Having just completed Rookie Camp, it's safe to say that I'm fully initiated into USSA (United States Skiing Association). Starting Thursday and ending Saturday afternoon, my teammates Erik Lynch and Michael Ward, 40 other athletes and I were thrown into everything that we should know as we make the step up to the national team. It was a pretty cool experience to meet the other athletes and to learn about all that USSA has to offer. Rookie camp was especially big this year - 43 athletes out of 189 total athletes on the US Ski and Snowboarding Team. A lot of the new athletes are part of US Freeskiing, which just became a branch of USSA last fall after Halfpipe and Slopestyle skiing and snowboarding received the approval for their Olympic debut in Sochi. They named the A team in December, but the B teams for both the Freeskiing sports are all new athletes. Some of the slopestyle and pipe athletes are already experienced veterans, while one boarder is 13 and two or three were 14 to 15! It's hard to imagine being named to a national team as a middle schooler, but those little punks must be able to huck! Nancye Rahn, the team's athletic manager, kept us on schedule and plenty busy. I didn't think to take any pictures, but I found a handful posted up on twitter. The first picture below is in the conference room, where we spent most of time, listening and interacting to presentations. Throughout the camp, we covered everything from USSA's academic and career programs, to nutrition and sport psychology, to financial planning, doping control and community involvement. Below, X-Game medalists Bobby Brown and Grete Eliason participate in a mock press conference during our communication and media training. Team building at the National Ability Center. (I know, typically a 4-way tug-of-war battle is not what you think of as a team building exercise. It proved a point though: we didn't get very far pulling in separate ways.) Here's a list with traits of success that one of the groups came up with during the career planning session. The idea is that as athletes, we are setting ourselves up for success, we just need to acknowledge the skills we learn in sport and then apply them to real life. And we had some time to play basketball and soccer. I am most likely not about to drain a big jumper here. All in all, it was a great time really getting to know athletes from other disciplines and USSA as an organization. I came away with a better appreciation of the resources that are available to me. I'm excited to be part of something that is first and foremost dedicated to being the "Best in the World" in skiing, but is also committed to creating well-rounded individuals in all aspects of life.
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Finally, real ski jumping today! We've been slowly working our way up from the smallest of hills, and today we had the privilege of jumping on the K90 in Park City. As I mentioned in my last post, two weeks ago we started with the basics on the K20 meter. I think it was a productive way to start the season and focus on some fundamentals, like simply jumping hard. Not that I wanted to stay on the little hills too long, but it was a fun time.
One of the funniest comments I overheard the first day on the 20 was from Bryan Fletcher. "This is going to be weird," he said, "the last hill I jumped was Planica." Planica, as in the K185 ski flying hill that until the opening of Vikersund last winter, was the biggest ski jump in the world. After the 20 and eventually the 40, we drove over to Steamboat for a three day camp of jumping on the K68 there. That hill is a great jump to train on, but it definitely still feels pretty small. Getting on the 90 today was a lot more fun! The Norwegian Nordic Combined team arrived last weekend and trained with us today. At the moment they are arguably the best NC team in the world and are especially good jumpers. It was fun to watch them fly, but the take away from a good jump is that it's really simple when done right. I've been pretty busy lately and haven't been able to get a lot up on here. Last week I started online classes through Westminster College in Salt Lake. I'm just taking two classes, Psychology and Philosophy, but summer classes cover the same material as semester classes in about half the time. I better understand human behavior and thoughts a bit more by the end of the summer! It will be two weeks this Tuesday that I've been in Park City. It is a bit weird to get into a town that I've been to many times, but never for much more than a week, and say, "Alright, I'm home." I think I will be here for quite a while, so I better get used to it. Taylor Fletcher, Michael Ward and I rented a condo for the year. It was unfurnished when we got it, but it's been pretty easy and kind of fun to set the place up. The first week or so we didn't have a couch, as the guy who gave it us was at the Tour of California, but that was about the last piece that we needed. We've been training hard the last few weeks. A lot of the guys bike race all spring, and Michael and I joined them for one last weekend in Salt Lake. It was a Criterium in a city park - 10 laps in 30 minutes, and it basically all comes down to who can sprint the last lap. I had fun and learned some tactics. Next time I'll need to be more ready for the last couple laps.
