Thursday, November 17, 2011

Race Update

So little change of plan. It's way to cold to race in Fairbanks. We will now be racing tomorrow in Anchorage as an unofficial race between the three Alaska college teams. Alaska Pacific University, University of Alaska Anchorage,  and University of Alaska Fairbanks.



Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Racing starts!

Tomorrow morning we leave for Fairbanks for my first race series of the year. We race a 3.5 km classic course Friday night, then we have a 10km classic on Saturday, and a 7.5km skate on Sunday. Here is the weather forecast.
It does look a bit on the chilly side, I think I will bring my long johns.

Skiing and training here in Anchorage has been super nice though. It's been cold and lots of fresh snow! Here are some pictures;






Alaska Pacific University campus has got to be one of the better looking university campus's around the world.


 Sadie just left for the World Cup, this is bad news for the rest of us at the ski house because now there is no one to do the dishes.... Not really, I'm actually really excited to watch her climb her way up the results list on the most intense racing circuit in the world. Good luck Sadie!





Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Final Fairbanks update

I just got back from our camp in Fairbanks. I spent 8 days up there and skied close to 500 kilometers in that period. This was a great chance for me to get on snow early in the season. Not a lot of ski venues had all of their trails open for the last week of October, but Birch Hill did.



Friday through Sunday, myself and the other APU athletes helped host a kids camp. We did lots of drills with the kids, like no pole skiing and one pole skiing. We would work on the kids technique for the first hour of each workout then the kids spent the rest of the workout following us around the trails. A big part of being a successful skier is just getting out there and doing kilometers and kilometers of skiing. The camp was organized by a non profit group called Challenge Life. It was a lot of fun to be apart of the camp and get a chance to teach some of the younger generation. There were a lot of kids out on the trails that are just starting the sport and were so passionate about having fun and learning.




Here is a video of my friend and teammate, Reese Hanneman and I. He put the clips together, I did some of the filming.  It's from one of the downhills on the race course. We spent a lot of time working this one corner. I have a pretty good feeling Reese and I will have one of the fastest times on this section of the course in three weeks.

Sunday night we drove home after a morning three hour ski. It was a great camp and I'm pretty excited to be back up in Fairbanks in three weeks for the Tour of Fairbanks, my first FIS race series of the year!