Goodbye Summer

With the advent of cold nights, changing leaves, and drier air (finally!) here in Craftsbury, there are more than a few signs that fall is on its way. However, this blog title alludes to more than that- in under a week, the Green Team is heading to our European training camp to chase snow in Slovenia and Austria! I couldn't be more excited to change up the scenery and feel real snow under my feet. More on that later, but here are some photos and stories from summer training since July. While my May and June were spent mostly in Craftsbury, in the late summer I did a lot of traveling in between training blocks, had some good adventures, and am finishing our last hard block before Europe with high motivation.

Of course it wouldn't be the East Coast without the bugs- deer
flies are nasty creatures and require special measures if you want
to run the trails in Craftsbury

We hosted our second BKL camp of the summer in July and the
end of camp prizes came from the GRP- but they look better on this crew!

In mid July I flew out west for a good friend's wedding in Ashley Lake, Montana. The wedding itself was gorgeous and it was nice to catch up with high school friends. Since I was in the middle of a training block, I got to do a bit of adventuring on foot around Kalispell and Bozeman, which reaffirmed my love for Montana and for jagged peaks, winding rivers, and endless sky. I'm definitely a Western girl at heart.

3 of us from my high school cross country running team,
 reunited for Hailey's wedding. We keep in touch even
7 years after graduating from PCHS, and it's always awesome
to see them and catch up

Post wedding I spent a few days in Bozeman and did the Ridge
Run from Bohart to the M. Here's my route looking towards Bozeman

Not sure about this....? Keep on trucking!

Then it was back to the East and real life! The end of July and August may have been the most humid weather I've ever experienced in Craftsbury. I would wake up in the morning, start sweating, and proceed to continue to sweat through my morning workout, post-lunch work, and my afternoon workout, and then maybe stop in time for bed. I made it through with some serious hydration, but unfortunately picked up a cold that was going around the team. For a summer cold, it took me out for much longer than I wanted when it settled into my sinuses and refused to leave. It's always frustrating to miss training, especially for something as silly as a summer cold, but it's also important to know my body and know when to rest. Anyways, I've been able to rebound and get back into a good training routine, and it only makes me more motivated to head into the fall with renewed focus.

Here are the last few photos from the East, with a smattering of training photos, work around the Center, and other random shots.

Our first harvest of summer squash and zucchini in Craftsbury.
I think we were still excited then, before we got up to our ears
in squash

Summer work- pizza making in the Hosmer Point kitchen for
weddings is always a blast. We'll miss you Maggie!

Susan bought a new place on the Common and her blueberries
were unreal. Thanks to her for letting us pick while she was out
of town

Taking our new summer training clothes from Craft for a spin,
 they are awesome! Photo Caitlin Patterson

Rolling with a big crew (Photo Caitlin Patterson)

Another Monday, another mountain bike club. The GRP
women rocking our new Bliz helmets and ready to coach
the little ones at bike club (Photo Ben Lustgarten)

A quick trip over to Lake Placid with Caitlin to visit Clare and
see her new apartment,.We got treated to this sunset and dinner
on the porch with Clare and Erik

Hiking in the Adirondacks- balancing rock

Working on good power application in my double pole, thanks
Sam for the photos!

A scenic drink break in Hardwick

And of course, GRP biathletes Emily and Alex got married
this August! Congrats to them. Their wedding was just
up the road at Hosmer Point and everything was beautiful,
down to the wedding cakes that Em made. Here's the GRP
ski contingent at the wedding

Practicing my SUP yoga with Kait and Heather

Finally, I ventured over to New Hampshire last weekend to take on a hike in the Presidential Range. Kait, Caitlin and I really want to do the full Presi traverse at some point, but since it's almost 23 miles and up to 10 hours of hiking, it wasn't the smartest thing for the last day of our training block before going to Europe. Instead we did the Northern Presi's on the most perfect day and were quite happy to be done at a little over 5 hours of hiking instead!

