2009 March

All is well here in Norway.  It has been nice to have some solid results again with 9th and 13th place finishes here although I was hoping for a bit more today.  Of course it was disappointing to go from 4th to 17th in one shooting stage, but this is biathlon… After being a bit [...]

It was undoubtedly the best collective day for the German athletes this year. Claudia Nystad and Axel Teichmann both won today's prologues. It seems that this has happened before...oh wait, it has, just over three months. The opening leg of the Tour de...

Today is the first day of spring.  A time for new beginings and fresh starts.  This spring marks the begining of my new legs, new goals, and new victories.  I am fired up and ready to jump head first into this new year! I am at my halfway point between surgeries.  My right leg was fixed a week ago, [...]

divbr //divdivspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; "div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font: normal normal normal 100%/normal Georgia, serif; text-align: left; "a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l4L_01UOs1s/ScAmwAf4BjI/AAAAAAAAAC8/S1GZV4Nv22M/s1600-h/podium.jpg"img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l4L_01UOs1s/ScAmwAf4BjI/AAAAAAAAAC8/S1GZV4Nv22M/s320/podium.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314290166506456626" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 303px; " //adiv style="text-align: center; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "My first NCAA podium. 5k Classic- 3rd place/span/divdiv style="text-align: center; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "br //span/diva onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l4L_01UOs1s/ScAmg8CVD-I/AAAAAAAAAC0/8dSvwV9OmGU/s1600-h/n624440321_6298828_516319.jpg"img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l4L_01UOs1s/ScAmg8CVD-I/AAAAAAAAAC0/8dSvwV9OmGU/s320/n624440321_6298828_516319.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314289907610750946" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 238px; " //adiv style="text-align: center; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "University of Alaska Anchorage- Fourth place team/spanbr //divdiv style="text-align: center; "br //divdiv style="text-align: center; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "br //span/divspan class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; " /spanI have finally arrived home after what seems to be like traveling home from another country. Maine may be close to the farthest place in the US you can get from Alaska. Regardless of our five hour time change (an extra hour because of daylight savings the first day there), and the long travels UAA was able to post the best team result in history! A successful first day for the woman, and a successful second day for the men put us in first place for the nordic team standings. In college NCAA skiing, alpine and nordic skiing is considered one team. Our alpine team had some unlucky runs, and wasn't able to pull off races as well as the rest of the season. Even so, UAA came in fourth in the team standings. The best UAA has ever recorded in history is fifth, many years back. It was fun to be a part of it. Our team got a nice huge trophy that everyone enjoyed lugging around town and the airport on the way home. It is fun to race as a team, then you are sharing the excitement afterwards!divspan class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; " /spanAs far as my races, I had one really successful race, and one not so successful race. The first day was 5k classic. This is my favorite event, so I had my eyes set on gold. The course was perfect for me. A mellow first couple of kilometers, and then it picked up quickly. With two long steep uphills in the last kilometer and a half, I knew that holding the hard pace at the end was most important. I felt good, and was able to slide across the line making the podium, in third place, 17 seconds out of first. The second day was not nearly as successful. I did a 15k race for the first time ever. The 15k was a mass start, so things were extremely aggressive for the firs 5k lap. I have never been in such an aggressive race, falling two times in the first couple of kilometers. Girls were pushing and shoving, running over each other, even taking each other out. Rather than being crazy, I decided to ski the first lap comfortably and try to come on hard at the end to avoid the crashes and breaking equipment. When the time came to go really hard and catch up, I was too far back to get back on with the front group. I didn't feel too terrible, but the result was not what I was hoping for. br //divdivspan class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; " /spanOverall it was an awesome experience, competing not only for yourself but 11 other members of your college team. Rumford, Maine was an enjoyable place, but I have realized I never want to spend more than 10 days at a time there.br //divdivspan class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; " /spanI am now off to Fairbanks for distance Nationals next week. I will be racing in the team sprint, 5k classic, and 15k pursuit. Hopefully Fairbanks warms up a bit...!!/div/div/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2018521813175454198-3616026601386980376?l=sadiebjornsen.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

While one of the four predictors had a pretty good showing with the women's prologue, no one would say that the co-bloggers and commenters had their finest hour with the men's prologue. Ain't none of us the King of Mördarbacken.Petter, pooped, puttered and disappointed everyone except ADS, who put him in fifth, two spots higher than His Sneerness's final spot. Even beyond putting Northug in first

It seemed like there was a lot more awareness of the Iditarod Trail Invitational this year. I’ve followed the race for the past few years and I don’t remember seeing nearly as many newspaper articles as there were this year. I wanted to make sure I had a copy of this stuff [...]

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img src="http://20.media.tumblr.com/COiZNt422laan2fe6zzlNtFyo1_500.jpg"/br/br/p“To all the skiers who don’t have the talent, guts or stamina to make it: all is not lost.  You too, can be a wax tech, which is basically the same as being a rock star.”   Randy Gibbs in Liberec with Therese Johaug and Kristin Stormer Steira./p pBonus random musing: you too would kick ass if you weighed 43 lbs and had “stormer” as part of your name./p

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Tomorrow will see the first of three back-to-back-to-back races in Falun and the second race in the World Cup finale. The women go 2.5km and the men 3.3km. Last year the finale was held in Bormio, Italy where Piller-Cottrer and Nystad won race with tim...

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