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 past few days in Otepaa have been better than I expected. There’s not much snow here… in fact anything other than the race trails just has a dusting of wet snow from the other day. But the skiing is still perfect with some firm klister skiing and fast skating. We’ve moved out of the bunker and into a smaller but newer hotel across the street from the stadium. Yesterday was an interval training day so the coaches had us run a mock sprint relay against each other. Cook, Torin, and I started by racing the first round of 3 laps using double pole only. We weren’t prepared to d-pole in Canmore and we definitely don’t want that happening again. After the first round we had 20 minutes to get ready for another 3 laps striding. It was a really hard work out and it was good practice for the races to be rubbing shoulders with the other guys. Today we had the afternoon off from training to Cook, Andy (our PT) and I went into Tartu for the after noon.

It took just about 30 hours, but we made it to Otepaa in one piece. We flew from Canmore to Chicago where we met up with Justin, Pete, and Kris for the flight over to Stockholm. As usual Chicago was a complete sh^%t show so we ended up sitting on the plane for over an hour while they de-iced and plowed the runways. Because of our delayed departure from Chicago we had to run to our gate in Stockholm but inevitably missed our flight to Estonia. It was only 8:30 in the morning and the next flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until after 2 in the afternoon. With several hours to kill…. and to try to stay awake… we took the train from the airport to downtown. It’s a pretty sick set up they have there in Stockholm. All you have to do is walk down some stairs from the terminal, hop on a train, and you can be in downtown Stockholm in 20 minutes.

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.

Just a quick shout out from Canmore. I arrived here on Wednesday after an early morning travel from home, but all in all it was an easy travel day. It almost feels a little weird to only travel for half a day to get to a world cup. For the past few days we’ve been getting to know the race trails and acclimating to the slight increase in altitude.

this is what my roller skis looked like after classic intervals on Wednesday. A good mix of mud, salt, and cow sh*^%t. Because of the warm temps and lack of snow I drove up to Maine on Thursday. Click more for the video update.

Well I’m back home after an exciting week of racing at the US short Distance Nationals. Houghton is a pretty sweet place but damn it’s hard to get up there. It took three different little planes to get me from Houghton to Albany today. Oh well… it was worth it because the US Nationals week was a good time.

Girls Sprint relay Podium

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