Silver in Silver Star

I'm a bit late with my blog from the NorAms in Silver Star, but it's been a bit of a crazy ride since I finished the 10k skate last Sunday! More on that later, but here are a few photos from the wonderful place that is Silver Star, British Columbia. In a nutshell: frosty trees, kilometers on kilometers of perfectly groomed trails, story book houses, and a hot tub in every rental house. In other words, every skier's dream.

Checking out the race trails with Heather on a cold 
day. The 5k course in Silver Star is HARD!
Steep with sustained climbs, this one took us 10
min to ski easy (Photo Kaitlynn Miller)

The whole team bundled up for an interval day on the classic
sprint course.

Getting instructions from coach Pepa (photo Jaqui Mourao)

Our "bubble-gum pink" rental house, straight
 from the pages of a kid's Xmas story book

Sunset rip with the GRP crew

The stadium on a clear day- the organizers did a great job
with these races, they were really professional and it
was so awesome to race against all the Canadians!

Look what Mary and I found on our afternoon jog!

So, more about the races. Saturday we did a classic sprint, one of my all-time favorite events. The GRP had an awesome morning in qualification, with all 4 women finishing in the top 9, and Ben getting 14th in the men's qualifier. I qualified 6th, but knew it would be a battle to the A final. I felt better and better as the heats went on, and my teammates were all having really good days as well. Heather, Kait and I all ended up in the A Final, so it was sweet to have half of the heat in green! Plus Mary was 3rd in the B Final as she discovered some new-found sprinting speed. There was a lot of jostling in the final, but I stayed patient and put in a really hard double pole sprint at the end to take 2nd. Kait was right behind me in 3rd, and Heather took 6th. The wax techs gave us such amazing skis, so it was fun to be able to put them to good use.

The final corkscrew turn in the A Final, following Canadian
Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt and Julia Kern, who went on to win
the A Final (Photo Fasterskier)

Women's podium from the classic sprint. Congrats to Julia
on her first SuperTour win, she is a speedy young one to watch!

On Sunday we raced a 10k skate interval start. Going into the race, I had quite a bit of pressure on me because I knew I was the SuperTour leader and I needed to do well enough in the race to hold onto that position. 10k skate isn't my favorite discipline, and I knew the hills were going to be punishing. However, I also knew that my fitness wasn't going anywhere, and as long as I paced it well it was going to be ok. On the very first climb my legs started to protest and I settled in for a 10k of lots and lots of pain. Overall, not my best race, but I managed to place 8th and found out that it was good enough to hold onto the SuperTour lead.

Going into this season, I didn't really set any specific goals for placing in certain races or trying to qualify for anything in particular. I find I do better when I go with the flow and approach each race as an individual opportunity to do my best on that day. It helps me deal with race nerves and pressure to keep things more low key. So I guess it's been a really pleasant surprise to find that my fitness and racing is coming around this year. Because I held onto my SuperTour lead for period one, I'll be heading over to Europe in mid January for my first every World Cups. If everything goes according to plan, I'll race two weekends in Sweden and then fly over to South Korea for the pre-Olympic World Cups in Pyeongchang. I'm both excited and nervous to be racing World Cups! I hope to just keep taking the races one at a time, but I have no expectations beyond getting my feet wet.

Of course, I wouldn't be getting to any start lines at all without the awesome support of my team, my coaches and wax techs, and my sponsors. And big thanks to all of my friends and family for the cheers and messages from back home!

A perfect snowy distance ski after the races in Silver Star

Finishing up by riding the chairlift up to our rental house

Always an interesting time with the GRP squad- selfie stick
fun in Seattle on our layover. Thanks guys for keeping it fun!

I've now been back in Craftsbury for around a week, and it's been so nice to catch up with everyone here and to get in some skiing on the Center's trails. We raced in the Eastern Cup opener this weekend, which was a total blast because we get to race with college skiers and juniors, and most of the volunteers are either Center employees or people we know from around Craftsbury. The team at the COC did a great job with the races again (not surprising). I'll be training in Craftsbury for a few more days and then head home for the holidays and US Nationals in Soldier Hollow. Happy Holidays everyone, and hope you have snow to ski on wherever you are!

Race Season Is Here!

It's been a little while since my last post, sorry about that! I have a lot of pictures to share, but I'll try to keep the words short so that I can catch up without writing a novel.

After our camp in Park City, we had about a week at home in Craftsbury, and then did a short on-snow speed camp in Foret Montmorency up in Quebec, where they had a 2.5k saved loop from last year. It ended up being a really productive camp with high quality speed workouts, and we even managed to entertain ourselves for 4 whole days without wifi. Amazing! Anyways, after that we survived some rain in Craftsbury and packed the trailer to head out west. Luckily, the skiers got to fly to West and the techs were nice enough to drive the truck and trailer all the way across the country. 

