Perfect start to new season

I say perfect, perhaps a slight exaggeration but it was a good start. I'm just back from Idre in Sweden where I was racing in the first of my qualification races for selection for the TeamGB squad heading out to Ezrurum, Turkey in February.

We headed out on the Sunday and used the first few days to re-familiarise ourselves on that strange coloured white stuff that was all over the ground in Sweden.

Weather conditions were perfect, blue sky, crisp snow and ideal skiing. The week finished with 2 races, a sprint race and then a 10km distance race on the Saturday.

I had two goals for the season when I started, first was to get a good enough result that allowed me to qualify for selection for the Ezrurum European Youth Olympics and the second was to get my points tally down to move up a squad within the British Nordic system and go from Youth to Junior.

Well, I managed to do both in Idre. My first race I managed to get pretty close to the age group winner in terms of my percentage behind which I was please with and the following day I managed to get a good result that meant I got good FIS points and as a result qualification to the Junior team.

To cap it all, I came back to the UK as we entered the final day of my crowdfunder to find that I'd hit my target - not only that but with offline support and the only crowdfund, I've calculated that I'll be approx 60% over my original target - what a result.

Next up is Goms in Switzerland where I aim to improve on my results even further and see if I can reduce my FIS points tally and up my world ranking. So the next goal, get points under 200. A year ago, I would have said that's impossible but this weekend's racing has proved that I can do it. There's still a long way to go but qualifying for selection means I can relax a little bit at Goms and not be stressed about hitting a target.

I'll keep you posted on the results. In the meantime, many thanks to those that supported me - it now means I can focus very much on racing and not have to worry as much on financing my camps.

Watch this space for further updates.