Glacier Camp

14  tough female athletes

4 coaches

2 groomers

2 piston bullies

1 glacier

1 building

7.5 km of groomed trails

26 hours of skiing

3 helicopter loads of food

2 bottomless coffee makers

1 guitar

50+ trashy magazines

2 choreographed dances

These are just some of the numbers that describe my week on the glacier.  After a little over a week of dryland, we drove to Girdwood which is about 45 minutes from Anchorage and then flew by helicopter with all of our skis and luggage up to APU’s Thomas Training Center on the  Eagle Glacier which would be our home for the next week.   There was one building perched on the edge of a rocky cliff and overlooking the glacier.  Bunk rooms filled with upstairs and while the downstairs housed  a big living room, kitchen, and drying room.  We were pretty isolated but we had 7.5km of trails that twisted around the glacier and were groomed just for us twice a day so nobody was complaining.  It was the perfect location for training, eating, and sleeping which was about all we did.  Each day we skied between 3 and 5 hours usually broken up between two training sessions.  The majority of the volume was easy distance but the glacier was only at 5800′ of elevation so it was still low enough to do a few quality intensity sessions.  The morning sessions were usually skating.  It was often pretty fast when we started and then became progressively slower, softer, and slushier as the morning progressed.  Having a pair of skis with a wet grind or a lot of structure was necessary if you still wanted to be gliding by the end of the morning.  Then we classic skied in the afternoon and a thick mixture of red and universal klister was usually perfect.  We had a mix of weather with everything from some fresh snow on our first day to some really warm weather where we skied in shorts and sports bras.  The pictures show a lot of sunny weather but there were also some days where a thick fog covered the trail and visibility was probably less than 15 meters.  Since we put in A LOT of laps around that one loop, the fog sometimes came as a nice mental relief blocking the upcoming switchbacks from view.  The terrain was very hilly which was perfect for striding and V1 which can sometimes be difficult to practice on rollerskis.  The group of girls was also awesome and I really enjoyed training and spending time with everyone.  Having that many competitive women working hard together really raised the level of the camp.  It seemed like every interval we did, there was someone new chomping at the bit and pushing the pace.  During the distance sessions I also tried to ski with as many different people as possible hoping to learn from other’s technique, tempo, and pacing.   It was a really fun week and I want to thank APU for hosting all of us and organizing such an awesome camp.  They are really lucky to have such an amazing facility and to be able to ski so easily throughout the summer.

Skiing behind World Championship and Olympic medalists like Kikkan and Chandra was just one of the great experiences of he week.

I felt very lucky to be able to ski in July!

We took advantage of such a strong group with lots of skiing in a pack

On the clear days we had 360 degree panoramic views of mountains

The trail snaked back and forth across the glacier.  We were not allowed to ski off the groomed section because there were lots of cracks and crevasses but what was groomed was probed frequently and very safe

Thomas training center with the Eagle glacier in the background on the right

More views of mountains and other glaciers

Holly Brooks is someone whom I had previously only raced against so it was awesome to be able to train with her too

It was great to have some familiar faces and old teammates at the camp as well like Sophie

Jessie Diggins, Holly, and I during a L4 interval.  The tracks got softer and softer with each interval during this workout but we took turns leading and pushing the pace and were able to negative split all the intervals despite the changing conditions.

It wasn’t all training either as we also had a lot of recovery time between sessions to fill.  With such a fun group of women it was easy to keep the atmosphere light.  Here Jessie, Chandra, and Kikkan entertained us all with their amazing dance moves.

Whittier Sightseeing

We had an afternoon off during the dryland portion of the camp and it was the perfect timing for a Dartmouth reunion and sightseeing trip with Anchorage native Eric Packer.  Eric took Sophie Caldwell, Rosie Brennan, and I to the port town of Whittier.  It was about a 45 minute drive to a  6 mile one lane tunnel through a mountain, finally arriving in Whittier.  Known for its poor weather, the saying goes, “It’s always shittier in Whittier” but we lucked out and it was definitely prettier on that side of the mountain.  The town is really little but we had fun taking pictures, eating ice cream, and lounging on the docks in the sun.  Especially during camps when the training load is high and intense, it’s great to get to get away and relax the mind and the body.