Panorama looking back towards Mt. Washington

Lots of snack breaks to keep us going

Star Lake in the saddle between Mt. Adams and Mt. Madison

Finally, that brings me up to right now! Sorry for the long wait between posts this summer. The truth is that summer can get really busy between training, work, and travel, and sometimes it feels like I hardly have the time to sit down and blog. However, since we'll be on the road more often from now on, I'll try to use my down time to get a blog up from my next destinations.

The Green Team leaves September 12th for Planica, Slovenia, where we'll be doing an on-snow camp in a tunnel with saved snow from last year. After a week of that, we'll head to Ramsau for skiing on the Dachstein Glacier. Both of these places will have great opportunities to apply our summer fitness to skiing, and make sure that our hard-earned technique changes transfer over to snow. I absolutely cannot wait, Ramsau is one of my all-time favorite places, and from what I've heard about Slovenia, it might be up there as well after this trip! Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

Labor Day weekend activities- "Vermonting" with some UNH friends
on Mt. Pisgah by Willougby Lake. Loved seeing these wildkittens!

How did it get so late so soon?

That line from a Dr. Seuss poem pretty much sums up the first two months of training in Craftsbury for me! It's funny that when I graduated college and became a professional athlete, I worried about having too much time. Too much time sitting around between workouts, too much time on off days, too much time in all the hours of the day I wasn't actually training. Well, I'm here to tell you that rarely do I find myself sitting around with nothing to do! Between training twice a day for an average of 2-5 hours (sometimes more), sleeping, working, taking an online class, fueling, stretching, shooting practice, keeping up with the granola consumption in our house by baking up fresh batches, and all the other little random life stuff that creeps in, more often than not I find myself at the end of a day or week wondering where all the time went.

In the two months since I got back to Craftsbury, I've had a really productive and fun time with training. I feel like I'm making baby steps forward in so many areas- technique, strength, total hours, quality of my workouts, etc. It's nice to be able to train more than ever and still come out of it with good energy. Of course, I still get very tired at the end of hard blocks, but it's nothing like my first summer at Craftsbury when I was figuring out how to do this whole elite athlete thing. Having an awesome training group here helps a lot too. When I first joined the team, sometimes there were only two women at practice for rollerskiing. Now we often have 10 of us, so there's always someone willing to go your pace. If you feel good you can always pull a train, and if you're having an off day and feel tired then someone else will lead. It's fun to be a part of a group with such high motivation and willingness to put in the hard work that it takes to get better.

Anyways- less talk, more photos, here are a bunch from the first bit of training, and a few non-training ones as well. Enjoy!

One of the first rollerskis of the year- Pepa calls
us the "smiling monkeys" on the branch

I think our front yard is pretty darn beautiful. By the way,
matching unplanned.

Tucking into the draft at the start of a rollerski OD

Kait, Johanna and I helped with a kid's biathlon camp in June, and when
we showed up after dinner coach Sam was having a wee bit of hard time
getting the fire started- GRP women to the rescue! (dresses and all)

Planting flowers on a rainy June afternoon to brighten our
moods

With June showers come EPIC DOUBLE RAINBOWS.
Although my iPhone failed to capture the double-ness
of this one

After our first hard block, Caitlin and I took off to the White Mountains for a few days for a camping/hiking expedition. Even though she has lived in the East for 8 years, she's never had a car before this year so she had never explored the area. I used to go to the Whites all the time in college so I was more than happy to play tour guide. We spent the first day exploring the Franconia Notch area and driving the Kancamangus Highway. (which of course took me back to my days skiing 50+ miles on the Kanc with the UNH ski team, good times!) Then we hiked Mt. Washington from the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail side, and even though the top was socked in we still got incredible views off to the west.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. A night time walk from
our second campsite

Lake of the Clouds- below the summit of Mt. Washington

Then it was back to training! Here are a few more shots of the crew. This summer we have 4 U23's joining us for summer training, the first time we've had a group like this for the summer- Gavin Hess from Dartmouth, Gavin McEwen from Dartmouth, Evan Weinman from Middlebury, and Johanna Taliharm from MSU and the Estonian biathlon team. Combined with new GRPers Mary O'Connell and Ben Lustgarten, we have a big group but it's been manageable so far! It's so great to have new energy, and Johanna, Mary, and Ben have integrated into our crazy house/team situation seamlessly.

