After 30 or so hours of travel and 5 flights plus a 3 hr drive, I made it from Anchorage to Gallivare, Sweden. The travel day was long, but everything went well so I can't complain too much.
Gallivare is 100km above the arctic circle, however, I awoke to light shinning in my window the first morning. Knowing that I was so far above the arctic circle, I panicked, thinking I must have slept in until 11, knowing that the sun was rising around 9:30 in Anchorage before I left. I checked my watch to see that it was only 8. With all the timezone we traveled through, I wasn't sure if I believed my watch so I grabbed my phone and it too said 8. Still confused, I had to look up the sunrise and sunset of Gallivare before I could be sure it was actually only 8AM. I learned that the sun that day was indeed supposed to be up at 8:30AM, however, setting by 2:30 and loosing around 10 minutes of that daylight each day. The sunrise is relative as the sun just moves a little bit across the horizon before setting so I don't think I actually saw or felt direct sunlight the whole the week. Despite a lack of sun, the arctic has a unique beauty that I very much enjoy. There was lots of snow and great skiing, making for a good first week of getting our feet under us and shaking out the cobwebs.
There were two races over the weekend that the U.S. Team participated in as a warm up for the coming World Cups. I chose to just do one race as I was fortunate enough to be on snow in Anchorage before leaving.
The week was highlighted by visiting our old wax tech Peter's house in Gallivare and being treated to amazing food cooked by his family. The U.S. team also seems to be in good form taking quite a few podium spots over the course of the weekend. I felt satisfied with my race, but hope to get a little more speed in the coming weeks.
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| Leaving the beautiful mountain of AK |
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| The view out the window |
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| Erik doing some race prep |
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| Sadie enjoying a ski |
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| Jessie and Sophie sprinting |
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| Celebrating Sadie's birthday |
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| Morning in Gallivare |
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| The Stadium (Hoff photo) |
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| Sun shining over the horizon (hoff photo) |
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| Baking in Europe provides a number of challenges converting measurements and translating ingredients at the store, but Jessie and I were successful in baking Sadie a birthday cake and Caitlin did some fine decorating! |
The World Cup starts this Friday in Ruka, Finland! NBC will be airing and/or live streaming all of our races this winter!!!! Check out the schedule here:
http://www.nbcsports.com/olympic-sports-schedule I believe most races will be available on demand using NBC Live Extra, however, you may need to be a subscriber to NBCSN to be able to view. Live timing and results will be available at
www.fis-ski.com
Additionally, I will be featured on a podcast throughout the season sharing stories of racing on the World Cup. My first episode can be found here:
http://www.acast.com/snowbound/snowbound-usnordicteamsrosiebrennan
