End of Summer Recovery and Refocus

After many months of focused training and glacier camps, it's impossible to not build up some cumulative fatigue even with a few recovery days built in. As a result, I like to mix things up, change some training, take some rest, and find a change of scenery at the end of the summer as a way to regroup for a strong fall period. I headed home for a dose of summer! I was able to do some of my favorite workouts and train with the Park City Nordic Ski Club a bit.


I never feel like I have enough time for everything when I go home and it's always hard to leave, but I was lucky enough to head further east and spend some time with family at the beach. This provided me with some true recovery. It was some of the most humid weather I have experienced, making even an hour run rather unpleasant so I was "forced" to just lie on the beach a bit, swim, and catch up with my family.

Nothing beats waking up at home

Found some mountain goats

Running Timpanogos with the junior team

View from the top

Now, time for a week at the beach!

Some quality rest

and quality food! 

And more rest!

 Arriving back in Anchorage, we jumped into things quickly and did 3 practice races, providing a good way to see first, how my fitness is, second, how my recovery went, and third, what I still need to get done during the fall training period.

Girls Team

The junior team joined us for an uphill run race

After the races, I went to the Alaska State Fair for the first time! 

The veggies are impressive

How many loaves of bread would this make?

That is a 107lb cabbage with some basketball sized beets in front of it, yikes!

Vegetable art!

an amazing full size double rain to finish of the week!

The Sun Camp

We have now completed our 3rd and final glacier camp of the summer. Our summer training is broken into 4 week blocks. Two weeks are spent dryland training in Anchorage, one week training on Eagle Glacier, and the last week spent on our own with some combination of recovery, adventuring, and training. Repeat this three times and that's a summer! It sure makes the summer fly by! I am having a hard time believing it's already mid-August. The good news is that I have had what I would call a very successful summer of glacier camps with the most training to date, the best technique to date, and limited to no injuries! The bad news is that I have not been the best about taking my recovery seriously enough and came out of the last glacier camp a little pooped and with a few less pieces of skin! I guess falling gets easier when you get tired... 

We were graced with 5 of 6 days of perfect bluebird skies on the glacier, making getting out the door a whole lot easier when you are feeling tired and not quite as motivated. I also have some teammates that double as spectacular photographers so thanks Eric Packer:

Out for an afternoon classic ski

A far away shot of our glacier sprint course

Skiing back to the building. With warm temperatures there was a lot of ice starting some come through the snow as seen here.

nothing beats sportsbra skiing

Happy to have some juniors along and share some of our stories. They are also heading to Dartmouth this fall!!!

Girls Team skiing together

Happy for sunshine

Team Picture after our exceptionally hard team sprint that left me with a few raspberries after a crashing on some icy snow

Coach Erik Flora and glacier workers, Don and Andre who work around the clock to make sure we have the best camp possible.

Girls Team!

Look at those guns

Erik and the elite team

With a big chunk of summer training done, it is time for a change of pace and scenery! I am taking a break to visit Park City and Cape Cod to spend time with family and recharge for the next block of training.