New Zealand Part 1

Over the last 2 months, some of you may have been worried that I fully dropped off the edge of a cliff never to be seen of heard from again.  Fortunately, that is not true, although short of that kind of story, an excuse as to why I have not posted becomes meaningless, so I will not even try.  After a good two months of training in Park City, Utah, I am now in New Zealand, training at the Snowfarm.  If you are a cross country ski enthusiast, there is pretty much nothing about this place that wouldn't interest you.  Let me explain...

The Lodge: This is the Lodge.  It is situated on the top of a mountain, and all around you, every direction you choose to look, there are mountains.  These are Lord of the Rings vistas, they are scenes of paradise, and the best part is, all of this placed on 50K of perfectly groomed ski tracks.  I have come to the Snowfarm a week before the rest of the team will arrive, as my cousin, Josh, is getting married to a wonderful lady named Kate, so I have been hanging out with the locals and the fellow enthusiasts.  Meet the crew:

Bernie.  Bernie has been coming to the Snowfarm for the past 6 years.  He is from a town right outside Rochester, NY and coaches cross country running, skiing and track at a high school there.  He simply loves to ski and is here to do just that.

Andi and Ben.  Andi is from Wellington, but splits her time between Vernon, Canada and "The Farm".  She started skiing 2 years ago and went to World Champs last year!  Quick learner.  Ben owns land about 2 1/2 hours from here.  He mines for gold on his land, parts of Lord of the Rings was filmed there, as well as one other movie.  He is a biathlete and a cross country skier and owns a movie projector and an enormous screen.  He's dialed.

John and Tim.  They are the TORO guys.  They are the snowthrower guys, not to be confused with snowblower guys.  They are here simply to test the quality of a given snowthrower.  The other day they put in 13 miles with these things, and not on simply flat ground.  These guys were throwing snow up and down steep hills. through slush and powder, and no problems reported yet.  But we had to see for ourselves...

Bernie and me trying out the machines, and boy did they run like a charm!!

More to come later, including ski pics!!

-Lizzo-

PS: If you want to be Kiwi, all you have to do it add a Y or an O to the end of any word and you will automatically sound like a local.  Cheers!

Bend Part 2...

So, let's see, doing a bit of catch up......we had an off day a week ago and went golfing at the premier golf course in Bend, courtesy of Jason Adams, a local skier in Bend.  I golf once a year, always here in Bend because we play best ball and without the wonderful rules of that game, I could easily still be out there!  A few days later we went on my favorite ski of the year, a crust cruise up to Brokentop Mountain.  It was a perfect day for it, bright and sunny and the snow was ideal for it.  We just finished up our camp with 2 days on the coast of Oregon, staying at Andy Fecteau's (another Bend local who helps us out a ton) house in Pacific City.  We surfed, trained and spent some quality time together as a team.  It's a great way to end a camp.  I will update more with pictures if I get any from my teammates.  I am not hanging out in Bend with Morgan Arritola for another 4 days before heading back to Park City to start school (one class at Westminster College in SLC) and work again.  

The smile after Morgan Smyth's first time golfing.

Mo getting her golf on.  As you can see, we have some real talent!

The group heading out over the lake on our crust ski to Brokentop.

Quite the view....

Newell showing off his moves

Kuzzy and me

Photo's are courtesy of  Torin Koos, Noah Hoffman, and Pete Vordenberg.

Bend Camp

Girls team!!  We are working on our ups!