A busy day on the biathlon range! I've been doing a bit of
shooting, both for fun and to prep for August rollerski trials

The van's full, and we are pumped for training!

200m track speeds in Morrisville- one of my favorite speedster
workouts (nordic skiers really aren't that fast on the track, in
case you were wondering) Photo Caitlin Patterson

A sweaty gym circuit

Planned matching this time for a lovely
ski out in the Eden/Montgomery area

I'll try to get a few more pictures in my next update about what's been going on around the Center, but a new thing for me this summer is coaching mountain bike club every Monday,. We have around 30 kids middle school aged kids on the trails, from first time single track riders to absolute rippers. It's been really fun and rewarding to work with some of the beginners, and also humbling to ride with the faster boys and learn a bit about fearlessness! I won't be hitting any gap jumps any time soon, but I am soaking it all up and psyched about bringing our cool trail system to the local community.

Calm before the storm

Getting pre-ride instructions from Captain Ollie (in orange)

Our first group of mountain bikers back in June- the Craftsbury
Academy middle schoolers.

Summer really is a great time to be in Vermont, between the green landscapes, the numerous local swimming holes, and of course the maple creemees (that's soft serve ice cream to all the non-Vermonters out there). I'll be enjoying it a lot as I'll be stationed here in Craftsbury, bar a quick Western trip for a wedding, up until our first camp (to Slovenia and Austria/Italy) in September. Thanks for reading! I'll check back in with a more timely update in late July.

Biking home under the strawberry moon with millions of
fireflies in the trees = magic (Photo Caitlin Patterson)

Riding home in the back of Eth's truck from a concert on the
Common with Mike and Johanna- open air is the best way to travel
in the summertime 

And one last one- Fourth of July hayrides at the local bbq
in Craftsbury. Johanna rocking the rock tape, Mary
crushing the patriotic vest game. Happy late 4th everyone!

Refresh

Much like the handy "refresh" button on your browser, for skiers the month of April is a great time to take much needed rest, mentally and physically, and prepare for the upcoming training season. Personally, I am a Western girl at heart who spends most of her time training and living in the East, so for the month of April I hightailed it out to the West Coast and fit in as many adventures as I could!
I rarely get the opportunity to camp, backpack, downhill ski, or just spend late nights with good friends when I'm in training season (not that I would give that up, the sacrifices are well worth it), but it is great to spend some time without much of an agenda and let wanderlust take over.

Less than a week after the last races at SuperTour finals, Hallie and I trekked out to Truckee and Mammoth Lakes, California. Our stated reason for the trip was to hop in the Mammoth Lakes Marathon, a 21/42k skate marathon, but really we were there for a vacation with a little ski race on the side. The Cali sunshine proved to be just what we needed, and we had an awesome few days with a group of friends from the Far West and USBA teams. Hallie won the 42k marathon for women, and I was on track to win the 21k when I skied a few extra k's on a wrong turn... whoops! It was still a blast even with the extra distance at 9,000 ft of elevation.

Dock time on Donner Lake outside of Truckee- white skier bodies!

Mexican food and lake views in Tahoe = 

Crust skiing on Mt. Rose overlooking Lake Tahoe with Hallie,
and Patrick Johnson and Maddie Phaneuf from the US Biathlon
Team

I flew back from the Reno airport and immediately turned around and drove down south for a 4-day backpack in Canyonlands National Park with my dad and one of my best friends from college, Kelsey Hoar. It was a bit of a whirlwind with so much travel, but once we made it to our first campsite we quickly settled into a rhythm of hiking, setting up camp, cooking, and exploring tons of ancient Anasazi ruins in the canyon we hiked. Southern Utah is one of my favorite places on earth so I'm always happy to explore more corners of the desert.

