(translated by Aubrey Smith from langrenn.com: “Alsgaard bedre enn på seks år” 11-1-09 by nrk.no, “Therese utnytter dagene på hjemmebane” 11-1-09 by teamturbo.no, “Jeg er trygg på det jeg har gjort” 11-2-09 by Ivar Haugen. All photos from langrenn.com taken by Ivar Haugen)
After a severe bike accident in June that broke bones in both her back and face, Astrid Jacobsen set about on a long road to recovery. She recently returned to training by joining her teammates at an on-snow camp in Val Senales.
She came to the camp a week after the rest of the team, but explained that the purpose of the short camp, for her, was not to use the camp as an altitude camp but to get back into ski training mentally and socially, “do a little skiing, see some sun and snow, and be with the rest of the squad.”
Her recovery has been much faster than predicted, but the time off has not been totally in vain; studying to be a doctor, Jacobsen admitted that the break from training has been good for her studies.
Therese Johaug, who recently came back from the same altitude camp in Val Senales with the women’s national team, talks about her new focus in training. She has changed coaches this season, from Fredrik Aukland to Egil Kristiansen and simultaneously started to enter some periods of hard training, so-called “Bjørgen-training”. She has also added more sprint and speed training, but not, she explains, to become a sprint specialist. She would like to improve her
speed to both perform better at sprints (qualifying more often for heats) and make her more competitive at the sprint finishes of distance races like pursuits and mass starts.