Bend, Oregon is a pretty neat town.  We have come here for the past 3 years for an on snow camp and this year, as with the other years, we have incredible snow and so far, the weather has been unbeatable.  It is the typical ski in the morning and drive down the hill to sunbathe in shorts in the afternoon.  We are getting in a pretty big training week, around 20 hours, which is my biggest of the training year so far, and what a great place to do it.  Great people to train with, both my teammates and XC Oregon, members of the CXC team, Sun Valley and others, so the living is really good.  Kikkan was here until this morning when she took off for Croatia.  She is one of two nordic athlete representatives for the coming year, a really important job, and so she will be in FIS meetings, giving input for our sport for the next 2 days.  Croatia shouldn't be a bad place to be!!  Taz is also here which is great, as we don't see our Alaskan teammates as much as we would all like to, so it is great to get a little training in with them before our Whistler camp in September.  I only have these two pictures, both taken by Pete Vordenberg, but there are a few more on teamtoday.org if you want to check them out.  Carina Hamel, my idol and the person who I followed around for my entire first year on skis came by for a ski on our first morning here.  It was great to see her again and to click her heels a bit as well, just for old time sake!  Carina is now working in Portland, Oregon in production for Keen Shoes parent company!  In the next few years there may be a shoe line out called the "Carinas".  If you see them, she is the designer, and I promise you they will be amazing!

Carina Hamel and I skiing on our first day of snow in a month!

Spring Flings...Snow to Desert back to Snow

This spring has been a time of real adventure for me.  As athletes, we are "on" from the middle of November through the end of March and so when April rolls around, we are ready for a bit of a break.  This year, Noah Hoffman, Sarah MacCarthy, Zoe Roy, Mikey Sinnot and I set out for a 5 day backpacking trip in Escalante, a part of the southern Utah desert.   Here is a snapshot of our trip.

This is a gas station.  The store is actually inside a mountain, 

and they have awesome ice cream sandwiches!

As we got closer and closer to our camp site for the night the temperature kept dropping...

and dropping....

and dropping!

What is Mikey thinking about right now?  Arizona.

But, the snow disappeared for our sleeping, and though the temps were not 

what we had hoped for yet, we were still smiling in the morning.

But the weather warmed up and we found this guy sunbathing on the rocks.

Sarah and  Mikey psyched about the warm sand.

On one of our days we climbed up and over this arch (Jacob Hamblin Arch).  It required a bit of a repel, and conquering a few of my fears, but we made it.  Our campsite for the night was actually in those green trees that you can see through the arch.  Beautiful mornings!

The five of us (Noah, Sarah, me, Mikey and Zoe) standing at the edge of the Escalante river.

And back to the snow...Last tuesday and again this Saturday a few of us SLC/PC folks set off to find some powder at the end of April.  As you can see, we found some, and it was perfect.

Pete Vordenberg loving the day, as usual.

I have to admit, it's hard not to smile on days like these.

Lahti to France

Pat Casey and Matt Whitcomb in Lahti, enjoying the first sun we had seen for 3 weeks.

View of the stadium in Lahti.  This is used as a soccer stadium in the summer.  

Lots of seats for spectators!

And they filled them all....

View of the stadium and jumps.  The nordic combiners and special jumpers had competitions here while we did, so we got to watch Billy Demong win one day and the days events kept the crowd entertained for most of the day.

The biggest coffee mugs we have in our cabins here in Metabief, France!  Not big enough if you only fill them once.  

We are here for OPA Cup Finals this weekend.  It is a multi-day pursuit style race.  The way it works is tomorrow we have a skate sprint race.  The person who wins tomorrow will have a one minute time bonus on 30th place in tomorrow's 5K skate race.  The second place finisher will start 3 seconds behind the winner, third place 3 seconds behind second place, etc all the way until 30th place.  After that it is a mass start for the rest of the field.  Then, on Sunday, we will start again, same style, and race a 10K classic.  The winner is the person who crosses the finish line first at the end of the weekend.  Pretty awesome.  

OFF TO LAHTI....

We are off to Lahti, Finland today for some World Cups this weekend.  Czech has been great, team spirit is high and we are fired up to keep the momentum going through the rest of the season.  More soon....

A shot of me skiing with Charlotte Kalla in the 30K....really fun!

Another 30K shot, both courtesy of Torin Koos.

RELAY!

Our Ladies Relay Team! (me, Kikkan, Mo and Caitlin)

30K today, should be awesome!  More later.