Wednesday we hammered out some intervals with Cross Country's National Training Group. It was supposed to be a threshold workout (aka - not race pace hard), but sometimes things get a little fast when you get that many people skiing together.  Oh well, it's nice to mix it up and ski with a good group once in a while.

Fisnordiccombined.com recently revamped their website to feature more multimedia, quick updates and athlete stories.  It's worth checking out.  They even added a list of athlete blogs (including this one here).  I think it's pretty interesting to look at some of the foreign athlete's websites.  Christian Erichson's is particularly well done - and his English really is that good.

The news for the weekend was at the Summer Grand Prix in Germany.  Our team chose not to go, but some of the National Training Group competed for the US.

Ben Berend, one of the up-and-coming athletes from Steamboat, jumped as far as Jason Lamy Chappuis- who has won the World Cup overall the last two years!

That's it for 2013 Nordic Combined and Ski Jumping Nationals!  I believe this was the 5th time we have had our National Champs in the summer, and I'm not yet completely used to the idea, but oh well.  It was nice to compete at home, in Park City, and overall I had a great weekend of competition. 

On Saturday during Large Hill Jumping Nationals I put together a great jumping competition: good enough to finish as the 7th American overall in the jumping, and I started the Nordic Combined race in second, behind Czech athlete Ales Vodsadalek. I was stoked to be starting the race ahead of the 5 A-team guys, but they chased me down pretty quickly and we skied as a pack for a while.  I couldn't hang on to the pace the whole race, and finished up 6th American, which is a good improvement from my previous National Champs results, and close to where I hoped to be.

In addition to Nationals, it was also Springer Tournee, which is an annual summer comp for all ages on all the hills.  At the beginning of the week we spent two mornings working with the young athletes from around the US and Canada who were in Park City for the Tournee.  I worked with a great group of kids between the ages of 10 and 14.  Hopefully they had as much fun as I did!

The first day the older athletes lead our group through a series of dryland tests.  Here's a few pictures, thanks to my mother!

The next day we coached our group on the jumps.  Michael Ward took some of our group to the K64, and I coached kids on the K40 and K20.  I'm sure I didn't have to say anything way different than their regular coaches, but sometimes just a different way of phrasing makes things click.  I think my kids had fun and learned - at least a little - from my coaching.

And now there's no rest for the weary.  Today we jumped into an intensity block of training: two interval sessions both today and tomorrow, morning intervals Wednesday and a time trial Thursday.