This morning, we had our first rollerski time trial. Throughout the summer, we're going to continue to do a time trial every Monday in the first week of every period, so every 4 weeks. I do not hold much stock in how fast I race this time of year, but I had a pretty good time and felt good. Nothing feels great this time of year; when we do so much distance training, it can be hard to get the top speed going. Now we're going to back off the training hours a bit and focus on jumping. We all certainly need to be starting the race much closer to the front. Tomorrow we start - on the 20 meter hill! It should be a fun time. I'm half way through my trip back home. So far, I've had a great time with my family and have managed to stay pretty busy. Last weekend I went out waterskiing for the first time in two years. I seem to only get to ski in May now. The weather wasn't exactly ideal, but it was calm, so I can't complain. My brother is a lot better at skiing since the last time I saw him. And between his GoPro ski mount and my mom in the boat, I think we had about 200 pictures per session (literally). Tuesday I met with my high school coach, Ted Theyerl, and Chippewa Valley Nordic (CVN) for a little dryland and story time. I'm not much of a speaker but I did try to show the kids that I was right where they were a few years ago. CVN was actually just getting started when I was in high school. At the beginning it was just three other guys, myself, and one girl.
I was blown away at how quickly the CVN team has grown. On a busy spring night, it was hard to know how many would make it, but we had a good dozen middle and high school age kids and another 6 or 8 of their parents. That's just to say that the group has grown exponentially in a few short years. It was pretty cool to see all those kids so gun - ho about Nordic! Of course I'll be back, but this is my last week that I'll call Steamboat my home. Then it's back "home" home to visit my family for two weeks. After that I'll move into a condo in Park City, UT with Michael Ward and Taylor Fletcher. That will be the start of my Ski Team days. The season wrapped up in Whistler, B.C at the very end of March. I came away as Canadian National Champion, an awesome way to end the year. Since then, it's been a busy few weeks. The day after returning Michael and Cliff and I hopped in my car headed off to Park City for two days of testing. All went well there with two rollerski treadmill tests as well as body composition and hemoglobin tests. Michael and I also looked around at places to rent. We actually haven't seen the exact one that we're going to live in, but Taylor has and thought it was our best option. Move in date is May 15th! Since testing, I've been working almost every day at Ciao Gelato. On the training side of thing, right now is all about building the base for next year. I have a program for strength twice a week, and try to work on flexibility quite a bit this time of year. The most important thing right now is to get a lot of hours in the Level 1 zone - basically the easiest aerobic pace. One of the best ways to do this is on a road bike, where you can go out for three or four hours without the wear and tear on your body that you would have running. (And it's a bit too early to get out the rollerskis). Last weekend, I put in some serious hours and fun time in Moab, Utah. I went down with a couple two nordic skiers, one NC skier, Ben Berend, and their Dads for a long weekend of riding. One of the the Czech athletes that we've gotten to know, Ales Vodsedalek, is training in Steamboat this year, and since he's staying with the Berends, he came as well. Moab is probably the top destination for Steamboatians to get away for the nice weather and a change of scenery as spring fever hits. Last year I was close by when I rafted a stretch of the Colorado, but I'd never actually been to Moab or any of the surrounding parks. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera charger and didn't discover until the first ride that my camera battery was dead. Luckily Ales took pictures. The pictures above are all from Slickrock, which was our adventure for Friday. Saturday we got on our road bikes and went into Canyonlands National Park. Although Moab is known for mountain biking, the bike paths and roads are also incredible. It was super windy for this ride, but fun to cover some ground and see some more sights. Sunday, we mountain biked again, and did a totally different trail from Slickrock. It was hardpacked sand, rocky and super technical stuff. At the beginning of the trail, a sign was describing the perfect ride, which is when one goes the length of the trail without ever having to touch a foot down. I was only about 20 touchdowns and a handful of complete stops away from that!
