Snow to Summer

My trip in Norway continues.  There is so much to tell, but I have been spending so much time with all of the wonderful people I have met, that it has been hard to find the time to write about it all.  So, for now, I will tell bits of the story through many pictures.

The days are really light up here in Norway. This is one of the sunsets I was up to see in Sognefjell, which happened around midnight or 12:30, but it never got fully dark.

We skied every day, twice a day for the first 4 days we were on the snowfield, but on the 5th afternoon, we took a break from the snow to go down a bit lower and hammer out some hard double pole intervals.  They were really amazing, as we all did them together in a "pace line", much like biking.  A different person would start each interval and then after the first 30 seconds it was a free for all and the goal was to try to pass each other.  It helped my practice of skiing in a pack and it was amazing to be double poling along with some of the best athletes in the world.  We were really moving, drafting each other and hauling along the road.  It has been one of the highlights of my camp so far, for sure.  I even got to lead the first 30 seconds of the last interval!

Ingvild and I on the way down!

The cool down ski

Ingvild totally spent!

The crew.  Egil, the head women's coach on the left.

Heidi and I happy to be done and riding the adrenaline high!

Vibeke, Celine, Heidi, Theresa and Maiken hanging together in the Signefjellshytta.

My awesome Rossi Rep, Simon, who brought me a bunch of test skis!

Ingvild, Maiken, Therese, Marit, and Celine

The women's team.  Maiken, Marit, Marthe, Celine, Heidi, Vibeke, Ingvild, Astrid and Therese.

Me on the only sunny day while I was there.  Photo courtesy of Mette Bugge.

Celine Brunlie and I drove through Beitostollen, one of the early season World Cup stops on some years and we will be there this year in November for some Norwegian Cup races and training.  Fun to see it with no snow!  

Celine was so kind and took me into her parent's home in Oslo for the last 2 days and it has been so nice to meet her family.  As with everyone I have met, they are extremely generous and kind and have been making me delicious home cooked meals and showing me the ropes of Oslo.

Celine suiting up for our bike ride yesterday

My bike!

Our trip to the kayak race!

We biked from Celine's to her sister's kayak race, and as it turns out, we were allowed to enter the race!  So, we did!  Celine was actually quite good, as she used to kayak when she was younger, and being in a really tippy boat was a real challenge for me, but I didn't flip the whole 5000 meter race!  It was so fun!

Celine and I after the competition!

Celine's incredible family:

Starting with her dog, Kompas or "little bro".

Her father, and also the Chef, Gustav.

Her mother, Kathinka, Kompas, and Celine

Her sister who is on the Norwegian National Kayak Team, Agnes.  Her grandma, Grandma. Gustav, Kathinka and Celine.

Grandma looking really cool at 86 in her blue shades! I hope I can be so stylish when I am her age!  She is a professional seamstress and after seeing some of the work she has done, I am all the more impressed by this woman.

Ingvild Ostberg, my personal tour guide for the day, took me on a rollerski up to Holmenkollen and around on the new rollerski tracks on the course.  It was a super nice day and it's always more fun to ski in a new place with a friend, so the time flew by.

Ingvild and me.

And then we finished the day at Celine's cabin on a Peninsula just a 40 minute trip from Oslo, 10 minutes in a car and 20 minutes on a boat and you are in Paradise!  We did some sun bathing and relaxing in the sun together this afternoon and have now just sat down to dessert after a delicious dinner with the girls!

Me, Maiken, Marthe, Celine, and Ingvild

I have been having such a wonderful time here.  The girls and the coaches have been so nice, so generous and welcoming and training with some of the best women in the World has been amazing and very inspiring.  I feel really lucky to have been here, made new friends, and am fired up for the training season back home as well.  But first, one more session with the girls tomorrow morning in the gym and then off to Sweden to train with and visit Anna Haag and Emil Jonsson on my annual Swedish summer trip!

