Today we raced in the Birkie Elite Sprints in Hayward, Wisconsin. It was a little bit like the sprints on the Common before the marathon, but only two skiers raced at a time, and the cones were realllllly close to each other. I went in the very first heat, against my former Dartmouth teammate Audrey [...]
Towering snow covered peaks and warm blue skies greeted our team as we drove up the Ridnaun valley last Friday to the site of U-26 Biathlon Championships. Our home for the week is the Schneeberg Hotel, a four star resort complete with a giant spa wing and five course dinners. Do you know the difference [...]
Over the last month, the skiing here at Craftsbury has gone from really good to incredible. We haven’t gotten any huge storms but we also haven’t had a big thaw resulting in considerable snow pack with all of the Center’s core and peripheral trails open and in great shape. Yesterday was one of the first [...]
After only a day in Oslo part of the US team headed 3.5 hours north following twisty roads along lakes and fjords to the little town of Beitostolen for a week of training and racing. Beitostolen is a small resort town with alpine trails and a World Cup Nordic venue. It was really nice to see the [...]
Last weekend the GRP crew split between the Dartmouth Carnival in Hanover and Canadian NorAms in the Gatineau. Matt, Chelsea, Pepa and I lit out for the territories early on Thursday morning to test skis and the race courses for a mini-tour stage race in the Gatineau Park, just north of Ottawa, Ontario. With three races [...]
When I was a college ski racer, February felt crazy. It was the culmination of 6 weeks of winter carnival racing season, in which we raced every Friday and Saturday and missed a day and a half of class every week. Staying healthy, keeping caught up with school work and making time for ski training [...]
I’m up in Fort Kent, Maine right now soaking up the World Cup atmosphere. A ton of work has gone into putting on these biathlon World Cups in Presque Isle last weekend and in Fort Kent this weekend. It’s very cool to see how excited everyone is and the County is going all-out to put [...]
Last night we arrived in Oslo and were greeted this morning with sunny skies which was a great change after a couple weeks in the grey Baltic countries. This morning I skied from our hotel in town up to the Holmenkollen stadium which was a solid 40 minute uphill. It was hard to curb my [...]
Last night we arrived in Oslo and were greeted this morning with sunny skies which was a great change after a couple weeks in the grey Baltic countries. This morning I skied from our hotel in town up to the Holmenkollen stadium which was a solid 40 minute uphill. It was hard to curb my [...]
This weekend was, as all of New England knows, the now annual UVM Canival/Trapp’s Eastern Cup weekend. With a college carnival, eastern cup, and JOQ combined, there are always a lot of skiers at this one. This year only Saturday was combined, with the college kids racing by themselves on Friday, and the eastern cup [...]
Yesterday I went out on the course at Trapp’s to take photos of our guys racing in the 10 km skate and I realized that I still had photos on my camera from Nationals that had not yet made it on to my computer. Whoops! So here is a brief visual journey through a few, [...]
The Marathon this past weekend represented the culmination of a lot of hard work by the Craftsbury Nordic Center staff. Whether it was planning, organizing volunteers, grooming or shoveling snow onto the course, everyone pitched in to make the 30th Craftsbury Marathon a spectacular event! The Craftsbury Marathon was actually my first 50k race in 10 [...]
This weekend a couple of us went up to Orford, Quebec for a NorAm mini-tour and it was tons of fun. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a mini-tour, think of it as kind of like a three-day stage race in biking. The difference is that on the last day, everyone starts in [...]
After a hectic fall balancing school, travel, and skiing, I decided to take the a break from school this winter just focusing on skiing. So a little over a week and a half ago I left Craftsbury and flew to Finland, starting what will be a two month stint in Europe. The first stop was in [...]
The range at Jericho played host to another set of biathlon NorAm races this past weekend. I missed the first ones right after Christmas because of a cold, so it was exciting to finally get down to race on what is essentially our home biathlon course. We go down there quite a bit to train [...]
The last few weeks here in Craftsbury have been wintery and awesome. We got lots of snow, and pretty much every day has been filled with perfect wintery activities, like going for really long skis on grand tour, skiing to lunch, skiing to dinner, skiing in blizzards, skiing in the moonlight, skiing in the sun, [...]
In early January I traveled to Europe to compete in some IBU Cup competitions. The first weekend was in Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic. The countryside around Nove Mesto has rolling hills with patches of forests and lots of fields. Imagine the Creek Road between East Albany and Craftsbury, but add high rise apartments [...]
Finding ways to make a professional ski team ‘green’ is a tough job. On one hand we’ve made a commitment to developing young skiers into international competitors. On the other, we’ve also made environmental initiatives and awareness an equally important goal. It’s a difficult position to be in- the Green Racing Project isn’t going to [...]