8-10 of them, possibly a mother and two babies among them. They moved around a little but just generally were in the same area almost all day. Later in the day I noticed that they had moved on but we saw that they had moved to a small park just down the street. Pretty cool seeing them. I'd still like to see some moose, but it seems you have to be on the Nordic course for that.
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