I had a blast mountain biking, but it's so stop and go and physically challenging that it's nearly impossible to stay in Level 1. Which is why I'll mostly stick to running and road biking training right now. But it sure was fun! Now, when I'm not working or training, I'm sending out letters in search of a headwear sponsor. If anyone has any ideas, let me know! After the winter that the majority of the US has had, the amount of snow up here in Whistler, British Columbia is pretty unbelievable. We flew up to Seattle on Monday, then drove the rest of the way up past Vancouver to Whistler. The drive and crossing the border was a bit of a hassle, but it was also a beautiful drive along the coast. I've never been to this part of the continent, and can really see the appeal of this place. It's going to be a pretty short trip - training through Friday, then we compete Saturday and fly back home Monday. So far it's been fun and relaxed though, traveling with the guys I went to World Juniors with, as well as some of the younger guys from the Winter Sports Club. Martin's here with Todd Wilson, another coach from the club. I'm having fun traveling with some younger guys. I better enjoy this while I can, because, by the way, I made the US Ski Team (along with Michael Ward and Erik Lynch) and won't necessarily have seniority next year! The temperature hovers right around freezing up at the Olympic park, so when it's not snowing, it's raining, or we're in a short break between the next bout. Although we've only been here for two days, I'm starting to appreciate how lucky they were with the weather during the Olympics here. Despite these "rainforest" conditions, we've been able to jump the large hill both yesterday and this morning. This is the first time the hills have been opened since the Winter Games. It's a shame, because the hill's definitely one of the coolest and most fun that I've ever jumped. Fortunately the inrun is refrigerated, which helps keep it a little less sticky when slush is coming down. There's a pretty solid hill crew that did all they could to keep the track cleared out, but it was snowing too hard for them to be able to do anything for a couple of our jumps today. A few of the German special jumpers came over for the training camp, and I watched Martin Schmidt, one of their bests jumpers, go no farther than 75 meters one jump. That's how it goes sometimes though, especially when it's dumping snow. Like I said, they were pretty lucky with the weather during the Olympics. Todd Wilson took some cool pictures of the technology at the jump. Check them out on the slideshow. Despite 70 degree temperatures and a day of rain, we were able to get one more weekend of competition in before heading back home. This was definitely the toughest Continental Cup we've done this year! The competition was our first big hill comp of the year - and first time on a big hill all winter. As usual we only had three training jumps before getting right into competition. Too bad - because it was a fun hill that I would have liked to train on more. I ended up jumping to 39th both days and skied to 26th on Saturday and 34th on Sunday. It was a really tough field and I didn't have my best competitions, but it still was not a bad way to round up the season.
We flew home Tuesday and have a small competition this weekend in Steamboat. Then at the end of the month we'll go to Whistler for a training camp as well as Canadian Nationals. It's a bit strange to be sitting here and writing a recap for World Juniors. For one thing, that means the season is nearly over, and for another, it's fairly difficult to sum up the whole week in one entry. In short, it was an awesome week. A few things didn't go as planned, but the experiences where awesome and I had one day in particular to be very proud of. The week kicked off with a bang Monday night at an impressive opening ceremonies. All the teams were bused down to the hockey rink from last year's University Games. After a cool presentation of all the countries flags and a couple speeches, they brought in the Atatürk University Dance team for an epic performance. The "dance" lasted over an hour and included (from what I interpreted) a wide variety of Turkish dances, a planned marriage, a shocking unveiling of women in soldier uniforms, and some incredible drumming at the end. The organizers and city of Erzurum made it quite clear that they were incredibly proud to be hosting these championships and would do all they could to ensure the athletes had a great time. Before our first competition we had a couple days of official jump training and some time to ski the course, although our whole team had already been here and knew what to expect. In the evenings, we had down time to hang out with the rest of the US team - jumpers and XC skiers, as well as some of the foreign athletes that I've gotten to know. First Competition Our first event was the individual comp with a 10km race. I wasn't completely satisfied with my jump, which put my in 36th place, the points spread was pretty close, so I really wasn't that far out. I moved up steadily throughout the race, constantly fighting through spastic packs of skiers. I ended up going over the last big climb in 10th, but really had nothing left in my tank and finished the race in 12th. No matter what, I was really happy with my race and am quite satisfied with a 12th at my first ever World Championship event. Mattia Runggaldier, an Italian, took home the gold, after skiing a really impressive race and putting down the fast time. I was the third fastest skier of the day, which I was also pretty happy about. Team Competition We've known all winter that we had a real chance at getting on the podium in the team event if we were all on our game. Unfortunately, we weren't quite there. We put down solid jumps - Erik especially, and started the 4 x 5km race in 7th, just 32 seconds out of the podium. Michael "scrambled," or lead off, and skied a hellova leg to put us in 3rd, right ahead of Finland. We hung on for a while, but there's a lot of fast skiers out there and we were a little handicapped with Erik being sick and at this point I was pretty congested as well. I anchored, but the combination of skiing alone and being sick didn't work out - not to make excuses - but I didn't ski a great race and started and finished in 8th. Second Individual Saturday, the last day of competition wasn't really my day. I was congested and coughing a lot, so I didn't have the usual confidence in my racing. As a result, I put a lot of pressure on my jumping and tried way too hard to go far. I should know this by now, but trying harder just doesn't work in ski jumping. So I jumped myself out of the race, especially because it was a 5km. I started in 42nd, over 2 minutes out of the lead. I was a little discouraged and frustrated at the start, but I skied the hardest race I could. I ended up 34th, and had the 18th race time. One of the pluses of the race was I had a strong finish and won a photo finish. I always like to practice my lunges to the line and that may have been the first time I was actually in a photo finish. On Thursday, we went and watched girls jumping competition. Sarah Hendrickson threw down two deep jumps to win a silver medal. She's been lighting up the World Cup this year and really deserved the medal! It was the second silver for the US, we soon found out, as Noah Hoffman had just finished 2nd in the U23 15km classic race for cross country.
