The European teams on the World Cup are amazed that we spend so much time on the road but each new hotel becomes our new home. Andy hangs the American flag, Holly built a fire in our last condo, and Liz loves to feng shui each room to find the perfect space and sleep environments. We settle into our routines, doing laundry when possible, sampling new cuisines (I tried two different kinds of caviar last night but they were both a little too fishy for my taste buds), and overall loving the adventure. We just arrived in Lillehammer, Norway but here is an update from our last "home" in Ruka, Finland
The World Cup opened last weekend with a three day mini tour of a classic sprint, a 5/10km classic, and a 10/15km skate purusit.
My teammate Noah Hoffman rocked the weekend with a breakthrough performance finishing 9th overall in the tour and posting the fastest time of the day on the final stage! It was so cool to watch the Hoff hassle his way up through the pack and then ski with the lead pack. Noah works really hard so I think this is just the first of many awesome World Cup results this winter!
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| Congrats Noah on the win! |
Our women's team also had a great weekend. Sadie had a couple breakthrough results with the 3rd fastest qualifier in the sprint and a top ten in the 5km classic. Kikkan had her first classic sprint podium and finished 5th overall for the weekend. Liz and Jessie both posted top ten times on the day in the final stage and Jessie lost a pole and glove at 4km and skied the next 6km without a glove in some Arctic temperatures! Ouch! Check out this video of the highlights of our team over the weekend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XNcdQN8g20
I had a solid start to the weekend but I'm still looking for more. My best result of the weekend was a 16th in the classic sprint. After a few poor lane changes and tactical choices early in the quarterfinal which I have replayed endlessly in my mind, I ended up in a double pole sprint finish with the other Ida on the World Cup, Ida Ingemarsdotter from Sweden for second and third place in our heat. She got me by an inch or so in the final lunge and I just missed moving on to the semifinals. Both Swedish Ida and Justyna Kowalczyk, the winner of our heat, advanced all the way to the finals so I was bummed to have my day end too soon on a day when I was feeling strong. More races to come this weekend in Lillehammer!
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| Here is the beginning of my quarterfinal. |
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| Black light bowling with the team in Ruka |
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| A Ruka sunset, probably around 1:30pm |
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