After a short rest week where I put my bike away and dusted off my rollerskis, the US Combined team headed to Lillehammer, Norway. This camp was planned to bring together the US, Norwegian, and French teams for some training and some friendly comps to “check the level.”

It was a huge success from the start since we were able to bring some additional athletes and coaches to bring our total to 22 people and 16 athletes! This included the 10 members of the US Nordic Combined squad, comeback kid Todd Lodwick, and a promising group of junior skiers from across the US. France brought a four member A-team squad and Norway brought their entire NC nation with around 65 athletes! For the camp we stayed together with the Norwegians up in the mountains at Sjusjoen. Although a drive to the ski jumps, it was near the new roller ski loop that offers nearly 5km of challenging courses. Sjusjoen also has some great trails across the high open alpine hills and bogs for some fun workouts as well.

During the second week of our stay we had four competitions. Three of which were designed to mimic the new Nordic combined format for this season, a one jump and 10km pursuit race. The 4^th was an annual event in downtown Lillehammer called the “Super Sprint,” and consisted of a 200m all out uphill sprint where competitors were seeded on qualification times and went head to head through rounds of 16, 8, 4, and a final 2. These comps were a serious test for me since I have been spending a lot of time focused on cycling lately and I was eager to see how the fitness would transfer over to skiing again.

In the first event I managed to jump to 2^nd behind Havard Klemetson and just ahead of Petter Tande and Jan Schmid all from Norway. I started the race with a solid tempo and started taking the time out of Havard at 15 sec per lap but Petter and Jan were also catching me. This surprised me but as we all came together at 3km to go I relaxed and started preparing for the sprint. Jan took off at the 1km to go mark but I was able to pull him back and gap off Petter, and managed to eke it out at the line. Day two was a bit harder, Magnus Moan had missed day one but came out strong in the second comp tieing with me for second place in the jumping. As we started the race he went out pretty easy, but began to up the pace each lap until with a km to go he put in a hard acceleration which left me with nothing but to follow him in for second. The final 10km comp Johnny Spillane nailed down a 100 meter ride to take the top spot and was followed by Havard, Magnus, Petter, and I, respectively. I started about 10sec behind Magnus and Petter and though I caught Petter quickly Magnus was skiing fast and by the 7.5k mark he had reeled in Johnny and Havard and left them to go on for the win. I skied in for 5^th and was followed in by Todd Lodwick who had his top showing of the series with a 6^th place. For complete results go to www.usnoco.com

The Street Sprint was probably the most exciting comp of the week. Although I finished my day 11^th getting knocked out in the first round of 16, Todd Lodwick showed off his “old-man” strength by defeating each of his opponents handily seeming to cruise in. In the Semi-final he went up against the three-time defending champion Magnus Moan and managed to take him down to enter the finals, which he also won against Havard.

All in all it was an awesome camp in which we had a great showing, and it more importantly it gave some younger skiers from both country’s a chance to meet and compete with each other and with some of the top NC skiers in the World. I want to especially thank Erik Sandoy of Norway for helping facilitate such a big crew and also Dave Jarrett for putting together this awesome trip!

Tags: combined, demong, lillehammer, lodwick, moan, nordic, roller, skiing, spillane, tande

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