When the word gets out that there is skiing in Sjusjøen, people seem to come from everywhere in the hope of getting some early season skiing. Today, I woke up at six in the morning and quick ate some breakfast before driving up to the Sjusjøen ski center. By getting up early, my teammates and I hoped to find some good tracks with fewer people, and we did, but by eight in the morning the 5km of trails were already packed with skiers. Among the skiers were the national teams from Germany, Slovenia, Austria, and of course Norway.

In addition to busy trails, I seem to have become much more busy with the coming of snow. This past week has been full of training, school, waxing skis, and organizing for another training camp with Team Statkraft, which starts tomorrow. This time we are headed to Beitostølen, which is a small town to the northwest of Lillehammer. Our training camp will culminate with some of the biggest races of the year. The races will be televised all over Norway. I know it is only the beginning of November, but these races will decide the European Cup and World Cup teams for the Norwegians. So for many of my friends and teammates, this is a very important time. The first race on Saturday will be a sprint, and the second race on Sunday a mass start. To have the opportunity to mass start with the Norwegian national team will be great and, of course, very fast. Wish me luck

Getting new equipment is always a treat, no matter if it’s passed on or bought in a store. This year it was a bit different for me. Last Tuesday I made the 20min drive from Lillehammer to Biri, which is the small town that the ski-company Madshus calls home. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a couple months now, and the opportunity finally came to see “where skis are made.” I want to thank Peter Hale for helping me coordinate my trip to the Madshus factory.

I’m back in Lillehammer now after spending a week in Torsby, Sweden with Team Statkraft at a training camp (samling). During our time there we took advantage of the ski-tunnel and the great outdoor biathlon facilities. The weather seemed to cooperate too. It was a little cold at times to feel comfortable on rollerskis, but that’s just fine seeing as winter is right around the corner.

During our first morning, we arrived at the ski tunnel about ten minutes before it opened to join the fifty others lining up to get in. As one would imagine, this time of year is a very busy time for the tunnel. An incentive to arriving early is that those first on the tracks would enjoy the best skiing for the day, because after about two hours the snow in the 1.2 km tunnel would get a bit soft.

Last Sunday I woke up to a foggy morning, but I couldn’t see any of the snow (snø) that was predicted, only heavy frost. A little disappointed I strapped on the rollerskis and went out for my first ever “staking” (double-pole) interval session. Sure double-poling isn’t anything new, but this interval session wasn’t focused on classic skiing. Rather, we used skate skis and skate poles to isolate the specific muscles used in skating. The Norwegians make a definite distinction between this kind of “staking” I just described and classic double-poling. In my opinion it is a kind of specific upper-body strength training for skate skiing.

The seasons are changing here in Norway and that brings only one thing to mind: snow. Believe it or not, this weekend it’s probably going so snow here in Lillehammer, and, if that happens, it will be the earliest I’ve seen snow in the fall. As the title of this post suggests (”a new beginning”), now marks a time of change in the seasons, but also, and conveniently, marks the beginning of my blog on FasterSkier.

Today I finished the last race of the summer championships or “Sommer NM.” All has gone smoothly this weekend and I must say that the races here were quite competitive and well attended. The total number of participants was roughly 300. In my category, the senior men, there were only about 40, so most of the participants were in the younger age classes between 17 and 20. Even though the competitions started on Saturday, preparations started over a week ago. I also had some classes and assignments to turn in, but I pushed my focus on school to start after the races.

Preparations started last weekend when coach Torgersen asked me to produce a training plan for the week prior to the national competition. The Norwegian training philosophy before important races is that everyone has a different individual recipe for being in top physical form. Therefore, everyone had their own “training recipe” prior to these big races. Me, on the other hand, had no idea of what to do so I looked through my old training diaries (finally putting them to some good use!) and put together a plan for the week. I knew it probably wasn’t going to be perfect the first time around, but at least it’s a starting place to learn from. Anyway, I felt that my training the week before the championships was well thought out and had some benefits.

The training camp in Vik was simply amazing. I think this was one of the nicest biathlon venues I’ve ever been to. Unfortunately, I was still a bit under the weather when the camp started so I had to be careful to not exert myself too much right away. It took 5 hours of travel west of Lillehammer to get to Vik. The route took us through some amazing valleys. I’ll let the pictures I posted of the drive speak for themselves. I found it ironic that the Norwegians I was riding with had some road rage at all the tourists who were driving slowly to take in the views. In the meantime, I was a tourist myself taking pictures out the windows.

Oh my, where to begin. So much has happened the last few weeks that it’ll be hard to put everything in… I might have to make a couple posts. I guess that’s what happens if I don’t post for a couple weeks. Anyway, two weeks ago I got to go camping with all the international students from Gjøvik and Lillehammer. All of us got on a bus on a Friday afternoon and drove to a camping park near Besseggen, which is in the high mountains to the west (about 3 hours driving from Lillehammer).

Since my last post a week ago, I’ve been busy with orientation at Høgskolen i Lillehammer (Lillehammer College). All has gone well and I’m already done with a week of class. The school consists of three buildings: one main building with a library, café, and several classrooms; another with more classrooms and administration offices; and finally the media school building. The campus itself is much smaller than Williams mainly due to the student housing being located a short bus ride away. These three school buildings were originally the media buildings for the 1994 Olympics. My school schedule looks well set up to accommodate ski-training, because I don’t have class on Friday and, in addition, most of my classes start close to noon; perfect for training in the morning and afternoon. At this point it is hard to say how challenging my classes will be, but it looks like a typical workload for a college class so I’m sure there will be some challenges ahead.

Last Sunday I participated in a “low key” biathlon race at the Sjusjøen ski center. I say “low key” because there were forty competitors in the senior mens class and around 90 total competitors including men and women. This was a bit different from the Minnesota cups that have 30 total competitors, which would be a good showing.