Rosy's field (along the Birkie trail) following the snow storms

This month has proven to carry a refreshing variety of training temperatures and trail conditions.  Upon returning from the perfect trails resulting from the blizzards in West Yellowstone, I was greeted by enough snow to rock ski on my favorite trail, The Birkie Trail.  Even with sparse snow it makes for endless enjoyable skiing.   Within a couple days there were enough flurries to perfect the trails before an arctic front blew in from the north.  With Temperatures plummeting into the negative teens the mask, ear bags, and thick polypro clothes came out.

Morning run at -17 F

The cold front was followed by mild temperatures which were spent in northern Minnesota with Carolyn and her family.  It was a nice treat being able to ski a Giants Ridge and Hidden Valley  wearing less than 3 layers of clothes!  To conclude December, Cork and I drove to Rumford, Maine for Senior Nationals and met up with the rest of the team.  Here we have been greeted by warm sunny weather.  Even though I love spring skiing weather, it would be nice if the warmth could wait in order to preserve the trails until the competitions are complete!

The stadium (clean section of trail) at the Senior Nationals venue

Rosy's field (along the Birkie trail) following the snow storms

This month has proven to carry a refreshing variety of training temperatures and trail conditions.  Upon returning from the perfect trails resulting from the blizzards in West Yellowstone, I was greeted by enough snow to rock ski on my favorite trail, The Birkie Trail.  Even with sparse snow it makes for endless enjoyable skiing.   Within a couple days there were enough flurries to perfect the trails before an arctic front blew in from the north.  With Temperatures plummeting into the negative teens the mask, ear bags, and thick polypro clothes came out.

Morning run at -17 F

The cold front was followed by mild temperatures which were spent in northern Minnesota with Carolyn and her family.  It was a nice treat being able to ski a Giants Ridge and Hidden Valley  wearing less than 3 layers of clothes!  To conclude December, Cork and I drove to Rumford, Maine for Senior Nationals and met up with the rest of the team.  Here we have been greeted by warm sunny weather.  Even though I love spring skiing weather, it would be nice if the warmth could wait in order to preserve the trails until the competitions are complete!

The stadium (clean section of trail) at the Senior Nationals venue

By Benjamin Lannin

On a recovery day what better way to spend it than with family giving thanks to The One through whom all good things come.  Hope every one out there is having an awesome Christmas, recovering mentally and physically, as race season goes into full swing.  We have had great snow in Traverse, just hope it survives the warm up that is on the horizon.  My prays go out to all who have suffered through any of my blogs.  May you have rocket fast boards and a tail wind in all your races in the new year.

Greetings from the sauna

Chrstmas carb load

Merry Christmas!

Holy Moly, today’s been one crazy morning! (crazy in a good way, of course…) Despite me being a bit of a disorganized mess, I got a ton of help from my teammates and coaches and learned how to just roll with what happens. Funny how NOBODY was surprised at all of this….just another day in the life of a Junior trying to get her life organized!

(The lovely house of Rick and Sheryl Ewings, where the CXC women are staying.)

Here’s the deal: I have a whole list of things that I goofed up and things that weren’t actually my fault either but still got goofed up. All of which ended up okay!

I forgot my contact lenses this morning and since my eyesight is just bad enough that I can’t legally drive, I decided it’d be okay and hopefully I wouldn’t trip over an ice chunk. Last week I lost my race suit bottoms so I dug up last year’s suit to race in. I lost my hair binders (Jennie found them for me), and I broke my watch but was able to make it reset by popping off the back. Melissa and I accidentally switched one of our boots (her orthotics were super comfy though) but we got it figured out before we left the warming hut. I had the pleasure of cutting up a hat into a headband so I could race in a headband like I usually do and still be sponsor correct (that part was really fun).

Aaaaand….right before my sprint start, someone accidentally grabbed my poles. I spent the last seven minutes of my warm up in absolute freak-out mode, looking all over for what simply wasn’t there. I even asked the race announcer to give a shout-out to the coaches to see if they could grab me a pair of poles from a girl who’d already finished the sprint, but the girl who’d accidentally been using my poles found me about a minute before I started. And of course, I got a lot of crap from everyone after the race about not having my poles with me – how typical.

I actually think that all of this was the best thing that could have happened to me, because it got my adrenaline pumping hard and since I’m sure I’ll encounter weird things in the future, I’m now prepared!

The view from the Ewings’ deck. Beautiful!

Rossland is such a nice town – it’s really pretty with some seriously sweet views!

The girls went on a jog overlooking town…

Ninja style!

Looking forward to the 5km skate tomorrow. Getting ready to race hard again!

