The US Women's Nordic Team arrived and things got busy here in Anchorage! We were graced by wonderful weather as always for Girls Camp, workouts were hard, and social nights were the norm. It is always difficult for me to adjust from training with my APU teammates to having an influx of lots of fast girls show up at my house and at our training sessions. This is one of things I realized I need to work on throughout the week. My goal for the week was to be confident in MY own training and believe that whatever I am doing right now for training is because I know thats what I need to be fastest in the winter regardless of what the 15 other fast girls around me are doing. My training volume has been significantly reduced this year due to the injuries I have developed which is where I believe this lack of confidence developed, but I had a really successful time turning things around and being proud of what I did do throughout the week. A couple highlights included reducing my time on our L3 interval route by about 1 minute, swimming 1 mile all in the freestyle technique, and completing a 5 hour mountain bike ride without back pain!
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| After training, these birds decided to attack us. Becca was more cool with it than the rest of us. |
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| Checking out the coast with Patrick |
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| The top of Resurrection Pass, 3 hrs into the bike ride |
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| Sunny on one side of the pass |
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| A little gloomy on the other side... |
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| Made it to the top1 |
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| Pat had to hike up to the snow to get a snowball. Silly easterner still thinks its crazy to find snow in the summer. |
After turning back down the pass, I managed to break the derailleur hangar off my bike and therefore had no rear derailleur. I happen to have an amazing boyfriend who is not only good at fixing bikes, but also riding bikes so despite a plethora of bugs, rain drops, and a few swear words, Patrick was able to turn my bike into a single speed and switch our pedals so he could ride it 12 miles out while I rode his slightly more functioning bike. He even managed to not break the chain until the last kilometer!
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| Post workout photoshoot with the whole bunch of girls! |
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| Astrid cooking up some king crab! |
A couple exciting things happened this week during camp. First, we had guest superstar Astrid Jacobsen join us from the Norwegian National Team. Astrid won World Championships in 2007 and then showed up at World Juniors, which also happened to by my first World Juniors. I had a great race myself, but happened to be in 3 heats of the sprint with Astrid. She thoroughly kicked everyone's butt, including myself. She has also received a lot of attention because she chose to continue her education while ski racing and is also attending medical school. As I also chose to pursue education in addition to skiing, I have found her to be a real inspiration. It was amazing to be able to train with her, or well behind her, and listen to her wisdom. She is a very bright and experienced athlete and I learned so much from her!
Kikkan also landed a new sponsor, Alaska Seafood, who blessed us with King Crab Legs, Salmon, and Halibut. I am a seafood fiend and really gorged myself, it was amazing!
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| grill full of tasty fish! |
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| Sadie, her boyfriend Jo, and I on top of Hatcher's Pass, another great bike ride we did! |
After a great week of dryland, we headed to the glacier for a full week of skiing! We had a media day so check back this week or all the links to the articles, videos, and photos.
