Unfortunately, the last time that I managed to post something on this blog was the last time that we were in Canmore.  Here, not a whole lot has changed.  The scenery is still absolutely gorgeous, the skiing is still excellent, and there are fast people here again.  Well, I suppose the level of speed here has increased quite a bit, and I would guess that the field is significantly deeper than in November.  There might be a couple more nations represented here, and I swear I never had to take a bus to the venue before.  So really the Canmore scene has changed quite a bit, and definitely for the better.  They definitely know how to put on a good show here, and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer. So far, the skiing has been impeccable, and there are rumors of a snow-covered down town festival complete with trucked in snow.

Canmore is renown for it's mountains, and they were awesome this morning as you can see.

APU is representing well: we have a large contingent of three men and five women competing here at the World Cup.  Some of us are old hands at this, others are wide-eyed first timers just soaking up the scene.  We have done a pretty good job this year at loading the international travel teams with APU athletes.  In addition to the eight here we have three going to the Olympics, and had three at  the u23 World Championships in Hinterzarten, Germany.  APU puts a lot of emphasis on developing athletes that will be internationally competitive, and this is a good first step.  To be competitive, you have to get there first!  Also, the fact that the whole team gets to travel so much is very important.  For me, honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to come here if I didn’t have a team that travels the entire SuperTour early in the season.  That’s where I got enough points to come here.  And this is something I that I definitely don’t want to miss!

Skiing is just really sweet here!

Tomorrow is the 10k and 15k freestyle race, and we have a couple of athletes who are really excited to tackle the massive uphills on this course.  It will be really awesome to see how they line up against the rest of the world here!

Holly was a photographic genius for getting this shot with the mountains in the background

And we are all super psyched to be here!

Just a quick update:

We are here in Canmore, and the first day of classic sprinting is over.  We had a decent day, with both of the first Americans being APU skiers.  The day was not quite so good for Americans overall however, with quite a few of them sitting out of the rounds. Full results are on Zone 4. Laura Valaas from APU was 6th, and 1st American.  Mark Iverson was 7th, and 1st American.  I had a great time cheering them on, and we are all proud of their results today.  It was also a great day to learn more about tactics and watch some really fast skiers doing their thing.

Tomorrow we have another identical classic sprint race, so it’s a chance for some of us to improve on todays result.

Here are some pre-race photos:

This is a truly world class venue.

Our coaches are out waxing almost all of the time, here they are taking a rare break.

Katie Ronsse and Kassandra Rice skiing thursday morning, enjoying the snow speed and scenery.

Canmore is a really beautiful area

The last ski in Silver Star, it was a super fun distance ski with awesome teammates and an alpine run finish.

First, a quick recap of the races in Silver Star:

On Saturday we did a 10 and 15k skate race.  The cold conditions and hilly course made it a long and difficult race that rewarded tough skiers.  After dominating the American field this year so far, Holly Brooks also beat the Canadian racers that day, edging Dasha Gaiazova by 8.5 seconds.

Holly is on a roll this season!

Taz and I rounded out the top 10 for APU Women with 6th and 9th places.  Full results can be found at here.

James Southam took second in the Men’s 15k race behind Garrott Kuzzy, on a day when American skiers dominated the top 5. More results here.

James laid down a solid 2nd place.

Sunday’s sprint got off to a decent start, and developed into a really great day for APU, with 4 of our girls in the A final!  Having qualified 3rd, 7th, 14th, and 19th, Holly, Kassandra, Katie and I worked our way through the heats to meet in the A final.   Following Dasha’s 1st, Holly and Katie had a photo finish for 2nd, Kassie got 4th, and I barely missed 5th in a photo finish with Rebecca Dussault.  APU skier Laura Valaas also qualified well, getting 2nd in the prelim, but didn’t race the heats due to a minor illness.

APU ladies took 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th in Sunday's sprint race

Mark Iverson had a blistering day finishing 4th, leading the mens team which had 3 skiers in the B final as well.  Anders Haugen finished 7th, winning the B final, Mike Hinckley was 8th behind him, and Brent Knight was 10th.  The APU men finished the heats in significantly better places than their qualifying places too.

