2012-2013 Season, What an Experience!

What a great year, it has been so fun! I'm already excited for the next one :).

After 5 months on the road, it feels extremely good to be home. I arrived back in Anchorage this last Friday and the last three days have passed by like a snap of the fingers. I'm back in snow country, the reason I live in Alaska!  My ski season ended last Thursday, so I have had a few days to think about what a great year I have had.   I have also tried to take a bit of time to unwind a little bit!  Being on the road for so long and always focused on the next race has a stress that I am need to become more familiar with.   As an elite athlete, one puts a lot of  pressure on themselves to perform. I set some high goals for myself this last year and I now feel more than in years past, how important it is.  I'm super excited and feel more energized than ever before, as I accomplished many of my goals. Some of the events I might have liked to have done better and some events were beyond my goals.  I feel very lucky and I know that all that I accomplished is nothing I can take for granted. I do feel like I worked hard for this success, but I also realize many of my friends and other elite athletes have also worked hard and have had the same goals as I do, so I must continue to give everything I can to accomplish what I am set out to do.  I'm am super proud to represent the US ski team as we are on a roll that every country is acknowledging!  It is super exciting.

Photo Credit: USST

One thing I have been reflecting on the last few days is how amazing people have been to support me this year. I raced more this year then I ever have, I traveled to more countries, stayed in more hotels, and traveled on more airplanes then I ever have in a ski season. None of this was cheap and none of it would have been possible without all the generous people who have helped me over the years.  A special thanks to NNF for their support to nordic skiers.  A big shout out to all of you that support them who support us!

Photo credit: USST

Last week I finished off the season in Truckee, California. The last race series was the Super Tour Finals/ Distance Nationals. I went into the ski races not knowing how I would perform and I had the feeling that the best of my season was over. After winning the first race by over 14 seconds I realized that I was feeling good and that the body was not done for the season. The second day I came in 2nd place and that is when I realized I might have a shot at coming out of the four day race series on the podium. Going into the last race I was sitting in first, but was being chased by Kris Freeman, a three time Olympian and one of my biggest idles. I didn't sleep much that night, thinking I had a chance to take the overall win. It was a great battle the last half of the race and I'm supper proud to say I was able to come out on top. I consider it to be my biggest athletic accomplish yet and it is so motivating to want to train even harder this summer going into the Olympic year.

Photo credit: fasterskier

Again, thanks to my coaches, the wax techs, my competitors and my friends and supporters for making this season one of the best.

Photo Credit: fasterskier

World Champs 15km Skate

Yesterday was another great opportunity. It's really exciting putting my toe to the line knowing I'm in better shape and skiing faster then ever. My goal this week was to watch and learn from the best in the World. I try to be realistic and not be to hard on myself when I don't see my name near the top of the results sheet. Yesterdays race was a 15 kilometer skate, I went out at a hot pace thinking that was my best shot at posting a fast time. When I went through the stadium onto my second lap my legs started getting heavy and really tired. I then struggled a little bit on the second lap but was still able to make good movements and was trying to really hammer the fast flat sections. By the last couple kilometers of the race my body was starting to come around again and I was able to leave the rest of my energy out there on the last couple climbs and into the finish. The course was tougher then most courses I see in the U.S., it felt like if I wasn't climbing up a steep hill I was hauling down one.  Overall I was pretty happy with my race and I now know how much work I need to do to be the best in the world. It has been a lot of fun racing at these championships and seeing all my teammates kick butt. I'm now looking forward to racing the 50k classic on Sunday and cheering on the mens 4x10km relay tomorrow! 

I want to thank all of my friends, family, teammates, and supporters for helping me get here. This has been an eye opening trip.

