Flanders

     Today was the second day of the Flanders Grand Prix here in Belgium. This race has nothing to do with the world championships, it's just a European race that they have here every year that we happened to be here for. We were given the option to skate any race we wanted to if we chose to. On the first day all we skated was the 300m which went very well for the USA. In the junior b division, 3 of the 4 americans made the final. Janelle and Franchesca earned a respective second and third, and Kelsey finished with fifth. Dustin also made his final for junior b and had a slip in the second corner which got him sixth place. Erin made the final as well and finished in fifth. I skated the heat and didn't skate as well as I would have liked and missed the final by one spot, taking seventh. I think it was a great warm up race for worlds and we took a lot of info out of it. There were also long races yesterday, but it rained a little bit and we had a rain delay, so by the time the distance races were up it was already 9pm and there were atleast 6 10ks to get through and we had already been there all day, so we decided to go back to the hotel. Brianna and Christian (our alternates) did stay to skate however and they earned second and tenth in their races.
     Today we had a scheduled 7am practice, but the bus driver decided that he didn't want to show up. Mandy O'Neil had to use her car and take 4 different trips back and forth to the track to get us all there to skate before 9am. The track was full of people with so many different countries there (Colombia, Italy, Venezuela, Equador, Germany, Chinese Taipai, etc.). We came back from the track and rested instead of staying to skate the 1000s. A few of us went back to the track later on to watch some races, and Isaiah skated his 5k points race and brought home the win! Brianna got third in her elim, and Christian ended up in 4th in his race as well. Nathan and Erin were going to skate, but it rained again and they decided to cancel the rest of the races for the night.

Isaiah all the way out in front away from the pack

This group of girls are doing amazing in this race