Mass start on narrow bridges = pile ups. here is one of many during the race yesterday. I make it through by skiing on half snow half people on the left hand side (bib 41) Brian gets stuck in traffic before being tamahawked by a Swede going 50mph.

What an awesome couple days here in Norway! Drammen was an intense scene but it was also wicked fun. This is for sure my favorite time of the year since we have several races each week in some of the coolest world cup venues. Absolutely no down time whatsoever. So fresh off the podium in Drammen we were back on the start line for the skate sprint in Oslo. It’s really just incredible atmosphere here and even training days are exciting with the locals camped out on the side of the trail, sitting in the sun, and offering you hot dogs and beer. some days you can come in after a ski and smell like a campfire. I really can’t wait to race the 50k here one day. The sprint on sunday was no joke either with a reported 30,000 people in attendance… which we hear is going to be nothing compared to next year’s world champs. It wasn’t the greatest race for me, but despite how I was feeling I was happy to come away with a top 10 and to still be in contention for the sprint cup. the real highlight of the day was watching kikkan bring it home into the final stretch and finish 2nd! it’s really been an awesome few days for the US ski team here on the spring WC.
Tomorrow morning we are bussing out to Stockholm for the final sprint of the season and the first stage of the World Cup final mini tour which will end with 3 back to back races on Falun.

Well that was definitely an experience. The Olympics are unlike any event we participate in and it really is an incredible thing to be a part of. I’m sure there was a fair amount of coverage going on over the past two weeks so I won’t go into the racing too much but it’s obvious that it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me. Crashing out of the sprint was pretty tough to take and definitely took a lot of wind out of my sails, but I was also lucky enough that it wasn’t the defining moment of my Olympic experience. It was so frustrating for me because I felt great… and had been feeling awesome all week leading up to the event. I wasn’t too nervous, I wasn’t too calm, just excited and ready to race so when I wasn’t able to make up the time in qualification after my little trip off course it was pretty devastating. I know I was fit and fast enough to make it to the final, but that didn’t mean a whole lot after placing outside the top 30, so all I could do was look to the next event and wait for another day to prove myself in the sprint.
Although I didn’t have the same medal contention feeling in my other two events I was really thankful to be able to race two other times during the Games, and each event was super exciting. Starting the first leg of the relay at the Olympic for the US is something I have dreamed about since I was a little kid so it was amazing to get that opportunity. When you’re skiing in an event like the Olympics you really feel how cross-country skiing is anything but an individual sport and you’re part of something bigger than just your event. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a very successful Games for me, or the US XC team for that matter, but as a country we killed it. And as for our ‘team USSA’ we had a record breaking Olympics, scoring more medals in the ski and snowboard events than in the history of the organization. For me thats a major motivation, because once the XC team can truly pull our own weight the US can confidently say we are the best skiing and snowboarding nation in the world. And I know we’ll get there. It was great to have my buddies Johnny and Billy there to kick ass and give some perspective. Johnny was always reminding me that after being World Champion in 2003 he had to wait 7 years to get a shot an an Olympic medal. And the NC crew came through in big way.
So with the Olympics behind me I’m definitely ready to look ahead to the world cups and finish off the year strong. We flew all the way from Vancouver to Lahti Finland last night to get ready for this weekend. The schedule for this weekend is a 30k on Saturday and a relay on sunday. There is also ski jumping and Nordic combined events so we might even get to throw together a relay despite having a small team. so now that the madness of the Olympics are over I’m going to be back on the bloggin and tweeting and all that so stay tuned to follow the team throughout the last month of racing.
here are two of the three pictures I have on my computer from the Games. I’m really bad about taking pictures.

it happens……. bored in Canmore

Conditions are incredible here in Canmore. Even though there isn’t a ton of snow the race trails are still groomed rock hard every morning and the skiing on the tourist trails is still pretty epic too. There are not a lot of teams training here right now but I think there will be more and more people showing up each day, some from Europe and some from Silver Star where a lot of National teams have been training. Right now it’s just Kikkan, bird, and myself staying in the hotel but the rest of the USST crew should be arriving this afternoon.
So far training has been kind of relaxed for me as I adjust to the altitude, but I’ll kick it off tomorrow with some level 4 intervals on the sprint course. Not a whole lot else to report on. I’m really stoke that we get to have so many athletes there to compete at these world cups. Just today we were in the wax cabin and Justin pulled out a massive bag of credentials which really showed how big our team is going to be for the weekend. so it got me fired up to have a big crew to represent the US on the world cup.

here is a cool video that was forwarded to me. it’s a piece by the Christian Science monitor on the state of xc skiing in the US.
here is the link:
 http://www.csmonitor.com/multimedia/vide…

With only one more day left in Vermont before heading out to Canmore, I have to admit I’ve had a pretty awesome time at home. It’s not very often I get to come home during the middle of the winter so it was really cool to be able to see buddies and experience eastern skiing at it finest. I even got a chance to meet up with the BKYSL practice and talk with the kids a little bit. I think there is something like well over 100 kids in the Prospect league and over 30 lollipopper aged kids. thats a J6 I think….So it’s a good sing of things to come.
The first 4 days I has at home were incredible…. perfect hard packed skiing 25 degrees and sunny every day. This was followed directly by a day of 50 degrees, howling winds and pouring rain. I was just lucky enough to have a 3 hour OD planned on that day too. Pretty brutal.
After a full day of hard rain it’s been back to winter here and the skiing actually held up OK. I did a 15K skate time trial this morning at Prospect and it was actually really sweet skiing accept for one sketchy icy downhill. But that’s why you’ve got to love eastern skiing. On Friday Morning I’m back on the road and heading to Canmore. I really excited to get the bib back on and race again… and I really can’t wait to get to Vancouver. Only two weeks away!