Sognefjell Norway

I have successfully made it to the Sognefjell snowfield for another week of training on snow! I flew after our Bend camp ended and met up with Astrid Jacobsen who picked me up from the bus station and brought me to her house to spend the night. It was really nice to stay with Astrid, as she made me feel right at home immediately, and after going to a run in the forest we went to her parents home for a delicious dinner of salmon, potatoes and salad followed by Norwegian ice cream and "American" blueberries. Apparently the blueberries that are grown in Norway are wild and are blue in the middle as well, but "American" blueberries have white flesh in the middle. I think they are most used to the ones that grow wild in the forest and look much like wild blueberries that you find in Maine. After a night of sleeping hard, as the jet lag is in full effect, we headed out for a run in the forest and bogs with a junior ski camp that was going on. You may know this about me already, but big running is my favorite kind of training. It is like running on a spongy, damp or wet mattress  for 3 hours. Your knees and feet and quads feel almost as fresh when you finish as they did when you stared. It's really amazing training. A couple of hours into the run, we stopped at a cabin in the middle of the woods and I began to smell a delicious sweet smell of baking bread and sugar, and when we stepped inside I realized why. On Sundays in Norway, it is very common for families to take a walk in the woods together and stop at one of these cabins to eat a sweet bread, what they call a skollebulle, or "school bun". It is a sweet roll with some sort of vanilla cream and frosting on the top and let me tell you, it is super tasty 2 hours into a wet, rainy run. Just enough taste to get you home!  I rode up to sognefjell with one of the Norwegian male skiers, Oeystein Pettersen, who was very friendly and we listened to some awesome music and talked. It's really fun to get to know more skiers a bit, and I'm settling into life with the Norwegian ski team quite well. They are all really nice and speak amazing English which makes me want to learn Norwegian or or any other language really so that I am able to speak with others so they do not always have to switch to English for me to understand. The skiing here is good, skate skiing this morning on salted tracks, so hard and fast for much of the ski. Now I am heading out to do some classic skiing this afternoon in probably fairly slushy conditions, but still great to be on snow!

Bend Camp Continues!

Another Monday is here and so is my third blog in a row!  We just finished our first week of Bend Camp and it's been busy, but also fun packed.  We have been skiing lots, running and mountain biking on many of the great trails Bend has to offer, lifted some weights, put on a Fast and Female, went to a movie, did two yoga classes, had some team meetings and some media training, along with hanging out  together and sharing spring tales together.  We only have a week left and it is flying by, but I wanted to update you on some of what we have been up to.

Holly, me, Jessie and Sadie in our USA colored Onsies! Some good Memorial Day colors.

We had the opportunity to meet some para-nordic athletes and have some lunch with them, sharing stories and making new friends. Keep you eyes out for these women because you will be seeing them more and more in the future.

Shawn Cheshire (blind para nordic athlete), Beth-Ann Chamberlain (Para Nordic Coach and former USA Biathlete), Annelies Cook (USA Biathlete)

The Para Nordic gang and us.

A good friend and former US Ski Team coach and athlete Pete Vordenberg and his daughter Josie came by for a visit one evening! 

One of the more beautiful skis we have had here in Bend so far.

Jessie Diggins enjoying the sun!

Ida Sargent, Heidi Halverson, and Jessie Diggins

Ok, I guess I was a little pumped.

My parents have been looking for a new puppy and got to visit a few the other day.  This one looks like a keeper to me!

We did a classic team sprint time trial today in some pretty wet and rainy weather, but it was a really good effort from all and a fun way to make the rain less noticeable actually!

Jessie and me with some MBSEF junior skiers jumping on.  There are some seriously motivated athletes training at Mount Bachelor, so all you juniors out there better be on your game as well.  These girls and guys are no joke.  Train hard, have fun, and get a training group.  Believe, Dream, Set Goals.  It's worth it.

Jessie leading the infamous "Dancing with Diggins" station at Fast and Female here in Bend yesterday afternoon.  Big thanks to the Bend Athletic Club for hosting the event.

Also a huge thanks to our teachers at Namaspa here in Bend for hooking us up with some great yoga classes while we have been here.

Team Mountain Bike Ride

See you next Monday!

Camp Season Begins

Week 2!  Whew, on a roll!  

Last Monday I moved back to Park City, Utah where I spend my summer's and fall's training for the upcoming season.  I have been living there in the summers since I made the Ski Team in 2006 and I have made a lot of awesome friends and met a few incredibly generous families who I have come to call my "Utah Families".  Here is one of them, the Adam's family, who has taken in my teammate Noah Hoffman for the last 3 years and he has basically become their second son and third child.  Their two biological children are Luke and Lindsey, shown in the picture below.