The Portage Glacier

Very green glacial water

Eric went swimming and scared some tourists

The road ends in Whittier, so any onward travel is by boat on the William Sound

We flew down from the glacier yesterday evening and everyone is back in Anchorage, resting some very tired muscles.  The skiing was awesome and pictures and stories are on the way.

Alaska Dryland

The US Women’s team camp plan was changed this year and our summer snow camp was changed from New Zealand to the Eagle Glacier in Alaska.  The plan was to organize a huge women’s group with many of the top North American racers for a week of dryland training and a week of glacier skiing.  I had traveled to Alaska four different times before this trip for various ski races and I can’t say I really liked the place during any of those trips.  It takes a long time to get here (often a longer travel day than to Europe)  and then it was always either dark and below zero or dark with very little snow.  But I was ready to put those experiences aside and was looking forward to experiencing Alaska in the summertime.  And what a difference it has been!

I flew to Alaska a little over a week ago and was greeted by the sun despite it being close to midnight.  My last flight left Seattle at sunset and we had a continual sunset all the way to Anchorage.  If anything it was getting lighter as the time went on and we flew farther north.  Since then we have had perfect training weather with temperatures in the sixties and seventies, a fair amount of sunny days, and only one afternoon of rain!  The training group has been huge and lots of fun!  The US team, Canadian National Team, APU, and other top skiers from around the country are all training together so it has been awesome to train with people who I have previously only raced against during the winter!  For the past week we have been staying at Alaska Pacific University and training in Anchorage.  The APU team have been great hosts and have taken us all around Anchorage sharing their different training grounds.  We’ve put in lots of distance hours as well as a bunch of interval and speed workouts.

The stretch of beautiful weather is supposed to end today so we are heading up to the Eagle glacier a day early.  We are leaving tonight rather than tomorrow so we can fly in rather than having to hike in with all our gear once the gnarly weather hits.  It’s a 5-10 minute flight from Girdwood, Alaska and I’m really excited for my first ever helicopter flight.  Then I’m even more excited to be back on snow!  For the second half of the camp, we will be staying at APU’s training center on the glacier and will be skiing, eating, sleeping, and skiing some more!  I’m not sure what to expect but from what I’ve heard it’s the perfect place for putting in lots of quality hours on snow!  I’m sure there will be some great stories of what happens when 15 or so female Nordic skiers and a handful of male coaches live together in a secluded and rustic building on a glacier for 9 days.

Here are some pictures from the past week of camp.  Thanks a lot to Matt Whitcomb and Lauren Loberg for taking all the pictures during the workouts.  Visit www.nccsef.org or the USSA Nordic Facebook nordic page for more pictures!

We did a 2 hour double pole along the bike path of Turnagain Arm.  A strong headwind on the way back made for a tough finish and a lot of pace lining.

The second day of camp had 5×6min L4 double poling intervals.  Intervals with this big of a group are fun and tough.  It seemed like someone new was pushing the pace on each interval making for fast times and lots of hammering.  It’s also a good experience to ski behind different people and copy their tempo or technique.  Liz and I are working together on this interval in an unsuccessful attempt to catch Kikkan.

Awesome scenery during one of the distance rollerski workouts!

We did a 3:30 Tour of Anchorage OD which was a loop around the different bike paths of the city.  We skied alongside the ocean for a few long stretches and the clear weather gave mountain views including some of Denali.

There were a few sections where the bike paths didn’t connect.  Jessie and I practiced our off-road rollerskiing skills because Sadie told us we were not allowed to take our skis off!

Many of our afternoon workouts have been trail runs into the mountains surrounding the city.  On this run, we ran to Rabbit Lake which is where Kikkan’s husband Jeff proposed.

