Jay Richards

I should be in bed sleeping as heading up early morning to catch Jon's 8am game at the Ralph in TRF but even after grooming tonight, still wound up from the great day of racing at the State Nord meet. It is such a awesome event and if you were there or have been there before, you know what I am talking about. If not, try to go some year.





Jake had a pretty good classic race to start the day. He was 62nd overall out of 120 skiers and a little bummed out to get passed by a few skiers, not pass anyone and not able to keep pace some times with the power double poling but still was in great position and only 10 seconds out of 50th.


Hung tight with Elk River skier after getting passed with him. Glide was good and kick was right on. Like the early days of striding, still do the mixture thing and generally get good results.
In the skate race, the situation was very tight. After the first ten skiers, the groups were bunched together and hard to pass. I was yelling at Jake to stay in the inside and he did a good job moving up. At this point early in the race, he had already moved up to the 170 skier who stated 11 spots in front, obviously.
Jack Hinkens (184) was one second behind Jake. Jake put a few seconds on Jack but Jack would skate away to have the third best skate time on the day (less than a second behind Conrad Roberts who moved from 24th to 5th and only three seconds behind state champ Erik Fagerstrom) Jack's skate race was incredible So was Conrads and Jake as well.

Jake caught up to Coon Rapids skier who is also in 9th grade.

Punched it hard but the CR skier got him by 1/10th of a second. Jake ended up 48th overall and was flying on the skate race. I think he had the 20th best time and beat a lot of top 20 ranked skiers. He said it was the most fun he had in a race this year and a great way to end the hs season.
Jens rolling in the snow in between races.
Extended family chilling out in between races. Nice to have my mom, Jonell's parents and my sister with Peter and Max all attending.
Nice to have the whole family together. The brothers werew very proud of Jake. And mom and dad of course. Awesome.
We hooked up with Jack after the race. Very cool, nice kid. Jake and I said we need someone like this to live closer to Maplelag. Mountain biker, skier and hockey puck running in his blood for some pick up games. If you didn't see the article on skinnyski, check it out. Great job to Bruce and Margaret for the awesome ski pics above and all the other race action images thanks to family for coming to the race and dad for watching the resort.