World Champs Team Sprint

Today I raced the team sprint with Andrew Newell. I was planning on racing the pursuit yesterday but when I got to the venue to warm up I was told Simi Hamilton, who was scheduled to team up with Andy, was not feeling good so I could race the team sprint if I wanted. I was in for sure! I decided to skip the pursuit to conserve as much energy as I could for today. If someone would have told me a year ago that I was going to be in the team sprint at the World Champs with Andy Newell I would have said no way. It was an awesome opportunity. Todays game plan was to ski in the front pack and conserve as much energy as I could. As usual things did not go exactly as planned. I had a good start and was skiing around 5th in the first lap when someone stepped on my pole from behind and it broke, forcing me to ski about a half lap with one pole. Luckily the pace was not to high at that point so I was able to keep position. The second lap went smoothly and I kept my spot in the lead pack. Then on the third lap when I was really starting to hurt someone in the front made a burst at the top of the first hill and everyone scrambled to hold on. A French guy, a Finish dude, and myself tangled. I might have been the only guy to go down but I was actually the first guy out of the little cluster f*c#, but by that point we were out of contact with the top four. We ended up finishing 7th in our heat and about 10 seconds out of moving on to the finals. I think we would have had a good shot of moving on if I wouldn't have gone down. Oh well, it was still a TON of fun and a great opportunity. I hope I get to do more team sprints with Newell in the future. That dude is fast and just an all around great guy!

 The U.S. women had a pretty amazing day! Here they are on the podium.

 1st! Making history..

The guys top three teams.

World Champs Sprint Update

(Fasterskier Photo)

It's so awesome to be here competing at the World Championships. Today I had some really good feelings when I was on the race course. It felt like the muscles were really snappy but I still had good glide. After spending the first half of the season at high altitude I find myself struggling with finding the right pace at this low altitude sprinting, I know it is something I can improve. I've defiantly taken some mental notes that I think will help me the rest of the week. The conditions were really tricky so finding the right wax was difficult, I struggled with deciding whether I wanted to go for the good kick or the good glide, I may have made the wrong decision and I think that showed in my finishing result. When I saw I ended in 51st I was a little disappointed and surprised. This is my first time at the  World Championships so I didn't know what to expect, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that people are skiing FAST, I just wanted to be a little closer to the top 30. Three more chances! :) This is such a cool experience. The crowd is louder and bigger then I have ever seen for a ski race.

This is a picture from Swiss nationals a couple weeks ago. 

3x8

I don't get a lot of video footage of me skiing so I think this is a good chance to show some clips of me in yesterdays workout. The video is of Tad Elliott, Torin Koos, and I skiing on the same trail we will be doing a World Cup on in just over a week from now. I did 3 times 8 minutes at a pace that is slightly slower then race pace. Thanks coach Jason Cork for the video.

I'm wearing black pants with yellow patches by the knees and a black shirt.

Here is one more picture from Davos, there has been a couple of absolutely beautiful days. If you didn't get a chance to read my update from the last month you can still read it at this link. 

Euro Update

I'm three and a half weeks into my European trip and time has been blowing by; it seems like just yesterday we were finishing up Nationals. The trip has been really fun so far with some great new experiences. The first two and a half weeks I spent in Liberec, Czech Republic. I raced a World Cup and the Under 23 World Championships there. The U23 race series was at the end of my time in Liberec, which was really nice because I was able to get comfortable and familiar with the area before the big Championships. The World Cup races were two days after I arrived so I had both ends of the spectrum. This was a new area of Europe I had not yet been to. South of Czech Republic is Austria and Slovenia and Germany is to the west; all three countries I have spent time in. Czech Republic reminded me a lot of Slovenia. The population of Liberec is somewhere around 100,000, quite large compared to what I'm use to. I enjoyed being in the city for the first half of the trip as I don't spend much time in areas like that. It was interesting and exciting to have a huge town to explore on my afternoon walks and runs. By the end of the trip I was definitely ready to move on. I would say about 5% of the people could speak English, so it was really hard to talk to any of the locals. I like to try to meet people and learn a little bit about the area, culture, and just to get a sense of the environment.  It was gray and overcast most of my time there, which didn't help with the city vibe.

 View from my hotel room.

 Sophaloaf skiing on the race track.

 My german friend, Lucia Anger stops for a picture on our afternoon run.

 Night running....

always exciting!

The World Cup went pretty good considering I had just raced four times in the U.S. and then hopped on a plane across the pond (with one day to adjust) and then boom, RACE day. I finished 47th in the individual sprint, my third world cup sprint. Then the second day my good friend, Skyler and I teamed up and we got 27th place. It was awesome to get another couple starts against the fastest dudes in the World.

World Cup classic sprint.