Here's a short video of a time trial we did in Foret:

One of our activities while back in Vermont-
capturing and tagging all the chickens so that
we could send them to a new winter home.
Kait and Hallie decided to match for the occasion

Kait was considering just riding out to West in the
back of the trailer, after all we were already packed!

A wintery mix coming down at the Outdoor
Center prior to our departure.

Even though we heard reports of sketchy snow conditions in West Yellowstone, by the time we got there, the skiing was decent and a few inches of new snow every night helped get things race ready. We had about 3 days of skiing before our first races, a set of 5k FIS races that were in conjunction with the Yellowstone Ski Festival. It was really nice this year to have these races as "warm-up" races, as our first races of the year are usually SuperTours. In this case, the pressure was definitely off! We were free to treat the races as workouts and focus on nailing down all the important parts of race day: fueling, warming up, testing skis, and remembering how to go hard. That's the funny thing about the first races of the season, although we train all year and have some indications of where we are fitness-wise, it really doesn't matter until we put skis on and race. A rollerski time trial is not a race, and neither is a set of bounding intervals. So there's a nerve-wracking element to the first races, and usually a small seed of doubt, did I prepare enough? Did I do everything I could to show up to the line ready to go?

I was really happy with the first weekend of racing, as I placed 4th in the 5k skate and surprised myself by winning the 5k classic. In the past I have really struggled with the first races of the season, especially in West Yellowstone, but somehow I managed to push that out of my head and just go for it. It was also awesome to have my mom and her boyfriend out for the races- they get really excited about ski races so it was fun to ski well with them there!

Our first rental house in West Yellowstone was
called the "fox cabin", and featured decorative
fox quilts, fox stuffed animals, and about 30
fox paintings on the walls. Super bizarre

A gorgeous day for testing in West Yellowstone with Ben and Mary

Happy about snow, happy to be in West, and
generally just happy!

5k skate race, thanks Katrina Howe for the photo!

Another shot from Katrina from the 5k classic

Classic podium. 

Although we were supposed to move to Bozeman for the first SuperTours, partway through our time in West in became apparent that there wasn't going to be enough snow up at Bohart to hold the races. Luckily, West Yellowstone was generous enough to step in and offer to hold the races there, and although it meant a longer stay in West for us, we were just happy to have somewhere to race that weekend! Cabin fever can set in pretty hard in West Yellowstone, it's a small town with not too much going on in the winter. We made a lot of runs to the local coffee shop, hit the IMAX theater, watched hours of World Cup ski and biathlon footage, and before we knew it the next races we there (we may have done some skiing in there too).

Thanks to Salomon Nordic for outfitting
Kait and I with new ski boots and clothes! Here we
 are modeling our purple outfits by Yellowstone National Park

Warning, if you use my phone to take
selfies, you may end up on the blog!
Hi Mary

My favorite part of West Yellowstone is catching
up with friends from the ski world. Always love
seeing Anya, who coaches for the BSF juniors

 We moved to a new rental house,
this one with recliners, a fireplace,
and fast wifi. Upgrade!

For the SuperTour, we raced a freestyle sprint and a 10k classic individual start. For some reason I got insanely nervous on the sprint day, ran out of time to do half my warm-up, and was just hoping that my body remembered how to do this whole sprinting thing. Luckily it ended up being just fine, and when I saw I qualified in 5th I knew that I had a chance to have a good day. I've never actually made it to the semifinals on the skate sprint course in West, so that became my mission for the day. The course is super winding and flat, so positioning is everything. I fought all the way through my quarter and was really happy to place 2nd and make it to the final. Then in the semi, I had a good position the whole way and was in place to finish 2nd in the heat when I chose the wrong lane going into the finish. I ended up 3rd and missed lucky loser, so my day was over just like that. But that's sprint racing!

With a little extra motivational fuel, I refocused on the 10k the next day. That morning it was snowing really hard and the wind was howling, but it was still a race day and we had to go out there regardless. Plus the techs had already been out testing for hours. I quickly dialed in my skis and got ready to go, and when it was my turn to break the start wand, I went out on a mission. I kept getting splits the whole time that I was either 5 seconds ahead or 5 seconds behind Katherine Ogden from the Stratton team. I started near the beginning of the A seed, so I wasn't really sure what this meant and just kept pushing all the way to the line. It turns out, the reason I was getting those splits was because Katherine and I were battling for the win. I ended up winning by 7 seconds, and got my first SuperTour win! Having my dad and stepmom out cheering made it extra sweet. It's nice to start the season with confidence, rather than digging myself out of the "Yellowstone hole" of previous years. I just hope to keep it going into the next set of races, and right now am focusing on taking each start one at a time.

Finish of my semifinal heat in the skate sprint

Getting ready to go out in the blizzard in the 10k

With my dad and stepmom after the races- thanks for coming
up to watch!

