Kikkan, James, Holly, and I have settled in our “Olympic” home in the athlete village. Today we had our first interval session on the Olympic courses. I love the skiing here! The climbs are long, the downhills are fast, and most importantly the snow is just like our glacier facility on the Thomas Training Center. The session was very good. It is fun to see the athletes looking good and skiing very well on the tricky conditions. The more experience we gain the better we are! There are a lot of thoughts on how to develop a US skier, my belief is that you have to train hard and train hard at skiing. The complexity of our the movements in cross country skiing favors those who cover a lot of km’s so you can learn the 1000 different ways to kick a ski. Last week we skied in the pristine conditions of Canmore, where the track was hard and the kick was easy. Here at the Olympics the snow is like soup. It is hard to believe it is even the same sport as Canmore. The surface is extremely variable and the kick has to be precise. In Canmore you feel like a technical expert with an easy kick, where in Vancouver you have to be a technical expert to even find the kick. This is a very cool sport. I can’t wait to start rolling!

-Erik Flora

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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!