2nd!

This past weekend I had my first races of the season.  Saturday was a 5k classic race and Sunday was a 10k skate.  It felt great to get a couple races under my belt and I had some solid results, including a second on Sunday!  It was pretty fun to be standing on a podium in Europe and to have Justyna Kowalczyk, one of the biggest names in Cross Country skiing, on the step above me!  Thank you for all the support from the waxers, coaches and my awesome teammates who helped make this day so special!

Me and a few of my awesome teammates who were so genuine and psyched for me and my good result.  It makes all the difference to have such solid support behind you.

A racing shot!

My prize for the day!  A locally made traditional wooden coffee cup. Stoked!

Ladies team with one of the local volunteers

Justyna and me! She was really friendly and leaned right in with a big smile for a picture.

The Podium from left to right: Me, Justyna Kowalczyk, Yulia Tchekaleva

Euro Tour 2012 Begins

I traveled to Muonio, Finland, a small town 2 degrees North of the Arctic Circle last Sunday where our season begun this weekend with some FIS Openers.  These are the races where you blow some cobwebs out before hitting the World Cup next weekend.  It is pretty dark most of the day up here, as you will see from the pictures below, which have actually been lightened a bit on my computer!  Here are a few pictures from the week so far.

We started off the week with a school visit to one of the local middle schools.  The kids were shy at first, but then warmed up to us and began to practice their English, which, needless to say, is MUCH better than any of our Finnish!

Jessie racing hard yesterday in the Classic Sprints

Ida sprinting for the line.  The race started and ended on a very steep climb, so it was a real battle all the way to the line.

Holly with one of the volunteer kids, who are actually the same kids we visited earlier this week!

Simi racing in one of the heats.  He lost all of his bags on the way over and currently only has received 2 out of the 3 he checked!

Ida's post race smile.

Part of the cheering crew, Sylvan and Noah.

Newell is in the yellow and black suit on the left.

Ida finished the day with a strong 6th place!

Newell finished the day in 4th!

Noah, Holly and I went to visit the owner of the local ski shop who knows Dave Knoop, Executive Director of NNF, one of the major donation sites for supporting up and coming cross country athletes in the USA.  He was fired up to get the "hello" from Dave!

ORSA!

My favorite place on earth is here among the Haag family in Orsa.  Ok, maybe being home in Vermont with my own family is pretty high up there too, but this is about as good as it gets.  A few pics from our ski today.  3 hour skate tour around the area with Kik and Anna and her sister, Fia, on the bike.  Fia was our massage therapist this past season in Falun.

Kik and Anna on a run yesterday afternoon

The gang from the ski today

Kikkan is smitten with a small kitten found on the road

Kik with her fabled moose ears, Anna and Fia

Blink and beyond

So, Kikkan and I finished up at the Blink Festival and have moved on to a small town outside of Steinkjer, Norway. We are staying with the Lillefjell family, Frode, who was Kikkan's coach a few years back at APU had put us up and has been showing up (and training with us each session) all of the  awesome rollerski and running loops around the area.  The first part of the week we traveled to Sandvikhamn, an area not far from here where Frode's sister and her family have a cabin.  It was a beautiful place, and as it turns out, Petter Northug is from right down the road and one of his sponsor's owns a house with 2 apartments upstairs, right next to Frode's sister's place.  So, when he heard Kikkan and I were coming he gave us an apartment to stay in for the 2 nights we were there and hosted an awesome bbq one night.  We got to meet Petter's parents and a few locals from the area, as well as sign the guest book at the house, where we learned of how many sports teams had stayed there already, along with the Finish Cross Country team! Maybe next year we will go back to have a team camp there for a week.  It was absolutely awesome training, not to mention generous and kind people.

Women coming over the bridge that they made specially for the event!

Me, mixing it up in the 10k

Kikkan with the lead pack in the 10k

Kikkan in the sprint

Kikkan and I took a hike with a friend from Anchorage, Chris Seaman, who is living in Stavanger, Norway for his job with Conoco Phillips.  It was a quick hike, and we got to see this amazing waterfall!

Chris, Kikkan and I on the hike

And again

Opening Ceremonies in the Lillefjell house.  We each picked a country and made our flags.  From left to right: Marius (Norway), Kikkan (Canada), Anders (Italy), Haakun (Spain) and me (Sweden).  We even had a torch parade! 