Iverson was very happy with his 4th place in the sprint race

Silver Star is an amazing place to be a ski racer.  The accommodations are excellent, there is skiing right from your house, and the race courses are challenging both technically and aerobically.

As a young athlete, getting to be on the road with APU is an important learning opportunity.  Because we are able to have coaches on the road for 5 weeks straight in the early season, I am getting much more racing experience than I would if I only made it to West and Bozeman.  I know that I learned more than a few things tactically on Sunday here, as well as in the sprint in Bozeman.  Courses with substantial climbs like you might find at world junior championships or U23s are important to experience, and Silver Star is an excellent example. Also, it’s a total blast!  I love getting to start the season, head out on the road, and spend a bunch of time with the team. Traveling and racing is exciting and super fun, but is also hard work. While it’s great to hang out with your teammates all of the time, it also takes some cooperation and compromise.  There are chores to do, and skis to be worked on, and of course training once or twice daily.  Basically it’s very very fun, but also fulfilling, productive and definitely worth taking advantage of.

We are a large travel team. This really hit home as we were skiing in a group for some photos, because we really took a lot of room to maneuver.

The big blue mob coordinating and synchronizing, which took some serious teamwork!

Unpacking and sorting skis upon arrival to Silver Star

APU team Conoco muscle shot

APU, looking sharp.

We have a good time together, even when trying to take team pictures at -4ºF

After some strong APU performances in Bozeman, the team just finished traveling to our next race venue in Canada: the Sovereign Lake Nordic trails.  They  are located near Silver Star ski resort in the Vernon, BC area. Learning our lesson from our 18 hour drive last year, we made the trip in two parts with an overnight stop in Colville WA.  We had some great races in bozeman, and APU skiers looked especially strong in the striding sections of the course at Bohart.  Here are a few shots from the weekend:

The top three women finishers at the sprints in Lindley Park

Holly and I were 1st and 3rd

James celebrates his victory on top of the podium at Bohart Ranch after the classic race

Holly and James both won at Bohart Ranch, I was 4th. It was a good day for APU!

The big news from the drive was that the SuperTour rankings had come out, and APU Women are 1,2, and 3!  James Southam is also holding a strong position in 4th.

Now that we are in Silver Star, all there is to do is keep training, ski prepping, and get ready for some skate races this weekend!

We are finally on the road and happy to be here!  After an amazingly smooth travel day, we arrived in West Yellowstone to excellent skiing and more snow on the way.  It’s always exciting to get the season underway, and traveling with APU is as good as it gets.  We flew into Bozeman, leaving pretty darn early from Anchorage:

We made one stop at Costco in Bozeman for food, and left with 8 carts of goodies, then headed straight to West.

Skiing the next day was beautiful.  The great thing about West Yellowstone, other than the races, people, and event, is the chance to really get your skis figured out.  We have spent the last few skis organizing, testing, and prepping skis for the season.

We have a lot of skis!  Our coaches and tech work really hard, testing all day yesterday and today, trying every single pair that every single athlete has.  They are extremely good at waxing and ski testing, so it’s an awesome resource for us as athletes.  It’s good to know that your coach is going the extra mile to make sure that come race day, your skis will help rather than hinder your performance.  As an APU athlete, I have never had a problem with wax during a race.

Other exciting things:

New Uniforms!

We look really good this year, thanks to functional and fashionable uniforms from Swix.

Thanksgiving dinner, which is usually a team affair, was held on Sunday because of races before and after Thursday.  Making the whole dinner is a great teamwork opportunity, and this year it was superb.  It’s always nice to share that with great teammates and coaches.

We are really looking forward to racing tomorrow!

If you see us on the trails or are in the neighborhood, don’t hesitate to stop by and chat.  We love to talk to people, and are more than willing to answer questions about APU.

