The sprint today was a pretty sick. the sun came out for the first time all week and it was a wicked nice day. Having the Swedes here to hammer with was a lot of fun. It was an exciting day. Emil and Kikkan were the winners. Lars and I got in a tangle in the semi’s so we went to the b-final… I broke his pole too so sorry lars. it was still a fun day of spring ski racing. click ‘more’ for some pics!

It has been kind of a short trip to Czech but for sure an interesting one. We’re in Liberec which is where the World Champs will be held next year for xc, ski jumping, and nordic combined. Liberec is a pretty big city and there’s a lot going on here. It’s only about 100 k from Prague and after heading out on a short jog our first day here we realized it’s a fairly big…. dirty city with a lot of crazy drivers. We almost got hit several times during our 45 min run.

the view of the city from the top of the race course.

The rain was coming down hard today here in Otepaa making it a tough, wet, battle of a sprint race. I felt good today. Better than I did two weeks ago in Canmore but unfortunately I couldn’t bring home any results to prove that. I felt like I got my snappy sprint legs back, which seamed to be the thing lacking for me during the Canmore races.

The world cup racing is over here in canmore but our work isn’t done here yet. we will be staying in Canmore for another 3 days of training before heading across the pond to Estonia. This past week was thrilling, disappointing, and motivating all in one. It was the our goal on the US Ski team to have at least one podium during these races so I think we were all a little let down with some of our results. Despite some inconsistent results there were some bright moments throughout the week including Kikkan’s 8th and Kuzzy’s 9th in the skate sprint.

Today was another amazing day at the US Nationals. It was a smooth well organized sprint with perfect packed powder race trails. Its rad to come back to the states and race the US Nationals and see everyone I don’t get to hang with while on the world cups

For the past week I’ve been putting ‘money in the bank’… and its got nothing to do with cash. This is a term we athletes use to describe some of the rebuilding phases of our training.

Stratton Mt. School

I’ve been training in Vermont for about a week now. After traveling from Russia to Munich last Sunday after the race, we then flew home from Munich last Monday. I came home to some perfect winter conditions and some powdery tracks.

YEAH!!! what a weekend! congrats to kikkan! this is a huge step forward for the US XC Ski team.