As a proud representative of my home ski club, the Eau Claire Flying Eagles, I couldn't resist posting this video.  I think it's pretty much the same thing we ski jumpers see.  

Yep, I think we're all excited to acknowledge that it's fall and winter is just around the corner.   But, we need to do some serious fundraising at the National Nordic Foundation to prepare for the season. That means it's Drive for 25 time!

The goal is to get as many people as possible to donate $25 or more from now until November 15th.  It might sound like a long way off, but we need to get going now to grow our community web.  (And trust me, before you know it it'll be mid-November and we'll be skiing on snow from the east to west coasts... hopefully).

Click here to donate and spread the word!
https://www.grouprev.com/adamloomis

After a week of training in Oberstdorf, we drove through the mountains toward Innsbruck for another concentrated and focused week.  The Innsbruck valley is absolutely spectacular, and it offers excellent training opportunities.  

It’s not that often that we get to jump a new hill, yet that was the case for the whole team asides from Todd Loddwick (but I dare you to count ten ski jumps in the world that he hasn’t jumped…).  Innsbruck is a phenomenal venue – a little tricky to figure out the hill, but a blast nonetheless.  And you can’t beat the views.

Quality rollerskiing is a little harder to find in this area, but there are a few good places.  One day we drove up into Seefeld, in the mountains just above where we were staying.  The 5km rollerski track was just about perfect for a hard interval workout.  Another day we skied intervals up a mountain pass towards a couple of high ski areas.  It was pouring rain, a little cold and extremely slippery – one of those sessions that doesn’t look like any fun but kind of is. 

Monday through Wednesday we jumped in Stams, which is one of the best training hills in the world.  It’s a K105 – technically a “large” hill – but right in that sweet spot of slower, small hill speeds combined with large hill air pressure.  One of the days we jumped alongside some of the Austrian and German National ski jumping team members.  Which is to say, some of the best ski jumpers in the world.  Thomas Morgenstern was extremely cool to watch, and I saw the best ski jumps I’ve ever seen on a K60 from Andreas Kofler.  That’s the hill on the left below.  There’s a lesson to be learned here: no shame in stepping down to a small hill.

Our jump coach, Marc Noelke, used to coach many of those German and Austrian athletes, so I’m sure he was happy to see them again.  Marc got us into the Stams Ski School gym for strength training.  It’s safe to say that it’s a little nicer gym than your high school’s - they take their athletics pretty seriously there.  It was a little strange crashing the gym, I’m sure we’re the only American team to train in there, but that’s just one of the many perks of having a German coach who’s been around the block a few times.    

We wrapped up the trip with a second practice comp on the last day of the camp.  Taylor put it to us, winning both the jumping and skiing the fastest race time.  Watch out for him this season with the way he’s jumping – and we all know that he can ski. 

All in all, this two-week trip has us feeling even more ready and excited for winter.  We’ll keep training hard and expecting nothing but the best.  A huge thanks to all of our supporters who make this possible.  You are the NNF, and the NNF is our lifeline.

Life's not all fun and games.  Except for at Area 47, which is possibly the coolest park of any sort that I've ever experienced.  From water-slides to wake-boarding, climbing and high ropes courses to the blob, they've pretty much got it all here.  I made a quick highlight reel of our afternoon there. We definitely didn't get a chance to try everything out, but we did have some pretty good sends on the blob.  

Now in Stams, Austria, we're halfway through Europe training Camp #2.   We spent the last week in Oberstdorf, Germany, jumped almost every day and explored the mountains when we weren't jumping.  

I flew over with Brett, Michael, Nick and Todd. Getting to Oberstdorf is usually pretty quick, but we had some miscommunications with the rental van company and had to take a series of trains and a bus to get there from Munich.  European train systems are fairly slick, but with 4 ski bags and a half dozen heavy duffels, the transfers were a bit stressful.  We did somehow make it in time to get in some rollerskiing.  

 We met up with Bryan, Bill and Taylor, who were competing in the Summer Grand Prix.  We were training during the first grand prix, but we got to watch the grand prix finale, two jumps and a 15km race.  FIS is testing out a weekend challenge format, similar to the Tour de Ski, with the first two races counting towards the final times of the last one.  Unfortunately, with the large time gaps and 15km race on a 1.7km loop, far too many competitors were "lapped out" on the final race.  Less than 20 racers actually finished the last race, the rest were pulled after being caught by the leaders.  Nonetheless, it was a fun race to watch, and we were happy to see Taylor ski a strong race to the finish.  

Here's some training action.

Down time activities included alpine coasting, spear chucking, rock golf, slacklining and vicious games of spoons.  

A highlight was watching Michael attempt to eat 50 scoops of ice cream for a 100 euros (if he made it).  39 scoops in the toilet was calling, and he kept the streak of Nordic Combined eating challenge failures going.  I think he may have suffered more here than in the rollerski race we did.  

All in all, it was a fun and extremely productive week in Germany.  Oberstdorf is an awesome place for training, and we still have close to a week here in Stams.