By Jennie Bender

 I was skiing along the far trails, when I rounded a corner and there was a huge bear in the trail only feet from me. I hockey stopped and accidentally sprayed him with snow, making him angry. Wanting to make myself look big and intimidating, I held my jacket open and growled as loud as I could. Unfazed, the bear lunged closer, so I took off my skis and stood on guard with my ski pole as a sword, swinging it violently. He took another step closer and I cracked him upside the head and stared him in the eye, saying, don’t mess with me bear…

What do you think, good story? Yeah I didn’t think so either, but I thought about this scenario frequently when I was alone on the trails out on dead dog or windy ridge. I am pretty sure you aren’t supposed to do any of those things if you see a grizzly bear, and play dead instead. Yes, my reasonable voice could assure me that bears were all sleeping this time of year. Perhaps it’s my wild imagination or all of the bear memorabilia in this town, but I definitely did a few I’m-alone-and-slightly-freaked-out pickups during the two weeks that just the CXC team had been in West Yellowstone.  But really, there’s a bear statue as the towns center roundabout, tons of stuffed bears, shirts, bear cups, bear posters, bear hats, and a bear exhibit where you can see live bears. So, my paranoia has some foundation.

If you followed the updates or got marooned in or outside of the festival, you’d already know it has been one of the best snow years they have had in a while. The day before we left it was sunny, and for the first time in two weeks I could see a full cloud-less 360 degrees of landscape surrounding the town. Gorgeous I might add.

Our next adventure is underway, as we headed out to Canada on Monday. The drive was quite scenic and I have never been in this neck of the woods before. The combination of lakes, mountains, and valley of fruit trees in Washington kept me staring out the window.

We pack quite the load…

Today was our first day skiing in Silver star Canada, which is on top a mountain and paired with an alpine resort. We traded our plush queen size beds for twin bunk beds tightly packed into a small apartment, but it’s cozy enough.

The poor van after over a month on the road gets a beating.

More stories to come…

By: Jessie Diggins

It’s amazing, the things you learn about your teammates when you’re crammed into a van on the road from West Yellowstone, Montana to Silver Star, Canada. And the pictures aren’t bad, either.

This is how we started out…

And this is the van 2 hours later.

I learned that Kuzzy secretly wants to snuggle up to Cook. I learned that if I go into the trailer to dig out my passport, I’ll get locked in the dark for 10 minutes. I learned that I get nauseous on the twisting road through the mountains. Don’t get me wrong; the drive was beautiful, but I had to close my eyes a lot to keep from getting carsick with all the swooping turns.

Welcome to Idaho!

But the biggest thing I learned today? Yogi Berra has a lot of good quotes for traveling. Thanks to Adele Espy for sending me some quotes in an email. It made my whole day better.

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

“Nobody goes there anymore…it’s too crowded.”

and…”If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

We stopped in Omak, Washington for the night at the Omak Inn. Best hotel I’ve ever been in, period. There was a full-on couch in our spacious room!

Next morning we set out to cross the Canadian border. As expected, I got a lot of crap for being a dual-citizen. And somehow, I’m being made fun of for having an accent. Weird, since usually I get slammed for having a Minnesotan accent. Not sure how I can have both…

The Okanagan Valley. And the Ogopogo lives in the that lake. For those of you who don’t know, the Ogopogo is the Loch Ness of the West. It’s a sea serpent. Don’t believe me? Google it. It’s there.

Crossing into Canada…

And the coolest thing of the day? Seeing a Nordic Skier painted onto the side of building. YEAH!

So close! So close! Following the elevation on Jennie’s GPS was cool to watch as we climbed up to Silver Star.

Silver Star is such a beautiful town; the trees are perfectly frosted with snow, the houses are adorable and all different shapes and colors, and at night most of them are dressed to the nines with twinkling lights. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures as it was getting dark when we arrived but I will post some soon on my website: jessiediggins.com.

Our house is sweet, but nothing’s as cool as the bunk room where the boys are sleeping.

Cook showing off the “man cave”.

I think it’s appropriate to end this post with a good ‘ol Yogi Berra quote:

“I never said most of the things I said”.

Nygren

I am headed back to Minnesota Monday to prepare for US National after three solid weeks of training in West Yellowstone.  The best way home is to fly out of Bozeman since the team van is headed north to Canada for some races.  Coincidentally my brother Hans attends Montana State in Bozeman so I am spending  the weekend with him in Bozeman before flying home Monday. Yesterday I went up to Bohart Ranch near Bridger Bowl just outside of Bozeman with Hans and the Montana team for an absolutely perfect day of skiing.  The Montana team was hosting their annual Christmas Pole ski races so the places was bustling and the mood was festive.  I had 10 x 90 sec level 4b  and 5 x 90 sec level 4a intervals on the schedule so I got out past the race course  and had an amazing workout on their outer Logger’s Loop.  The skiing was absolutely perfect.  They had recieved a sizable amount of snow a few days earlier and with it perfect grooming and clear blue skies it was definitely one of the best workouts of the year.

Today I we are going to ski in town at Linley Park .  With many groomed kilometer in town and Bohart just a short drive away I have been extremely impressed with Bozeman.  It has been great ending three weeks on the road in the comfort of my brother’s college house catching up and getting a feel for where he trains.

Once home the plan is to spend a few days taking it really easy to make sure I am recovered and then get to work preparing for Nationals.  Preparation is going to first involve getting some solid volume in.  Next the volume is going to decrease and I am going to introduce some really hard level 4 intervals. Finally the volume will be almost eliminated and with a few select intervals maintained hopefully I will be peaked ready to rock.