Recovery, Weddings, and more Skiing

After the amazing time I had at NAWTA camp, I flew home for my first big recovery week of the summer. It was great to be home during the 4th of July because I got to see lots of old friends. I love coming home and running all my favorite trails and going on mountain bike rides with my mom. We were able to ride some newly cut single track trails at PCMR despite getting caught in some torrential down pour. 

There were and still are some serious wildfires in Utah. One evening a fire started just on the other side of the mountains and the smoke just started pouring over the mountains right behind my house. Luckily, nothing serious came of it. 

Visiting with great family friends at the 4th of July Parade!

On my way back North, we traveled through Portland to see a friend get married. We timed things just right, as just before we arrived, my cousin and his wife who are living in Portland popped this little guy out. Baby Calvin! 

The wedding was spectacular and very beautiful. Some of the closest friends from high school all showed up so I got to catch up with lots of pals!

We have had periodic bouts of beautiful weather in Anchorage. This is on  a nice recovery bike ride along the coast looking at the city.

All the best juniors skiers in AK had a camp just outside of Anchorage so we joined them for a time trial at Hatcher's Pass. It was one of the most beautiful days I have ever experienced in Alaska and it was even hot out, a rare occurrence up north. I had a great day racing and was really excited to see all that the juniors are up to these days. I sadly have no pictures of the day, I just got too busy enjoying the weather!

We headed back to the glacier for our second camp at the end of July. Unfortunately,  the weather on our entrance day was bad and a nice little cloud layer was stuck over the glacier so we spent most of the day waiting around in Girdwood for the weather to clear. These flowers were outside the Bake Shop where we spent the day hanging out. Despite the beautiful colors in this photo, the weather was actually really grey and cloudy. 

At the Heli pad, this air crane was busy fueling up for work they were doing at Alyeska. It was really neat to talk to the pilots that literally have no home and just fly this thing from place to place doing everything from replacing lift towers at the ski resort to fighting wild fires in the west. 

The cloud never left so we were only able to fly about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. We then had to walk about 30 min straight uphill to the edge of the glacier then the snowmobile picked us up and brought us to the trail where the Pisten Bully was waiting. It was quite the adventure. 

However, once we got up there, the weather cleared for most of the week and we had spectacular weather. We were lucky enough to have some professional photographers come up to take some team and individual photos. I have only got to see a few so far, but here are some good ones! This is the whole team.

The Girls team looking pretty in pink as always!

Charlie Renfro also made a little video while taking photos, here is the link: http://vimeo.com/46672506
Enjoy!

Sadie and Lauren and I enjoying a beautiful evening on the glacier!

Wahoooo

Getting our full dose of Vitamin D

I was able to ski the most I have ever skied in my life during this glacier camp and am feeling really good about the progress I have been making while living up on the rock. Now, it is time for a little vacation! Off to the cape!

Holy Cow, I let a month slip by without even realizing! Luckily it's because the last month has been so full of so many great things and so much hard training. We had an all-girls camp up here in AK with the best from the U.S. and Canada, and we even had a Finnish world cup superstar come join us. We spent 1 week doing dryland training and one week on the glacier. It was an incredible amount of training with some incredible women. I am so thankful to have had this opportunity and to have been in much better shape this year. I was really able to gauge my level of fitness and to work hard on altering my technique with the help of some of these girls.

Most days on the glacier looked like this or were even a little cloudier...

We did a sprint relay, but my team had some trouble in the hand offs, ooooops

We had 1 incredible day with above the clouds !!!

So we of course took 1000 photos

NAWTA (North American Women's Training Alliance

Following a canook in intervals

We skied up Hatcher's Pass one day, unfortunately that day we were in a cloud. 

Look at that blue sky!

Wouldn't be a camp in AK if a moose or two didn't disrupt intervals...

Typical girls, we ran out of oatmeal and spinach half way through the week

We got to spend a day with the APU Junior Team, very inspiring

Summer Solstice brought Michael Franti!

Painfully icing my bone spurs on my heels! 25 hrs in wet ski boots in 6 days does mean things to your feet!

Getting Air!

Giant Cookie for dessert!

Aiku, our Finnish guest enjoyed her first hamburger on the glacier!

Badass bunch of chicks

I made a birthday cake for on my teammates and was even able to find some flowers 6000 feet up on a cliff on the edge of the glacier to decorate it with

Last ski!