Chandra and I went swimming as soon as we reached the lake.  The water was a lot colder than Big Hosmer so it was a chilly run home but totally worth it!

Yesterday we did a short speed session.  We skied around a neighborhood where there was very little traffic and had great head-to-head sprints.  For me it was really fun to chase and be chased by Kikkan!

All of our interval workouts have been in a big groups which has been great practice for mass start races.  This picture is from a workout where we did 6×10min at L3 with a faster sprint finish to each interval.

Girls camp has of course had lots of pink and other bright colors.  Thanks to Rudy Project for all the neon!

My moose count got so high that I lost track.  They are literally everywhere including right in the middle of the city.  I think the gold medal day was when I saw six different moose within about six hours!  We even have a couple that live in our backyard and were eating the rhubarb outside of the coaches apartment.  We haven’t seen any bears yet but we have eaten quite a bit of freshly caught salmon and halibut adding to the Alaskan experience!

Park City Testing and Rookie Camp

I just returned from my first testing camp in Park City, UT.  We do a lot of testing in Craftsbury and it’s usually something that I really dislike but with lots of new tests planned, I was much more excited than usual.  The schedule for this testing was intense and comprehensive with VO2max and submax treadmill tests taking the priority but flexibility, strength, mobility, body composition, blood tests, bone density, concussion baseline testing, and physicals filling in the the rest of the schedule.  The USST has a sports science staff with physiologists, strength coaches, physical therapists, and nutritionists so I went into the camp with an open mind and was excited to see what I could learn and hoping to expose myself to all the available resources.

This trip also was my first visit to USSA’s Center of Excellence or COE and I was very impressed.  The building has a giant gym and weight room, recovery room with hot and cold baths, pool, sauna, and steam room, full kitchen stocked with lots of great recovery and training food at the athlete’s disposal, basketball court, rehab and physical therapy room, skate park and trampoline room complete with a huge foam pit, living room, and a couple floors of offices, conference rooms, etc.  The walls were covered with pictures of Olympic and World Cup medalists making it a pretty motivating place.  The COE is also surrounded by running and mountain bike trails as well as roads for rollerskiing on so it is definitely an awesome training center.

The COE has two treadmills for rollerskiing.  Sadie and I are warming up for a test tests on one of them.  Skiing on a treadmill was a little tricky at first but with some practice I got used to it and actually felt like I was rollerskiing.  Still it was easy to get tripped up or get shot off the back as the fatigue set in or the grade and speed of the treadmill really got turned up so during the tests we were hooked up to a harness set to catch a falling athlete.

Here I am during one of the classic rollerski tests.  We did three tests on the treadmill during the two testing days.  We did submax tests in both classic and skate in which we skied 4 minute stages at increasing treadmill speeds and had our lactate and oxygen saturation levels measured at the end of each stage.  These tests provided information about our individual training zones showing the heart rate and lactate levels corresponding to each zone.  By doing the same test with each technique it showed the differences in efficiency between classic and skating.

We also did a VO2max test on the treadmill.  The protocol for this test was a consistent treadmill speed but the grade of the treadmill increased every minute until you could no longer keep up and were thrown off the back.  It wasdefinitely a weird feeling to hit that breaking point!  The original plan was for these tests to be done with supplemental oxygen to mimic training at sea level or whatever elevation one spends the majority of their training time but that system was having some problems so we all ended up testing at the altitude of the COE or about 6800′ feet.

We also did a lot of strength and mobility tests which were designed to pinpoint specific muscular strengths and weaknesses that could then be used to design an individual strength plan.  The tests included lots of weird exercises.  Some movements were quite easy while others looked like they should be really easy but ended up being impossible to do.

For this test, they loaded up a bar with more weight than they expected we could lift we stood on a plate that measured the amount to force we exerted while attempting to squat the bar.  Apparently in the past and there have been a few athletes that have been able to stand up but I can’t say the same happened for me.  Try as I might, that bar was not going to budge.