Friday and Saturday we also got to watch the men's skate portion of the "skiatholon" event before our races started. The junior's raced a 20km (half classic, half skate) and the U23's a brutal 8 lap 30km. I was absolutely blown away at the level of skiing in these races. The winning time for the 20km was under 50 minutes and 30 seconds. My 10km time, to give some perspective, was 25:58, and that wasn't after classic skiing and switching poles and skis mid-race! On Sunday, I spent some time resting my lungs and body, and then had an awesome day in the city getting a bit of a feel for the Turkish culture with my parents. I'll put more up on that tomorrow, but that's it for now! As to be expected, we encountered a few hiccups along the road, but made it into Erzurum with all our gear last night. No matter how you do it it's a long journey to get here. We flew to Munich on Thursday/ Thursday night and spent the day in Munich. (Actually in the Munich airport hotel, the Moevenpick). The highlights of Friday included the epic breakfast buffet at the hotel, and continuing the traditional of always seeming to get lost when we're in Munich while going for a run from the Moevenpick. Yesterday we flew to Istanbul and then to Erzurum. We had almost 5 hours between flights, but needed most of it when we realized that our second flight was out of a different airport! Apparently there aren't any direct flights from the main Istanbul airport to Erzurum, which our coach didn't realize that when he booked our tickets. Anyways, it worked out just fine. The airlines arranged for a van and a driver for us to pile into, and we got a bit of a tour of the city on the hour long drive to other airport. However, it would have been nice if we had known this ahead of time. The Swedish Ski Team was on the same flights as us, and after getting their bags, took a bus from the airport, rode on a ferry to an island for lunch, drove around the city a bit more, and then arrived at the next airport. Someone on their team is organized. It was a bright sunny day in Erzurum today. They have a lot more snow since we were here at the beginning of the year, so the cross course is awesome. We're staying at a different hotel than last time, but I'd say it's even nicer. About half the teams are staying here - which is a lot of people between Jumping, Combined and Cross Country. It's fun to be able to hang out with the cross country team and see some of the other athletes from around the world. Tomorrow things get going with official training in the morning and opening ceremonies at night.
We've been in Steamboat for almost a month now, which feels like forever, with as often as I'm used to being on the road. The first thing I did since getting back was the DU Invite, a nordic race at Devils Thumb Ranch, CO. Cliff, Michael and I drove over for the day to get some experience in a mass start against some tough college racers. In the chaos of the start I ended up breaking the basket of both my poles - but no the tip itself. Fortunately, the trail was so hard-packed that it really didn't matter at all, but I was pretty lucky not to break a pole instead. The so-called "15km" race ended up being a brutal 17 km that took over 50 minutes, which is about twice the time it typically takes to do a 10km. It was really important to work my way up towards the front at the beginning of the race, and although I would have liked to get farther up sooner in the race, I was pretty happy with my performance and ended up 12th. After the race, I talked with a Norwegian who had just got over to attend and race for DU second semester. He was from the city of Trondheim, which has a major jumping complex and program. It turned out that he was friends with a lot of the Norwegian Combined skiers that I've gotten to know while competing. I thought it was pretty wild to run into somebody who knew people that I know from across the world! I also got the chance to get up on the mountain for a day with Spencer and Tyler. Although the mountain was a little bare by most standards, it's still a blast to be up there on a bluebird day. I learned to tele ski last year, and can lay down some decent turns, but the next day is always a bit of a struggle getting out of bed. Here I'm racing in the Junior National Qualifier the weekend before last. It was a warm day so I decided to bring out my one-piece lycra suit that I where under my jumping suit.