The Under 23 World Championships were great. When I sat down this past summer with Erik Flora, my coach, I decided these were the races I wanted to peak for; they were the races I placed a lot of my goals for the year. Guys and gals under the age of 23 from all around the World have to go through a qualification criteria in order to represent their country at World Championships and I've had the privilege to race at the junior and U23 Champs for the last 5 years. Every year I feel like I have learned something from the race experience and every year I feel like I'm getting closer to reaching my goal of being competitive with the best skiers. This year I finished 10th, 15th, and 16th. While this might sound unsatisfactory in domestic races, internationally I felt I raced well and solid. Every race, it was a new personal best for me and in every race I got to ski with the leaders and see what type of pace they were skiing. It was fast, but for the first time I didn't feel like they were in a different league then myself. This year it was a Russian guy that seemed to be the strongest U23 out there. His technique was good and he is obviously really fit, but I think I can catch up to him. I wrote some goals down after I left Liberec that I will look back at this summer. I plan on training hard this next summer and there are somethings I'm definitely going to try and improve on. Next year when I go back to U23 World Championships, it will be my last year that I can qualify for this age group and I REALLY want to win a medal!

 Photo credit: Logan Haneman

  Photo credit: Logan Haneman

 Photo credit: Logan Haneman

Sophie and I had a fun day of racing!

After my last race at U23's I was feeling really tired and that night I had to take a flight to Zurich in order to meet up with the World Cup crew on their way to Russia. I knew this was going to be a really hectic schedule, but I wanted to race the pursuit at U23's and I wanted to race the World Cup in Russia so this was the only way I was going to make it work. I got a shuttle late Saturday night to Prague and then got on the plane to fly to Zurich. For some reason I just couldn't sleep on the plane even though I was super tired. Near the end of the flight I started feeling really awful. I was sitting in my seat wondering if I was just super tired or if I was feeling sick. I decided to pull out the puke bag in the seat pocket in front of me, wondering to myself who ever uses these things anyway. If I really feel like puking, I'm going to just get up and go to the bathroom. All the sudden I got really nauseous and what do you know that bag came in really handy (no time to get to the bathroom). When I landed I took a shuttle to the hotel in Zurich where the World Cup team was and by that time it was morning and the team was just starting to wake up. I talked to coach Matt Whitcomb and told him I threw up on the plane.  Since the flu was going around and many of my teammates at U23's had gotten sick, we decided it was best for the World Cup team and myself that I skip the Sochi World Cup, just in case I started feeling worse. Tad Elliott, US Ski team member, had just gotten the flu so his plans were to skip Sochi and head to Davos, Switzerland. I was having a really hard time with the decision when all the sudden I started getting nauseous again and yes, more vomiting. That sealed the deal and I said adios to the team and Tad and I started our travel to Davos. The next part of the trip was one of the worst experiences of my life. It involved lots of throwing up mixed with trying to haul around all my luggage while we hopped from one train, to another, to another on our way to Davos. My body couldn't hold in any fluids and it wanted everything out of my stomach. Lets just say there was some not so pretty sites on the train station platforms and in the train bathrooms. Luckily my buddy Tad Elliott had my back the whole way there so I survived.

This past week here in Davos, Switzerland has been really nice. I spent the first couple days in bed getting healthy and then it was out to explore the winter wonderland. What a treat this place has been. It makes me feel like I'm in heaven. The people here are unbelievably nice, everybody from the hotel workers to the nice old lady I met on the bus.  Tad and I have been on some amazing skis and have been trying to take it easy. I had a serious block of racing in January, so the order from coach was to find some distractions and train long and easy.

Nice morning view to look at while having breakfast.

No coffee for this guy, I always go for some of that delicious hot chocolate.

Tad and I found some pretty nice trails.

Tad Elliott

Check out that view!

Waiting for the bus, notice the World Cup banners up top. The public bus system here is so nice, it seems like everyone uses it. There are busses that go through the valley every 15 minutes so if you miss one its not to long of wait. Tad and I don't have a vehicle this week but thats no problem.

The Swiss miss has been cooking us some amazing meals!

Skiing with some friends. Jason from the Swiss team (left). PK from the Australian team(middle). Tad(right)

Tad and I have been hitting up the sauna and a little snow bath between. I like to do contrast baths for recovery but don't exactly have access to one right now, thats alright we have been making this work .

 Me and my friend Mr. Snowman.