Back in the Swing of Things

Post-Bend Camp, we had a nice recovery week relaxing, hanging out with friends, shopping,  and doing some hikes. Then it was back to training hard! Unfortunately our coach got stuck on the glacier due to some bad weather and then our boys went up there for a camp so the girls were soloing it down in town. Luckily, we have a pretty incredible group of ladies so we were able to get in some good training despite being coachless and a little unorganized. Here are some pics form the past couple weeks:

We auctioned off a dinner made by the Women's Team at one of our fundraiser. Here is the Women's team starting to cook with the people that graciously bought our dinner. I was in charge of dessert and was able to make a raspberry creme brulee! It was great to be challenged in something other than skiing, cooking fancy meals is not easy!

We also participated in the Alaska Run for Women. It is a huge event supporting breast cancer research. Over 7,000 women ran in the event! Becca and I took it easy and just incorporated the run into our 3 hour workout for the day.

Some of us APU ladies at the finish

Spring and early summer is all about babies around here! While it is usually terrifying running around the trails without trying to get caught between a mom and a baby, there are occasionally some pleasant run-ins. There is a momma moose with twins that have been hanging out around the house. Here is one of the twins! Baby moose are very cute and this one is actually already getting big, the real babies are so small!

Eating our grass!

Today we had an incredible drive to practice. A momma black bear with 3 little babies ran across the road in front on us. I was slow to get my phone out to take a picture so I only got the last baby, but if you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can zoom in and see just how cute this little guy is. Now it makes sense where teddy bears came from!

We are very lucky to have an all girls camp starting on Monday up here in Anchorage. We have some of the best skiers in the world coming, some have already begun to show up so the next few weeks should be full of some hard and exciting training sessions!

Bend!

Bend is just an awesome place to train in the spring. Like Alaska, it too has mountains near by that are high enough to hold snow well into the spring and summer, but unlike Alaska when you leave the mountains after training in the morning, it is sunny, summery, dry, and beautiful. I was fortunate enough to get invited to the U.S. Ski Team camp being held there and eagerly jumped at the opportunity to go. Our days consisted of getting up early to hit the snow up at Mt. Bachelor and then enjoying the trails around Bend in the afternoon via foot and bike. 

I started in on a physical therapy program right before the camp for a nagging back injury I have had since my freshman year in college. Camp was then a big test to see how the stretches and exercises were working and if I would be able to overcome this set back. Things went great! While I was not 100% pain free, pain never forced me to cut a workout short or skip one all together! It feels incredible to not be held back all the time and I hope for nothing more than to continue on this path for a season of good health, something I haven't experienced in some time now. So with all that in my favor, camp was excellent! I got to join some friends who raced the same college circuit as me for the Pole, Pedal, Paddle, a race from the top of Mt. Bachelor into to town. It is relay style with alpine skiing, xc skiing, road biking, running, paddling, and sprinting all as different legs. I was the bike leg. It was great fun to race in a different sport and I certainly was plenty sore after pushing myself in a less familier sport. 

Team bike ride, definitely my favorite dryland workout. The mtn bike trails in Bend are awesome!

Racing in a fun 2 person relay we did for one of our hard workouts

Canadian National Team, Canadian National Biathlon, US Biathlon, US Ski Team,  APU, Alberta World Cup Academy, CXC, SSWSC,  and Craftsbury GRP were all there at the same time making for some epic group skiing and many partners for getting the hours in.

Leaders in the relay workout, Fiz in the back of this group was my partner

More intervals, we got about a foot of snow one day!

Start of the relay

Start-up Camp

Well, I'm here to say I survived my first APU Start-Up Camp. Infamously known to be a very hard week full of tired and sore bodies, I was not looking forward to the week. We ended up having some decent weather for the week and we were able to get out for some crust skiing. AK is known for its epic crust in the spring time. Because it doesn't take much to get above tree line here, the crust is extremely vast and consistent allowing for some serious adventures. We did a couple interval sessions, a couple strength sessions, a couple track workouts, and the rest was filled with just lots of skiing. The idea is to spark our bodies back into gear after a month off from any organized and serious training. 

The last day of camp, a 3 hour ski at Hatcher's Pass was the best workout of the week.

There was a couple inches of fresh snow on top of the crust making it a little slow on the way up, but unbelievably fun on the way down. 

It also allowed me to track the boys as I had no idea where to go

Enjoying some sunshine in AK

Coming down valley!

Taking a break after intervals, about halfway through start-up camp 

Some good looking teammates

Loving skiing when the sun comes out

We also had classic tracks groomed for us! Sweet!

Crust skiing involves getting creative on the fastest way up steep slopes

Reunited with my teammates

The week finished with our giant fundraiser, which was all athlete organized and a little stressful to say the least, Happy to be done with that!

Sadie and I getting all prettied up for the event.


Next week, I am headed to Bend, OR for a US Ski Team Camp. Bend is a really awesome place to do some spring skiing!