Lindsey Adams, Luke Adams, Noah Hoffman out for dinner to celebrate AP exams being finished!

Pizza Party at the Adam's house.  Such a fun time when you have a pizza oven in your house!!

Oh, just my buddy Noah, smiling big.  He keeps up an awesome daily blog which you can check out at www.noahhoffman.com

The crew at the pizza party. Cory Wubbles (my good friend as well as one of the Team's wax techs), Bryan Fish (USST Development Coach), Luke Adams, Toni Adams and Greg Adams (our "parents"), Matt Whitcomb (USST Head Women's Coach), Noah Hoffman

Noah baked his first ever carrot cake and it was mighty tasty!

Yesterday we traveled to Bend, Oregon for our first training camp of the year.  It is one of my favorite camps as it combines skiing in the morning and dryland training in the afternoon.  Today is an ultimate Bend day, as it was about 50 degrees and sunny up at the snow this morning and down in the town of Bend this afternoon (about 1000 feet lower) it is about 70 and full sun.  We are about to head out for our afternoon workout, which is a run today, planned around ending with a dip in the river! YES!  More to come soon!

Some of the crew

All the girls heading out for a ski together.  Big group here this year!  Oh, and Matt Whitcomb and Erik Flora (Head Coach of APU) are in there too!

Putting in some good deck time in the sun during lunch.

My good friend Morgan Arritola sent me some earrings today and I am SO pumped!  I only ever wear two pairs so these will be my dressy ones!

Monday Blogday Begins

Springtime is such a funny time of year.  All of us skiers scatter throughout the globe, some of us bolting for home after 5 months away, others of us hopping the first plane to the sunniest, warmest beach we can find.  Still others of us take our month off from training seriously and try to do everything we have ever dreamed of doing in those 30 days.  Our jobs as professional ski races are about as awesome as a job gets, but our month off from “work” is certainly a highlight of the year.  I am sure it is because it is only 1 month out of the year, and by the end of it most of us are antsy and ready to get back to training, but without this little break every 11 months, we might not be such a happy group of individuals.  By the end of the winter, our bodies are in need of a break, a rest, recovery from a taxing season and prep period that begins on May 1st and doesn’t let up much until early to mid April.  It’s time to let our muscles recover, and our minds regenerate and prepare for the next push.  

So, I head home to Vermont.  This is my happy place, though it is just one of many, but if I am trying to get some R and R in, there is not a better place than the house I grew up in.  I love the feeling of driving through Montpelier for the first time in 5 months and having it feel like I just left it.  I love leaving the pavement, going through the tunnel of trees, hanging full with new buds and bright green leaves.  And pulling into our driveway, taking in the view of my parents home, big red barn, surrounded by the rolling hills of the Green Mountains, fields, gardens, flowers, and the familiarity it all provides is exactly what I’m looking for in my ideal spring break.  I immediately find my overalls and try not to take them off until I leave and just soak in the feeling of being home.  The smells that bring back childhood memories, the light breeze that seems to blow every day, and home with two people who love you unconditionally.  I am in heaven.

Now I am on a plane back to Park City, Utah, where I spend the summer and fall months training and preparing for next season which will begin again in early November when we will hit the road for Europe and not return home again until late March or early April.  I love this part of the year too.  After the refreshing break in Vermont, I am ready to get into it again.  After all, as good as the break is, what makes it so awesome is all the work that comes before it.  

Here are a few of the spring adventures I got up to this month.

Well, this wasn't taken this month, but I did go out to Seattle after Spring Nationals to visit my brother, Andy and do some camping and skiing and adventuring together.  This is us, back in the day.

I was a guest speaker at a Girls On The Run at my hometown elementary school, which was a super rewarding experience.  The girls were all so inspired to try their best and push one another, it was so nice to see and be a part of.

Chef Dad slaving over a dinner of.....

.....a whole wild Alaskan salmon!!! YUM!!!

My local ski club, Onion River Nordic, hosted a get together for me and I did a little talk.  These were a few of the most excited ones!

Fueling up after a hike with my Mom up Spruce Mountain.  Thanks Powerbar!

Fire tower at the top of spruce.  My mom and I were not that into being on the rickety, old tower, so we only made it up 2 flights of stairs!

I got to spend Mothers Day with my Mom this year.  Thanks for being so supportive, loving and fun, Mom.