Next weekend I'm going to race the Switzerland Championships. These races should be a fairly small field but really strong competition. I've made friends with a lot of the Swiss team members so it should be a blast racing with these guys. Unlike the U.S. national championships where the field is over a 150 racers, the Swiss championships will probably have less then 30 but the competition will be a lot tougher. I'm just really excited to get the bib back on. Then after that it is back to World Cup racing, starting here in Davos and then I will be going to Val Di Fiemme, Italy for WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!  I am so honored to be a part of the team and I can't wait.  I know that in the future, I can be one of the best in the World and this is just just another step of some fun and hard work ahead. There are some good things happening in the US and we all hope you are following us. Olympics are just a year away!  Keep watching as it means a lot and we need you to keep us revved up!

Until next time- I hope YOU are all staying healthy and happy! Thanks for your support!!

Liberec

Finally I'm getting an update to you on my blog. I'm sorry to avid readers(Noah Hoffman) for the lag from my last post. A lot of exciting stuff has happened over the last couple of months.  I got to spend some time at home in Washington with my family and friends and race my first, second, and third world cup races.  I won my first national title, and now I'm in Czech Republic getting fired up for the Under 23 World Championships!

My debut to the World Cup was in early December, racing in Quebec City and Canmore. I had two events in Quebec, an individual sprint and a team sprint. In Canmore I had three races, a classic 15km, a skate sprint, and a 30km skiathlon. The 15km in Canmore was my best race, finishing in 36th place, 6 places out of making world cup points. Considering it was my first distance World Cup, I was super excited with that. The race was a mass start (everyone starting the race at one time), so I got to ski with the best in the world for half of the race before I just couldn't keep up with the pace. I now know what it is going to take to ski with those guys. To be honest,  I thought it was going to be harder. I'm 21 and I seem to be improving, so I figure if I continue to train hard there is no reason I won't be able to keep up with the leaders in a couple of years. They carry a fast pace, but they aren't doing anything special.  It's just a bunch of dudes that like to have fun, take their sport seriously, and train super hard,,,, thats what I like to do.

Being home at Christmas was so nice; it was a great time to replenish the system before heading out for the next period of racing. The Methow at that time of year is so great and being at home is always nice- the comfy warm house with a stocked fridge, clean clothes, comfortable bed, loving parents, oh and of course the best skiing in the world. It's the only place I have found that you can expect to have fresh grooming. I may have taken it for granted growing up there, but I'm learning to appreciate a lot more. I guess I just  expected ski areas to have corduroy. After moving away and skiing all over the place, I now realize that nowhere beats the Methow.

Sadzarue skiing in the Methow.

Tyler took me snowmobiling and shooting.

While I was home, Sadie and I hosted a kids camp. This was our second year putting on the "Cascade Challenge Camp". It was very successful and I'm not sure who was having a better time, me or the kids. I realize how important this aspect of being a "professional" skier is and I really think that Sadie and I can inspire the younger generation. I remember when I was their age and there was a couple of older guys that I would love to hang out with at the swim practices and competitions. I hope I can be that role model for them. I want to show the kids that cross country skiing is a healthy and fun activity where you can mess around with your friends and if you decide to take the sport to the next level, there are some great opportunities out there. The camp sign up list filled up quickly and over a week before the camp, which tells me it's a popular event in the Methow.  Maybe next year we will find a new venue so we can allow more kids to come. Just recently I scheduled another event in Alaska where I will be traveling around Alaska and going to some native villages to teach kids how to ski. I'm sooo excited to meet these kids and to explore new parts of Alaska. This event will happen after my ski season in mid April and the trip is sponsored by NANA Nordic.

Working on some waxing skills.

Thanks PowerBar for sponsoring the camp!

Max learned a lot and used his new knowledge to win a jeopardy question.

Just over a week ago, I finished up racing National Championships at Soldier Hollow in Utah. For me, it was the best nationals I've ever had. I ended up getting two silvers and my first national title. I have been feeling good this year and I have posted some good results, but I did not expect that to happen. It was an unbelievable week!  I guess the hard training last summer payed off. These results qualified me for the Under 23 World Championships, I maintained the SuperTour leader position giving me 3rd period World Cup start rights and also it put me in the running for qualifying for the World Championships in Italy. They should name the team this week so keep your fingers crossed for me. Being named to the team would be a huge honor.

And the most exciting thing of all……………… we got one piece racing suits!!!!

Thanks for reading and your support!