I’m back to the blog! for the past few weeks I’ve been living off the grid and enjoying some spring break, but now with the official start to the training season right around the corner I will be back with more updates than ever before. 

this year’s vacation, or what came to be known as SB09, started for me in Park City. I arrived there straight from Europe feeling tired and on the verge of getting really sick. Most xc athletes can agree that spring time colds are the worst… and literally from the minute I stepped off the plane I came down with a nasty one. Part of me thinks I had been fighting off a sinus infection during my last few races of the season, so it was one of those things where as soon as I was done with all the stress it finally caught up with me. So for the first week of SB09 i wasn’t feeling too hot, but at least I was feeling shitty in Park City and not at the wedgewood. nothing against all my homies in AK. 

I had been trying to put together a surf trip… which is typically what we try to do this time of year. My go to spot during the spring has been the Pacific side of Costa Rica so I started looking for flights there. Turns out it costs a lot to get anywhere these days so the vacation crew kept on getting smaller and smaller since no one had the money to go anywhere. But I wasn’t giving up on SB09.  My surf trip ideas went from Costa Rica, to Mexico, to driving to California, and finally settled on North Eastern Utah. So it wasn’t going to be an epic surfing vaca, but we were going to do our best to fins some fun. 

As it turns out we picked a hell of a year to have our spring break in Park City because during the first week of SB09 we were hit with some of the best spring skiing conditions ever in Utah. It was actually the best skiing conditions I had been in any where, at any time, during my entire life. within a matter of days we had everything from T-shirt skiing to waist deep powder and then back to sun again. it was amazing. I think I tripled the amount of Alpine skiing I’ve done over the past two years just in those two weeks. Every day we had a solid crew to ski with too. Jess and her jumper buddies were always ready to head out. Sturla, a  Norwegian Nordic combined skier that lived with Billy-D, was in town. Along with his friend Eirik, who is a special jumper for Norway. So those dudes were fully embracing the spirit of SB09 and were my skiing partners on most days along with Jess. 

Even with all the Alpine action going on I was able to bust out the nordie skis for the 2nd annual short-short distance nationals at Cory Wubbles’ house. With all the snow around it was no problem to push together a solid course with everything from table tops to tripples…. which were deadly for everyone… to some S turns, and a gnarly quarter pipe finish. The thing with the short-short distance nationals is that they’re held at night every year which made it hard to get any good pics. Zack Simons defended his title by posting the fastest time and is now undefeated in the event.  

I’ve returned back to Vermont now that SB09 is over and I’ve been working back into the training over the past few weeks. The focus has been on a lot of easy training, some hiking of stratton and hitting the pipe… but also some harder stuff with the accessional level 4 roller ski work out and some tough gym sessions. The official start to the training year, the big year, the Olympic year is on Monday… so that’s when I will start a more serious schedule including double sessions and two interval workouts a week. The break was fun, SB09 was a blast, but I’m stoked to get back into it. It was 80 degrees here in Vermont today so it definitely feels like it’s time to start summer training. with the start of the new training year I’m going to try to be better about putting up more frequent updates here on the blog as I start working out here in VT and throughout our many US Ski Team camps. the first of which is starting in a few weeks in Bend. so check back. here are some pics from the legendary SB09. 

a big day for the ski crew: Casey Simons, Annelies Cook, Lowell Bailey, Allisa Johnson, Andy Newell, Jeremy Teela,  Kyle Lockhart, and Lidsay Van

                                                     after the hike to the top of Baldy at Snow Bird

                                                        getting ready for the Short-short distance nationals

                                                                          TD and racer Andrew Johnson

                                                                          Carl Swenson on course

                                                    having some trouble….. before I got a head lamp on

                                         The ‘beach’ at Deer Valley…. Jess working on her goggle tan

                             Sturle and I planning the day. We were probably texting each other.