skiing at prospect

After leaving Estonia on Monday morning I was able to make it back to Vermont without any major problems. I flew from Tallinn through Brussels on to DC and then back up to Albany where it is then just an easy hour drive to my house. So it wasn’t a very bad travel day and I came home to some great winter conditions here in Southern VT. The snow at my house can be hit or miss during the winter sometimes because of the mild weather but the snow it actually pretty good right now, and even better up in the mountains where the xc trails are. So I’ve had some easy training for the past two days but have still managed to make it up to prospect each day. This morning I had a great breakfast with Peter Graves down at the Blue Benn, which is an awesome old school diner we have here in Bennington. It’s the full on silver trailer type diner that serves everything from turkey dinners to 24 hour breakfast. So after that I headed up the mountain in some perfect freshly falling snow and hit the Prospect trails a little bit with my mom. It’s really great to be back home and skiing around on the trails I grew up practicing on as a BKYSL skier.
So my life is going to be pretty chill for the next week while I’m home. A lot of my buddies are out of town but as soon as they’re back we’ll get a little rowdy before I have to head out to Canmore and prepare for the Olympics. Well, I promised pics from last weekend’s wax tech relay… so here we go!

Swedish skier Charlotte Kalla runs beside her wax tech giving a split. Finish, Norwegian, and Russian athletes look on.

The fans show up for the tech relay…. it’s even televised on local TV.

Peter J and Justin smiling before their intense race cough sets in. good times.

The skiing here in Otepaa has been bomber the past few days with cold temps and really hard classic tracks. It’s been pretty cold a few days but nothing too intense, just great extra blue skiing. The first two days here I just got in some easy distance training on the Tartu marathon course… it’s an awesome track that runs 65k’s through the Estonian country side. On Wednesday Stefan Kuhn and I hammered out some level 4 intervals together here on the sprint course. I guess at this point it’s kind of the norm, but this course is a long tough one because of it’s signature finishing stretch which feels like an eternity when you’re tired. So during intervals we tried to work on some strong double pole finishes and get used to the way the course skis. Since I’m the only US athlete here this weekend things haven’t been too exciting although we do get to eat lunch and dinner over at the Bunker. yeah the bunker. Anyone who has seen this place knows what I’m talking about… so I’ve been living off pickles and potatoes but at least there are a bunch of other people to eat with. Peter J and joaki are also here which is awesome and they’re already fired up about the wax tech relay going on tonight and with Justin as their third man I think they’ve got a pretty good team. It’s going to be a good one. I’ve never seen hammering like what goes down in the tech relay here every year. It’s under the lights and there are a lot of fans and athletes cheering everyone on, and people get after it. I’ll try to get some pictures and post them next time I get a chance.
I really wanted to do a video update while I was here but we don’t have a video camera with us so I couldn’t really show you guys around the stadium. but I did grab some pics this morning. Racing starts tomorrow with a 10 and 15k classic and then the classic sprints the next day.

300 plus meters of pure double pole hammering and the colosseum like stadium that is Otepaa.

my swedish bro’s…… waxers by day, racers by night…. at least for tonight.

when you can make it out of the wax cabins and to the ski trails without getting hit by a door…. your day is off to a good start.

First off…. just saw Tim Burke finish second a few minutes ago in the Biathlon World Cup! That gets be fired up!… but I’ve also decided that one of the most painful things I have to do as an athlete is watching ski races. For real, it sucks big time. With a lot of free time here in Europe and the remainder of the Tour de Ski playing out over the past few days it has been tough to have to sit back and watch so many races on TV. It’s a real bummer…. I just kind of sit here and get really antsy and pissed off that I’m not racing, I pace around the apartment and swear really loudly at the television. It’s definitely not a relaxing way to spend your afternoon. It’s kind of the same deal as Cook watching the packers… I’ve seen it many times and it’s not pretty.

But besides that things have been great here in Oberwiesnthal. There has been a little bit of snow and wind but the tracks are in great shape and it’s actually felt really good to be able to put in a few days of distance training since sometimes on the world cup that can be hard to do. It just so happens that here are some OPA continental cup races going on here this weekend too so there has a lot of other people to hang out with and ski with. Including Stephan Kuhn of Canada, Trond is here with some Swiss skiers, and the usually OPA cup scene. After a few days of easy training and some strength, which got me so sore I can barley sit down my legs hurt so much, I got back into the intensity today with some classic intervals. The plan for the afternoon is to hit the gym again before Grover and I make out way back to Prague where I’ll be flying out to Tallinn Estonia. Our time here in Oberwiesenthal was productive but I for sure would never want to be part of a one man team…. Much more fun with everyone else around. Stoked to get back into the racing in Otepaa.

a winter day here in Oberviesenthal