This last weekend was Winter Carnival, which is Steamboat's excuse to celebrate winter for a week. To an out- of-towner, it feels like New Year's or 4th of July, with parades, a light show and fireworks at Howelson. But to locals, it's as natural as any other holiday on the calender. Saturday we participated in the 100m downtown nordic sprint races and some of the younger skiers stuck around to do the skijoring behind horses next. Later that night, we jumped at Howelsen and put on a show for a crowd. After us, a procession of glow-stick lit alpine skiers ski in unison down Howelsen Hill, and then comes the "lighted man." This is another crazy tradition where somebody skis down the face while fireworks shoot of from his body. Now we have a few more training sessions before we make the trip back to Turkey for World Juniors. Tomorrow we'll do one more race to keep our body going fast. We head out Thursday, spend one night in Munich, and will be in Erzurum by Saturday night. The week after that should be a fun one! Sorry for the delay on getting this up. As many of you may know, we were not able to compete in Szczyrk, PL. They tried both days to pull off a good round of competition, but the continual blizzard conditions and high winds proved to be too much. It was fairly disappointing to miss out on the chance to compete, but there's nothing we can do about it -except for train harder and be ready for the next time around. I'll be in training Steamboat until we head back over to Turkey for World Juniors in under a month. Tomorrow Michael, Cliff and myself will be racing against some of the high school and college racers from around the state in a 15km mass start in Winter Park, CO.
On Monday we flew from Erzurum to Prague and then drove 2 hours to Harrachov. In the last 40km we went from rain and no snow to a winter wonderland. We get food and lodging at the military sponsored athlete housing here and just walk to the jumps and ski trails to train. I wish we were staying here longer. The town is simple and nice, the jump is good, and the cross country trails seem to go on forever. However, we're only here til tomorrow (Thursday) morning, and then it's off to Poland for competition.
The main goal for our trip to Turkey was to get a good feel for the jumps and ski trails, and be ready to be 100% on our game when we come back for World Juniors. I would say as a team we all did that. I'm excited to be coming be in month and a half! Erzurum was the next stop on the Continental Cup circuit. I kept the good results coming both days. Saturday especially, I had a good jump, which put me in 23rd, and I skied up to 5th place, just a handful of seconds off the podium. Sunday I didn't have as great of a jump, but I skied another strong race. Michael Ward jumped to 29th, so we skied together a lot of the race, and I ended up 11th and Michael 13th. I was pretty stoked about my ski times with the 2nd time rank both days. Sunday I was only 5 seconds off of the fastest time, so I guess I've got a new goal to shoot for. Some things were definitely a challenge, like not having a van and relying on the organizers to bus us around. The cross country course was almost an hour away so that bus ride was always a bit of a drag. On the other hand, they definitely made a big deal out of the competition. Typically the awards are just a quick ceremony for the top 6 after the race with medals for the podium, but in Erzurum they held a flower ceremony each day and a final awards ceremony in the city center the last night.
As I said in the last post - it was going to be quite an adventure just get to Turkey. We left Steamboat early Saturday morning and arrived in Prague on New Years day. Monday morning we flew off to Turkey and finally arrived in Erzurum that night. At the airport in Prague, we were expecting to have to pay a little extra for our bags; despite the fact that Turkish airlines is a United partner, our experience with other airlines is that they don't care that our Premier status for United gives us two checked bags. However, it was quite the opposite. They allowed ten extra kilos per bag and didn't charge a dime for 7 duffel bags, 6 heavy ski bags, 1 wax crate and 1 waxing table. I was relived not have to carry around the 8 pound wax container that I had in my carry-on going to Prague. After that start Turkish Airlines continued to impress us. On the two hour flight to Istanbul I wasn't anticipating anything more then a beverage service. That was before they brought this menu around. Yes, it was still airplane food, but it was nearly as good as it sounds. In Istanbul we had to pick up visas. I imagined this process being time consuming and expensive, but all it involved was a handing over 20 bucks per person and getting a cool looking stamp on your passport. Turkey requires a similar customs procedure to the US, where one must claim and recheck their bags when coming from outside the country. They don't have customs in Erzurum, and for some reason we weren't scheduled to do it in Istanbul, so we had to do it when we arrived in Ankara. Of course, we had all of 30 minutes between flights in Ankara. Once we found our bags we ran across the airport in search of the check in counter. Our flight began boarding at 6:05 p.m. and we couldn't have gotten to the counter - the same one that we would have went to if we had just shown up in the airport - more than a minute before then. "We have 7 people and 15 bags that need to get on this flight," we explained to the airline workers. Fortunately their English was great and their willingness to help even better. I can't imagine any US airport worker being so understanding if we created as much chaos. Miraculously, we made it, along with all of our bags, and the flight left not a minute late. The last piece to fall into place was our shuttle from the Erzurum airport to the hotel. We don't have a rental van, but the organizers said that they would provide transportation whenever we need it. Sure enough, as we walked out the door after our last flight they had two vans waiting, one for us and one for all our luggage. We arrived at the Hotel Dedeman in time for to catch the end of the dinner buffet and to take a quick sauna before bed. And the meal buffets! I couldn't ask for more. A mixture of Turkish and various Mediterranean cuisines, as well as Italian and other European dishes are offered in a ridiculously large variety. The dessert table looks like it came straight from a royal wedding. The only issue is fighting off the other hungry people. The hotel is right at the base of a ski area, so everyone else is up skiing on the mountain during the day - and serious about their feeding when the time comes. I'll try to get more pictures and info up when I can. The internet is off and on here (mostly off), but I'll do my best. We have official tr