We also did lots of jumping exercises on the force plate.  Sadie and I did this test together immediately after watching the ski jumping girls train so we were feeling a little embarrassed about our “ups” or lack their of.  By the end of the test we had mastered the camera angles to get the best shots.  This one actually looks like I’m kind of off the ground while some of the other attempts were not as successful.

For this last part of the strength test, muscle contraction speed and force was measured as we jumped off a box, onto the force plate, and then as high into the air afterward.  More boxes were added to change the starting height and by the end I was feeling like I was taking quite a leap.

By the end of the two days, I had a big packet of data and results.  Since most of these tests were completely new it was a lot of baseline information whichI will be able to build upon and use for comparison with future tests.  Testing has never been my favorite part of the training process as I personally don’t like to get too caught up in the numbers and scientific side of training, preferring instead to base my judgement on how my body feels.  But its very important for Pepa and the other coaches who actually design the training plans to have this data so I was glad to have this opportunity and definitely learned some new things.

After the testing was done, the rest of the new USST athletes from all the disciplines (42 in total from Freestyle, Alpine, Snowboarding, Free skiing, Nordic) showed up for Rookie Camp.  This is a three day fastpaced introduction into everything that USSA has to offer which is quite a lot.  We learned about USADA, media training, USSA education and career services, nutrition, sports psychology, marketing, events, fundraising, sponsors, and probably a lot of other stuff that I’m blanking on right now.  It was incredibly busy.  I felt like we went non-stop with presentations, team building activities, workouts, meals, and more, from when we left the hotel at 6:45 am until we got home around 9pm each night. Here are some pictures from that section of the camp.

Huge thanks to Adam Korzan, the USST nutritionist, who cooked amazing meals for us and always kept the kitchen and fridge at the COE very well stocked with great recovery food.

Jessie and Skyler fighting for the ball during an afternoon of soccer at Rookie Camp

My soccer skills were pretty rusty so I tried to stay far away from contact and ended up running around in circles without being any help to my team.

We did a ropes course one afternoon as a team building exercise.  Here I am with Mikaela Shiffrin, an alpine skier from Burke, during a blindfolded traverse of one of the elements.

Sadie and Jessie up in the air together– not sure where they are going from here…

Really fun to meet all the athletes and everyone else at USSA.

New Housemates

I have fully unpacked and moved into Elinor’s house with the rest of the GRP.  Lately I’ve felt myself in a constant state of packing and unpacking as I repeatedly shuttle my belongings between Craftsbury, Hanover, home, Europe, and elsewhere.   It has been over two years since I have stayed in one place for more than 2 or 3 months without packing up the car and moving to a new room.  So I’m very excited to settle into life at Craftsbury!  I’ll still be traveling a lot but it will be nice to finally have a more permanent home base!

I’m also excited to for our new housemates and teammates who have recently moved to Craftsbury.  It’s great to have Clare Egan, Maria Stuber, and Bryan Cook joining our team.  New team members refresh the energy of the whole group and training with Clare and Maria this week has been awesome!

And speaking of new housemates, my first morning in Craftsbury I woke up to a loud and constant chirping.  I opened my shade and there was a robin’s nest with four baby robins sitting on the windowsill just opposite the pane of glass.  I’ve since spent a lot of time watching and photographing my robin family.  Robins are a monogamous species and both the mother and father robin take care of the young. The mother mostly protects the nest while the father brings home the worms.  At first the parents would get very upset, frantically and loudly chirp, and fly in erratic circles whenever I was in my room.  They have since become much more comfortable with my presence so I’ve been able to do a lot of observing (ahhh the life of a professional skier) and have witnessed the dad regurgitating a worm into a chick’s mouth as well as many of sibling squabbles.  Clare did some research and learned that chicks stay in the nest for 13-15 days after hatching.  We missed the hatching so we cannot predict exactly when this event will happen, but judging by how quickly the birds are growing, and the time that has already passed, it is likely that we will see some fledglings soon!