It was Kelsey's first time to Southern Utah, so we got a kick out
of her fascination with every arch we saw, and there were lots!

A side trek to Angel Arch on our longest day, 15 miles, was
well worth it and gave the perfect lunch spot

After my Canyonlands trip, I had a few weeks at home to finally relax. I think my family was happy to have me in one place for longer than a 12 hour stretch. In April, Park City goes through shoulder season, which means that tourists are no longer coming to ski and most of the resorts shut down, but we don't get summer tourists yet. I absolutely love this time of year because the town is so quiet, and you can easily ski in the morning and then mountain bike in the afternoon every day. I filled my days with online class, CrossFit classes, volunteering at the local animal shelter, playing outside, and catching up with friends and family in Utah. Even with some rainy weather, it was one of the longer and nicer stretches of time I've spent at home since moving out East for college in 2009.

I got to go on my first real backcountry ski tour in Little Cottonwood Canyon with my friend Logan. It was so fun, I've decided that the minute I retire from skiing I'm buying a backcountry setup and going all the time. Earning your turns is seriously underrated.

Contemplating the drop...

Skinning up with the Wasatch Range behind me

Log and I pretty stoked on skiing powder and perfect corn in
the same day

Henrietta, an Australian Shepherd/Blue Heeler
mix that I fell in love with at Nuzzles and Co,
our local adoption center. My mom is lucky
that I didn't bring all the dogs there home!

Powder day at Snowbird! Brock (my college housemate from
UNH who was on the hockey team) has very little skiing experience
but was a total champ and skied double blacks no problem

I still had a few adventures in  mind though, including a weekend yurt trip to Gooseberry Mesa, outside of Hurricane, Utah, for a mountain biking trip. Luckily my mom, stepdad, brother, and a bunch of good friends from Park City and college were able to join and we spent the weekend eating amazing food and exploring the mesa's endless singletrack network.

Hiking Zion National Park's Kolob Canyon with college housemates

Me and my brother with my new Salsa mountain bike that
I'm obsessed with!

A goofball crew

Spotted- the Utah state flower, the Sego
Lily (this one's for you, Kait ;)

The Gooseberry Yurt, right on the edge of the mesa

Campfires and good friends

And finally, I decided that while I was out west I had to get up to Bozeman, Montana, since I have a bunch of friends from college and skier friends who live up there and it's always a good time. Right before leaving for the East I road-tripped up to Bozey and got in my last mountain time with some hiking and mountain biking. The mountains in the Bridger Range still have quite a bit of snow though, so it might be a few more weeks (or months) until you can truly hike and run the ridges there. It definitely made for some adventuring!

Hiking in the snow can be fun-- until you start
post-holing on the way down and cut your shins
and they bleed all over the snow. Emily Atwood
is still smiling here because she doesn't know
what's coming

Mantana adventures with the biddies- Anya, Kelsey, and
Tila Tequila (the dog)

An all-star running crew on a cold and windy day- Kate Dolan,
Cam McDermott, Erika Flowers, Jennie Bender, and Anya :)

This post is now way too long, so I'll wrap things up quickly, I promise! Needless to say, I was happy to end the month of April in a very good place mentally, and ready to hit the long summer of training with renewed focus. A week ago I flew back out East to start the new training year, and I will be in Craftsbury for most of the summer putting in the hours on the road, trails, and in the gym. 

I'll try to update with some spring training photos soon. It's been great to see my teammates again and get back to work in the garden with spring planting, and Vermont even cooperated with sunshine for the first week, so we'll see how long that lasts. Thanks for reading!