(the country)
In the sport of Nordic Combined, there's always a first trip to Europe. I can remember how excited I was that first time over the pond. However, I never really imagined a trip to the Middle East until the past year or so - when they announced that the 2012 World Junior Championships would be in Erzurum, Turkey. World Juniors aren't until late February, but we're heading over there now to compete in a Continental Cup - with the added bonus of getting a feel for the hill and race course. After Turkey, we'll head back to central Europe to compete in another COC in Szczyrk, Poland. We leave Saturday, New Year's Eve, but I haven't even ventured to total up the hours of travel ahead of us. Here's the itinerary: Steamboat Springs to Denver (van ride) Denver to Washington Dulles Dulles to Frankfurt Frankfurt to Prague Prague to Istanbul Istanbul to Ankara Ankara to Erzurum So that makes 6 flights and then we'll be there! Fortunately we'll spend a night in Prague to break up the travel. The last couple weeks we've been training in Steamboat, recovering from the races in Park City and getting ready for the rest of the season. I was supposed to go home for Christmas right after Lake Placid, but when that was cancelled, changing flights was so difficult and expensive that I just stayed here. Fortunately, a couple of the family's in Steamboat took me in for Christmas celebrations. One highlight was on the day after Christmas. I went with Erik Lynch's family to a hockey rink in Kremmling - about an hour away. We played a solid 2.5 hours of hockey (with a lunch break between). I also got up on the mountain and tele skied the day before - so waking up Tuesday my body was pretty unhappy. But it's fun to go out and do something different! I can't say I've done much more than skate around on a lake since I ended my hockey career as a ten year-old. I'll let you know how the travels and competition go - provided that I have internet. It should be quite an experience! Join the tour and be a member of our team at the Nordic Combined World Cup finale in Oslo, Norway March 5—11, 2012. It's a bit spendy, but it would be quite an experience! Check out the links below.
http://skitrax.com/32962?chttp://nccsef.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/NC-VIP-Oslo-20111.pdf The last two days of competition in Park City were even more exciting than the weekend. I set a career best each day and learned a lot along the way. Tuesday morning we woke up to an inch or so of fresh snow and more coming down. The snow definitely affected the jumping; although it was fair for everyone, most jumps were shorter and everyone was very close together starting the race. For me, an 82m effort (not a long jump for most competitions on a K90) was good enough to start in 26th. It was nice to start the race in the top 30 for once. I skied most of the race with Nick Hendrickson and in the last lap broke into the top ten and ended up 6th, with the 4th fastest race time. Taylor Fletcher kept the podium streak alive with a 2nd place.
Here's a link to a brief Ski Team article about the day:http://usskiteam.com/news/fletcher-podium-again-soldier-hollow Results are here: http://www.fis-ski.com/pdf/2012/NK/4078/2012NK4078ROF.pdf Wednesday I was feeling good in the jumping again and uncorked my best ever jump in a major event: 91m, which put me in 8th after the jumping. I knew I could jump that well, but starting that high up was a little shocking and totally new to me. Dave Jarrett, the US Ski Team head coach, told me before the race that even though I was going to be in a position that I'd never been in before, not too think about that during the race, just to know that I deserved to be up there and to just get to the finish line as fast as possible. Pretty early into the race I was third in a pack chasing down the lone leader. It didn't take long to pick off the early numbers who make a habit of jumping far but skiing back into much higher places. Going up the climb on the third of five laps we had the leader all but reeled in, but the pace was agonizingly slow and faster skiers were coming from the back. I went for it and picked up the pace. Before I knew it, finishing the lap I had a 10 or 15 second lead on 2nd place. It probably wasn't the smartest move tactically, but it was fun while it lasted and I felt like I had to try. Halfway into the fourth lap I was caught by a group of three, and the rest of the race was about the hardest thing I've done to try and hold on. I finished 5th and was for the first time the top American. Not quite the podium, but still I can't say it wasn't a successful couple of days. Results: http://www.fis-ski.com/pdf/2012/NK/4079/2012NK4079ROF.pdf And if you've really got a lot of time and want more detail than I'm giving you here, read this article on Fasterskier by Kerry Lynch: http://fasterskier.com/2011/12/nordic-combined-continental-cup-kicks-off-with-five-days-of-racing-in-utah/ Saturday we had a 2 man x 4 laps each of 2km team event. I raced with Brett Denney, and after the jumping we started a bit back in 16th. We clawed our way back up to finish 7th, just behind Erik Lynch and Michael Ward's team. Taylor Fletcher and Nick Hendrickson got the US on the podium with 3rd. Today we had another individual race. I skied up from 37th to finish 17th. I had a good jump and a solid race until I hit the wall going into the last lap only a few seconds back from the top ten. To have a mediocre performance and still end up in the top 20 is a great sign of how much farther ahead I am then I was last year.
