It was the final race of the season and Natalie Hynes wasn’t sure if she would see the finish line.

Racing with a sinus infection, the 19-year-old had successfully finished a handful of races earlier in the week. Her coaches instructed her to skip the sprints, take a few days off and reevaluate before the 20-kilometre freestyle mass start.

The night before, Hynes still wasn’t sure if she would be able to toe the start line. But the coaches told her to modify her goals. Instead of a top result, she should make her goal to finish the race.

It was a warm day and the snow had turned to slush. Many of the racers were on the course in T-shirts and their race bibs. It was an odd site at the Canmore Nordic Centre.

Hynes started with the rest of the junior girls and couldn’t keep up.

The course involved a lot of climbing, including the punishing inclines behind the stadium and they would have to complete the 5K loop four times.

“It was really kind of disappointing to be falling behind and I just felt like I had no energy to push,” says Hynes. “Every race is always going to be hard. That’s normal. It’s supposed to be hard and you’ve got to push through the hard times.”

She made it to the top of the final hill two loops in and pulled off to the side.

“When I had nothing to give and nothing to push, I just felt like I was so run down and I had no energy,” she says.

Hynes spent the rest of the race at the top of that hill. She cheered for her competitors, encouraging them over the crest of the hill and back down towards the stadium.

It was the first time she had never finished a race.

“That was a new experience I hope I don’t have to do again,” she says.

She approached the wax room area where the Team Yukon coaches were busy loading skis for transport.

Alain Mason came out of the building.

“(He) just smiled at me and gave me a hug and said, ‘well, you were the first one to finish, so there we go,’” says Hynes.

April is typically a recovery month for cross-country skiers and Hynes returned to Anchorage, where she was finishing up her first year of pre-nursing at the University of Alaska. She spent the month taking in the outdoors, but not focusing as much on training.

It would take her more than two months before adding intensity back into her routine.

The born and raised Yukoner was on scholarship at the university last year and a member of the school’s ski team where she impressed the coaches.

“Natalie brings a great deal of talent to our team,” said coach Andrew Kastning. “She has a great motor so if she can continue to dial in technique and improve fitness her skiing career could really take off.”

Hynes enjoys the team atmosphere of skiing. She rose through the ranks of the Yukon cross-country system and spent a few years in the same training group as Dahria Beatty and Knute Johnsgaard who are both current national team members and on track to attend their first Olympics this winter.

Hynes recalls the first ski race she did, when she was wearing a pair of red skis that Olympian Becky Scott had signed.

“As soon as I was out there I would go as hard as I could,” she says. “I really enjoyed racing. I never dreaded it. Once the race started, it was go time. Just get to the finish.”

Hynes has attended two junior world championships and hopes to attend her third and final one this season. It will be her final season as a junior before aging up.

This spring, she got a phone call from Cross Country Canada and was named to the junior national team.

“I was pretty excited,” she says. “It’s a pretty big deal.”

With a new coach at university, Hynes has enjoyed getting a fresh perspective on how she can improve her skiing.

So over the summer, which she spent working and training in Whitehorse, she put Kastning’s words into practise.

Part of her summer goals were to improve her core strength and her double poling. Inherantly better at longer distances, she wants to become a strong sprinter.

“I’m going to improve as much as I can,” she says, “and see where that gets me.”

Hynes hopes to keep improving on the NCAA ski circuit this fall and winter.

“I’m kind of a very go-with-the-flow kind of goalmaker,” she says.

If she makes it to junior worlds, great, if not, she has other goals to work towards.

“It’s so important for me to keep it fun, keep it chill,” she says. “I don’t want to start putting too much pressure on myself and then I don’t enjoy it.”