Haakun, Frode and Marius

Our hosts at the cabin on the Fjord!

More soon.  Now to the bogs for a last Over-Distance run!!

Blink Festival!

Kikkan and I are on our annual Scando summer training trip together and this year it has taken us to the Blink rollerski festival in Sandnes, Norway for a week.  Yesterday was our first race, an uphill climb called Lysebotn Opp, which we took a 2 hour ferry ride down the Fjord that runs through Sandnes, Norway and arrived at the start of the time trial.  It was for sure the most beautiful view I have ever had after a hill climb, and I have done some pretty awesome hill climbs in my time.  Today we have a 10k criterium style race with money preems every 2-4 laps, so it should be exciting!  Here are a few pictures of the trip so far!

Kikkan and me on the ferry to Lysebotn.

Ferry ride

We watched some base jumpers on our ferry ride.  Pretty insane.

A picture of the map on the boat of where we were going.

Me, sporting one of the awesome hats that Toni Adams crocheted for Kikkan and me. Thanks Toni!

Kikkan and me with some of the Swiss National Women's team.

Norwegian skiers, Astrid Jacobsen and Maiken Caspersen-Falla, Kikkan and me with some fans after the hill climb.

A bit of the view from the top, but no camera seemed to really capture the full beauty.

A few of the top boys racing, nearing the finish.

French skier, Jean Marc Galliard, second place finisher in the men approaching the finish.

Women's podium: Therese Johaug, Heidi Weng (not shown) and me!  Awesome day!!

Hello?

I found Vermont Peanut Butter in a cupboard in Utah!!! So psyched!!!

If you haven't tried their peanut butters, get on it! Check it out here:

Vermont Peanut Butter Company

HEY!!! I'm back!!! I took a long break from skiing and anything ski related, including blogging this spring, but now, considering I am back on snow in Bend, Oregon for our first training camp of the year, I believe it is time to get back on the ski wagon and begin blogging again.  I took a nice 5 week break in Vermont from Spring Nationals at Craftsbury at the end of March and really didn't leave my home for more than a night or two the whole time I was there.  I didn't pack more than a backpack to do anything, and it was completely unexciting and felt so unbelievably good that I think I will do it every spring! I spent the time gardening, landscaping, hanging with my parents, running and playing with my dog, and visiting with friends and supporters.  I was in heaven.  However, it is not the time in my life where I get to garden and own a farm with tons of animals and an old house to fix up yet, so I headed out to Park City, Utah where I have spent the last 6 summer and fall seasons, training and getting ready for the upcoming year.  I did some testing a couple of weeks ago (a real HELLO and wake up call to the body after a spring of recovering) and headed out to Bend after that.  The first training camp of the season always starts here with us skiing in the morning on great snow at the base of Mt. Bachelor and doing some form of dry-land training in the afternoon.  This past Saturday we participated in the Pole Pedal Paddle, a six stage event that includes an alpine ski, nordic ski, road bike, run, paddle and sprint leg.  It is a major gear oriented event, but well worth it.  We fielded two women's teams, one male team and Kris Freeman did the whole event himself.  It was a great team event and I hope we do it again next year, as everyone had a really good time.  A huge thanks goes out to Andy Fecteau and Rebound Physical Therapy for paying for our entry fees and gathering all of the gear up for us.

FAST AND FEMALE

We also participated in Bend's first ever Fast and Female event on Sunday afternoon.  We had a great group of girls and did some really fun dry-land drills and activities as well as some motivational talks and goal setting.  The Bend community is a really great one, so it was fun to meet some of their local stars and have gotten to ski with some of the girls up on the trails since then.

Fast and Female crew from Sunday's event

Speed Ladder at the Agility and Power station

Core Work!

A couple of the most impressive and fun-loving young women I had the pleasure of meeting on Sunday

VITAMIN D!!!

Matt and I on our ski yesterday. First Over-Distance (OD) ski I have gotten to do in quite a while, so it was extra special. Perhaps the warmest and sunniest I have ever seen Davos, so it was a really amazing day full of smiles and vitamin D!!!

Rest and Relaxation time in the bed with my buddies Chandra, Marcel 1 and Snargles.

Matt and Chandra on our OD at the top of the Sertig Valley. Double classic tracks up a perfect striding grade for an hour and then 10 minutes of descending, during which we hit 67 kilometers an hour!! SO FUN!