Speaking of improvements, our team had another great day as a whole. Taylor Fletcher threw down an incredible race to ski from 30th into first, and then keep going to win by 20 seconds. Erik Lynch, (who's 17 and trains with me in Steamboat), skied from 27th to an impressive 7th, Nick Hendrickson was 8th, and Michael Ward had a personal best finish of 14th. Our first Continental Cup of the year was today in Park City. I'm really happy with my day for the first comp. I skied up from 40th to 13th, with the 5th fastest race time. Last year, I was only in the points once with a 28th; things are starting to pay off. As a whole, USA had a good day as well: Taylor Fletcher was 2nd, Nick Hendrickson 7th, Brett Denney 10th, myself 13th, and Erik Lynch 19th. Michael Ward would have been right ahead of Erik but he was disqualified for cutting off one V-board going into the finish. That's rough, but he'll be in there again all the other days.
Here's a link to the results. http://www.fis-ski.com/pdf/2012/NK/4074/2012NK4074ROF.pdf The bad news is that Lake Placid is cancelled because of lack of snow. To make up for those missed comps, they’re going to have 2 more competitions here after this weekend. So Monday will be off, then we’ll compete Tuesday and Wednesday. It's going to be a tough few days. Back at it tomorrow with a team comp! Years ago, right about the time young Kikkan was getting serious, a coach in a bar at a ski race with a lot of experience trundled out the familiar attitudes around skiing that tends to sweep over folks when they talk about the US and skiing. Speaking of Kikkan, he said:
“I mean she’s good, but I don’t see her contending on the World Cup.” He said it with certainty. He believed that. Fortunately, Kikkan never heard that- or if she did, she never believed that. Belief is a funny thing. The time and investment Kikkan has put into her skiing, the strong support APU has given her and the unbridled optimism that balances Kikkan’s competitive drive with her focus, have turned her into a real force, an American skiing icon and the type of racer that will keep Scandinavians up at night wracked with concern (or at least hints of disbelief.) For Americans trying to make it, indomitable perseverance, positivity and belief are the greatest weapons we can borrow from the Alaskan contender on the World Cup. I've had quite a busy week getting ready for the first competition of the year, as well as organizing a team fundraiser. The fundraiser goes back to about a month ago when my boss Lynne, was thinking aloud about how they should celebrate their shop's Second Anniversary (Ciao Gelato, that is). The year before they held a fundraiser to buy Community Cultivation a greenhouse, but this year there wasn't anything that was jumping out for them to do. I suggested, half-jokingly, that they could do a fundraiser for the National Training Group, but I really didn't think she would take me seriously. Then the next day Lynne said, "You know what, why not? Let's do it." Lynne and her husband Massimo handled the food and helped with the advertising side. My teammates - mostly Tyler and Spencer - and I put together a pretty solid silent auction and did our best to get the community involved. It was a fair amount of work at times and a totally new thing for me, but by Friday night at 6 it all but worked out just as planned. With the help of a generous community, as well as some of our own contributions, we got together over 35 silent auction items, from equipment, clothing, ski lessons, to concrete pouring. Craig Ward live auctioned a ski we all signed which went for $130. After that, Kandise Gilbertson (one of the US Ski Team coaches' wife) stepped up and bought the other signed ski of the pair for $110! Between the auctions and generous donations, we raised over $4000! I was thinking 3000 would be great, so it was a success without a doubt. Now we'll work out submitting the money to cover our next trips to Park City and Lake Placid, and see where that leaves us. Saturday we had our first competition of the year, Winter Start. It was actually a pretty good sized field, besides our 8 man team we had three Ski Team members, some special jumpers from the Midwest, and the four Czech athletes that have been training here all week.
