Another Year!

I ski race because I really love skiing. The downside of being a ski racer is that it is dependent on snow which only falls half the year, if we're lucky. The upside is that I get the opportunity to go to more extreme measures to get on snow whenever possible. This is one of the many reasons I moved to Alaska. With APU's glacier training facility and the relatively cold climate of Alaska, I have many more opportunities to ski than most, which not only makes me very happy and enjoy my job a whole lot more, it makes me better at that job.

As we rollerskied across wet leaves in the pouring rain, turning to sleet, turning to snow, going absolutely as hard as we can crushing some interval training, I maintained a constant shiver and truly couldn't imagine anything much worse than what I was doing. With snow continuing to fall throughout the day and night, my pain suffering the day before was rewarded with a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. I gathered some ski equipment and headed up the mountains to find even more snow. We skied in a lovely track and were reminded quickly, why we do this. Skiing is FUN! That day was September 30th so with that, I successfully skied at least once in all 12 months of the year! Now that is worth a little celebration!

October 2014: Girdwood grooms us an awesome 5k

November 2014: Racing starts!

December 2014: Racing in the U.S. gets me a ticket to Europe

January marked my most successful month ever and a lot of frigid weather.

February: World Championships

March: Finishing out the race season with APU

April: Skiing on sea ice in Barrow, Alaska 

May: Crust cruising around Hatcher Pass

June: Back on the glacier!

July: Glacier round 2

August: Glacier Round 3, sun, sun, and more sun

September: early snow in Anchorage

Happy Fall! 

Fall Training

August marks the transition from summer to fall in Alaska and generally I associate the transition with rain, rain, and more rain. August came and went and somehow there was no rain! I was able to get out of the city for one last good weekend of adventures, checking out Talkeetna and Denali State Park for the first time. They did not disappoint with fall colors exploding and some unpredicted sunshine. 

Perfect camping spot

Fall colors popping strong up north

Riverside beach

Training continued with beautiful skies and a move towards more intense training as we get our bodies ready for racing. But Alaska is nothing if not unpredictable and the rain did come. We had our two weeks of mental toughness training in which it rained everyday and the sun never appeared. I was lucky and had to zip down to the lower 48 for a friend's wedding in Iowa. I had never been to Iowa, but didn't expect much other than cornfields. I was wrong! I was pleasantly surprised to find some corn fields, but also nice towns, nice people, single track trails, beautiful rivers, and nice bluffs above them, not to mention that it was beautifully sunny the whole time. It was essentially a high school reunion for me with some of my closest friends all making the journey and every minute of the trip was full of laughs, smiles, and lots of hugs. 

The beautiful bride

The neat church where the wedding took place

The happy couple, so happy they're blury

Catching a free ride on the Spongebob Squarepants rollercoaster at our layover next to the Mall of America

The Whole Gang

The last time we were all together, maybe 2009? 

Running with brother

My new Iowa Fan Club. Randy's store made us great burgers and shuttled us for an afternoon canoe and has promised to air the World Cup this winter!

 Upon arriving back to AK, things got intense. We pushed through the rain, ramping up the training with many hard sessions each week. This will continue through much of the fall in order to work on our racing speed and skills before the snow flies, O wait, that 2 weeks of rain, yeah, it left the mountains with quite a blanket of snow. Skiing will be here soon!

At least rain makes rainbows, back in Anchorage

Kikkan and I suited up for a wet ski

Eventually the rain broke and left snow!

Blue Skies : )

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Snowy trail

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.