We don't really look alike at all..

Women's podium- so stoked to see Kait have an
awesome race and take 3rd!!

And Ben got 2nd in the men's race, so it was a great
day for the team overall!

Thanks coach Pepa for all the cheering and
support!

Now we're in Silver Star, British Columbia, getting ready for the second weekend of SuperTours, which are also combined with a Canadian NorAm. I think Silver Star may be my new favorite place to nordic ski, and I'm really excited for the weekend's races. I'll post a (much shorter) update after this weekend!

Sometimes those travel days really get to you...

On our layover during the flight up to Canada we had 5 hours
in Seattle and took the light rail into town to check it out! Such
a sweet city

A preview of skiing in Silver Star- much more
photos like this to come!

VT --> UT

Besides winter, fall is definitely my favorite season. What's not to like- you've got cool, crisp air, even crispier fresh apples, crunchy leaves underfoot, and of course, anticipation for the coming ski season.

After the seasonal confusion of being in Slovenia and Austria and spending half our time on snow and the other half in shorts and t-shirts, I was quite happy to settle into real fall weather in Vermont. It was absolutely gorgeous training weather, and we hit peak foliage at the perfect time this year. The focus of our two weeks in Vermont was on rediscovering our speed, after having buried it a bit under some long distance training in Austria! Although the first few days back felt a bit like getting run over by a truck, I was happy to find those good speedy feelings again by the end of the speed block. 

Next up was a two-week training camp in Park City, my hometown, with the US Ski Team. During a long-run with Erika Flowers (from the Stratton team), we were reminiscing about how we both had awful October camps last year, me with a nasty sinus infection, and her with a broken arm. Needless to say we were beyond happy to be training full-time with the camp, soaking up the sunshine and mountain air! With that in mind, I was bound to be happy this camp no matter what happened. We packed a lot of distance and intensity into the two week period, ending with a few rollerski time trials at Soldier Hollow. Although my results in the time trials weren't all out stellar, I was happy to put on a (metaphorical) bib, and even practice sprint tactics again, and just get more excited about the real races coming up.

Here are a few photos from fall in Vermont and the camp in Park City. I'll be heading back to Vermont in a few days and getting in a final intensity push before we head west again for races in West Yellowstone (FIS race) and Bozeman/Silver Star (SuperTours). I hear it's been really cold and wet back east, so my fingers are crossed that it will mean snow in the next couple weeks! Snow dances, everyone!!

A gorgeous dirt road run back in early October in Vermont, 
or perhaps we'll just call it a leaf-peeping tour with added 
fitness benefits(Photo Caitlin Patterson)

We were back to a very full van on the way
to rollerskiing in Craftsbury

Morning sunrise from our driveway at Elinor's

Every fall Craftsbury holds an Oktoberfest Dinner, so Mary
and I spent a lovely afternoon making flower arrangements
with garden guru Pam

Look who the team ran into in Jericho- Patrick Leahy,
the senior US Senator from Vermont. Also a good reminder
to make sure to get out and vote November 8th, everybody!!

And a few photos from Utah- we got lucky with great training weather the whole time. Although the 50 degrees temperature swings during the day had everyone confused about training clothes, we really couldn't complain about constant sunshine and fresh mountain air.

Backyard visitors at my mom's house in Park
City- these guys have been popping up almost
every night to say hello

Jazz game with my dad! The Jazz might never reach

their late 90's peak again, but they're still pretty fun to watch

Skiing on the Mirror Lake Highway with Caitlin and
our friend Jaqui Mourao from Brazil
(Photo Caitlin Patterson)

High desert sagebrush and scrub oak, and a reminder why I love being
back in the intermountain West (Photo Caitlin Patterson)

An awesome run/hike on the Wasatch Crest Trail. It's high up
there- 9,000 ft, but the views are awesome. Even though I've
lived in PC for a while, I had never run on the Crest Trail
so I was super excited to the whole thing this year!

A fun group from the GRP, US Ski Team, and SMS on the
Crest Trail (Photo Erika Flowers)

We must train together or something- Caitlin, Kait and I ended
up in the same heat twice during the sprint TT(Photo Bryan Fish)

Last hill in the semifinal at SoHo. (Photo Bryan Fish)

The GRP on a final run on the Mid Mountain trail

Off day banana waffles with peanut butter maple syrup.
The recipe is from my neighbor Letty Flatt and I HIGHLY
recommend it (recipe in link)

I also helped my step-dad Dave grind 27 lbs of venison for
sausage! He's been lucky with his bow and arrow this year,
with two deer in the freezer, and we are happy about the local
game meat. Yum. (Note, not the backyard deer from above ;)

Stay tuned for some (hopefully) on-snow updates! I'll be in the east until just before Thanksgiving, when we'll travel out to West Yellowstone for a few FIS races and then the start of the SuperTour season in early December in Bozeman.