Todd Lodwick won the jumping, but was caught in the final kilometer by Brett Denney, one of the B team athletes. I started in 10th, ahead of Brett, and was able to stay on him after he passed me for most of the race. I ended up finishing in 3rd, which I'm pretty satisfied with. Next weekend is when it starts to matter, but it's great to have a good comp leading in. And is was fun to ski a faster race than the old man Todd. After one jump session on snow last week I took a quick trip home to see the family. It was kind of sad leaving after just getting back to winter jumping and getting back to no-snow Wisconsin. As it turned out, I didn't miss any jumping and we got just enough snow to get a bit of skiing in at home. Besides, it was a lot of fun and a worthwhile time home regardless.
As an early 50th birthday present to my dad the rest of my family kept my coming home a secret from him. It worked out just perfect surprising him. I got into town right when my dad was helping coach the local club cross country ski group. My mom dropped me off outside the park that they were at and as a I rollerskied into the parking lot they were in a group getting ready to head out. Needless to say, Dad was pretty surprised to see me. "What the hell are you doing here?" was all he could say at first. While I was home, along with celebrating my dad's birthday, we had an early Thanksgiving as a family. My grandparents and one of my neighbors came over for the feast on Saturday. We had ten main course dishes and two pies! The next morning we got an inch of snow and decided to take out some old skis and ski on the grass at the soccer park. I've never skied on this little snow but it was actually doable and I ended up getting a solid two hours in. I certainly hadn't planned to ski on the fields for that long but one of my Dad's friends came over and we worked on technique and discussed skiing for a while. I'm going to be start giving ski lessons this winter so it was good to get a bit of experience of experience being the coach rather than the athlete for once. It was fun to be back and see the family, but after three and a half short days at home I hopped back into the car, onto a plane, into my car, and got right back to training with the team. We got our first real skiing up on Rabbit Ears Pass on Sunday. It was even better when we skied yesterday, and this afternoon should be equally sweet. We're not the first place to get good snow, but the East has already lost most of their snow, I haven't heard of much else in Colorado besides above Breckenridge at another 1000ft higher than Bruce's trail, and the plateau in West Yellowstone is pretty bare, so we've got to have some of the best snow skiing in the country right now.
Hey guys, the US coaches just sent this out in an email from the National Nordic Foundation. The idea is that if we can branch our fundraising out far enough, we can make up for the budget shortfalls without draining the pockets of only the inner circle of Nordic Combiners and their families. Check it out! What: We seek 4000 American Nordic Combined enthusiasts backing their nation’s developing skiers on a single day. When: November 15th, 2011 How: There are two ways to be involved. The most impactful way is to become a Drive for 25 Ambassador and agree to get at least 10 of your friends to donate $25 on Nov 15. Send the email addresses to us (meaning the NNF) and we will remind them. Or the simplest way is to log onto http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com , and donate $25 on Nov 15th. Why: The US Nordic Combined is in serious financial trouble. While we have improved from a nation that rarely placed a single skier in the top ten on the world cup, to a nation that won more medals in the 2009 World Championships and 2010 Olympics than any other nation, we are currently operating on a budget that is less than a tenth of our toughest competitors. Our budget shortfalls are making it impossible for our younger developing athletes to afford the racing opportunities they must have & earn the required results that allow them to compete at the highest levels. This summer, we faced two large budget cuts and another is looming. The Drive for 25 Challenge offers the Nordic Combined community a chance to pull together and help keep our athletes competing. Who: You! NNF, the National Nordic Foundation, is stepping up to fill these budget shortfalls. The NNF depends on you to accomplish this mission. If you're interested in being an ambassador or pledging for me, shoot me an email and I'll forward you on to the NNF. And don't worry, they will only keep you on your list through the 15th of November.
Last week we went to Park City for a day of testing and our last jumps on plastic for the season. This was my second time testing at the Ski Team's Center of Excellence. This spring it was a lot of new stuff, but now we have some data to compare to. We tested on the rollerski treadmill in the morning and afternoon, with one testing measuring VO2 max and the other test to measure and establish training zones.
The V02 max test is only ten minutes, but with the oxygen tube attached to your mouth and the ever increasing incline, it's about as hard as it gets. This time the test was different than last in that we were breathing in as much oxygen from the tube as we would at sea level. This way, you can see how individual's respond to O2, and virtually everyone has a higher VO2 max at sea level compared to altitude. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but my VO2 score jumped up almost 28% from this spring when we tested without the oxygen. Obviously training is an important factor, but I might also have some lucky genes that respond well to high altitude training and low altitude racing. Anyways, VO2 max isn't all determining, but it's awesome to know that with time, the potential is there. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do any jump/force testing this time, but when we get our results back formally I'll also be able to see hemoglobin levels and a couple other respiratory and lactate measures that they took during both the tests. |
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