With the pre Olympic world cups behind us we flew from Vancouver to Estonia yesterday. The weekend of racing in Whistler was unbelievable. Although we didn’t score any podiums on the cross country side it was still a pretty successful weekend with a few top 10’s and Billy D going 1 and 2 in the nordic combined races. After getting hammered with snow and fog our first few days in town we had some unbelievable racing conditions all weekend long. The classic sprint day we had solid klister tracks making the long course ski really nicely. During the sprint day I was feeling really good which is a positive sign that training has been going as planned this year. The new longer version of the sprint course made for a lot of big striding but also a long finishing stretch that favored the skiers with a strong kick. It sucked not be be in the final and have the opportunity to fight for a podium spot, but the B final was still fun and provided a good chance to hammer on the Olympic course and get used to the way it races. 

We all had a quick turn around on sunday. After racing the team sprint in whistler we loaded up all the vans with all the gear. and I’m talking about ton and tons of skis. and drove down to Vancouver to spend the night at an airport hotel. Along with the world cup crew, skiers like Hoff, liz and morgan were heading out to europe too to get ready for the U 23 worlds. That was probably the best part about racing this past weekend… having such a big team around for once. it’s sweet to see some of the younger racers improving and scoring world cup points. you can’t compete as a world class skier without a strong team behind you… and you can’t have a string team atmosphere unless you can have fun together. here on the US Ski team i think we have both those things covered. 

                                                         the crew out on the town in Whistler

                                                            team sushi night for Liz’s birthday 

                                            the fog in whistler rolled out in time for the races

hello from Whistler!

I’ve spent the last 10 days training in Park City and although I hate to miss out on our US Nationals. I have to say… I wasn’t too bummed not to be freezing my butt off in AK. I had a good chance to get in some training in Park City and relax during my two weeks off from the road. the skiing conditions here awesome at soldier hallow and some pretty mild temps made for some good hard workouts. I trained a lot with Zack Simons and we even put in a practice race at White Pine last weekend during a local citizens race. 

On Friday Morning I made my way from SLC to Vancouver and caught a shuttle bus for the 2.5 hour drive up to Whistler. Some of us came from home, others from Alaska, but now the entire team is together here in Whistler to get ready for the World Cup racing starting on Friday. Our first day here we were met with some typical crazy waxing conditions for our first work out. I went out for an easy classic ski yesterday and was slipping and sticking around on some harries skis. But thats why we’ve been spending so much time here over the past year. conditions can be perfect here… but they can also be F’d. so every day we’re hear it kind of feels like an opportunity to do our best preparation for the Olympics. That’s also why our coaches brought in a big wax team for this weekends world cups. And have been putting in some wicked long hours the past two days. Randy is here, along with all three of our Euro waxing dudes, Peter, Oleg, and UK. Sometimes the snow eases up, but it’s basically been snowing the entire time we’ve been here… one things for sure. whistler get a ton of snow. check the pics.shoveling off the roofs of the waxing cabins

the team getting unpacked 

Randy with the sickest wax gear around