We are psyched about the upcoming racing season…

Throughout the year we train our bodies to cover a race course as quickly as possible, and skis are what we count on to carry us from start to finish.

As our program has developed, we have created a system of ski management.  We have 20 athletes, each with a fleet of skis designed to accommodate all the variable conditions we encounter.

We employ a wax tech/fleet manager year round to help each of our athletes continually develop, maintain and test their fleets. During the summer months we are fortunate to be able to test skis at the Thomas Training Center on Eagle Glacier.   In the fall, we ski at Hatcher Pass on early season snow, where we refine our fleets before the race season.

During the  season we take advantage of each race venue and their unique conditions to test wax, grinds, structure and all of our skis.  Last year we had 47 testing days while on the road.  We tested 5 different complete lines of kick wax, 5 different lines of glide wax, 50 grinds and over 300 pairs of skis.  We tested the effects of different binding placements, different ways to mark kick zones, and different ways to make hairies.

Using the data we have gathered, we have been able to fine tune our system.  Each athlete now has a fleet of skis that consists of 10-15 pairs of skis all picked for different conditions.  All of our bindings are mounted based on each skis characteristics, and every pair of classic skis has kick zones based on weight, body proportions.

Last year we found Swix waxes to consistently be amongst the fastest waxes we tested.  For that reason, we will be racing on Swix exclusively this year.

Today was our official start to the race season! Today our women’s team leader Kikkan Randall, kicked off a great start in Beitostolen with a seventh place in the qualifier and ninth overall. Training and preparations are on track with Kikkan’s skiing strong and making good developments over the training year.

Here at home we have had a good start to the season with a good balance of on snow training and dry land. In the last two weeks, we have had 2 sprint time trails for our Sprint Team and our Distance team completed a good 10/15km classic and 21/28km skate time trials. Fun to see the improvements over the training year.

Today we hit a solid interval training with repeats on our favorite loop. Depending on the athletes goals and body type work outs were designed from L3,L4,L5, and L6. Video is included. Conditions were sweet with 20 deg F and Swix LF7 as the choice of the day.

Here is the video and some pictures:

This is a double pole session. Glenn Alps has been really sweet. I think this is some of the best early season terrain with gradual rolling terrain. It is inspiring to ski at Glenn Alps with the mountain right at your side!

Brent Knight shaking it out before a hard charge

Happy after laying down some mean times…It looks fun to go that fast!

Holly Brooks ripping up the first climb…One fast coach!

APU Women's Team enjoying their cool down

Yeah…That was sweet!

A little team fun…

Look forward to seeing everyone in West Yellowstone!

Erik

We skied today. It was awesome. Swix VR 50, 38 moose, two trophy bulls sparring, and perfect early season skiing. I can’t wait for the race season to begin! Erik.

Ky Eiben, Erik Flora, Don Haering, and Kikkan Randall enjoy a ski at Glenn Alps, only 10 minutes from Erik's house. Pretty sweet!

September and October are great months in Anchorage for training. The fall provides a perfect environment to ski train with cool temps, spectacular mountains, and endless adventures. Our Elite team has been busy in the last weeks getting ready for the season. During the last period we focused on power. Our recent test results are unparalleled with 19/20 positive adaptations. Here are a few pictures. Train hard and enjoy. Erik.

Kikkan Randall building power in uphill V2

Tazlina Mannix cranking it up Potter 1km for stage 2 of testing.

Mark Iverson laying down a top time for L4 course and just getting fast!

Good day of testing. Train, measure, assess, plan, repeat…

The test results are in and they are good…Yeah!!

APU operates Thomas Training on Eagle Glacier. It is a summer ski facility. Coaches had a little work to finish before ski season started, so we started in the clouds and ended up in the sunshine at 6,000 feet. Gorgeous October sun!

Just beautiful. This is looking East off the porch at the Thomas Training Center.

APU Women's team getting stronger everyday, as a team!

APU coaches doing everything they can to get the season started with fresh tracks! We look forward to seeing you on the trails this winter.