Les Bois, Les Bois!

Fall in Boise

I'm back home for a brief visit in beautiful Boise after a tough three week camp in Utah. It was a great training camp, with some solid races, but it's so nice to be relaxing at home now. There's really no better place to be on an off week than at your true home where you can be with family and really enjoy doing nothing. This is my favorite time of year in Boise, when the trees are changing colors and losing all their leaves. I'm especially looking forward to Halloween, since my house always gets tons of trick-or-treaters.

As you know, an off week for me does not mean completely down. I took a couple days at the beginning of the week to catch up on sleep and truly relax, but I do have a couple workouts to keep myself in shape. Today I joined in the Idaho Nordic practice for some plyos and strength. It was fun to connect with such a motivated group of local skiers, and it was a great workout! It was one of the harder strength workouts I've done recently, and certainly better than going out for a jog and doing strength alone! Thanks for letting me join you guys!

I'll be finishing out this week at home and then diving back into training for the last dry-land block before the World Cup in December. It's crazy that Sunday will be November, but I'm feeling fit and ready for the season. November is when skiers start to search the sky for flurries, but it's important to stay focused and get in quality workouts regardless of the weather. So while I'm looking forward to snow, I'll be putting my head down and focusing on the work at hand. But still, THINK SNOW!

Zach and I on a bike ride in Utah.

View down into the Heber Valley, our October home.

Utah Fall Camp!

The women's team is all together for one last dry-land camp in Utah. We've been training at the beautiful Soldier Hollow venue (site of the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Nordic events). It's been great to be all together again, but unfortunately the internet at our house is spotty at best, so I've been unable to get a post up until now.

Today we had our first "test" of the camp with and 15K Individual time trial. It was a good race for me. I felt I skied strong and shot well, with only 2 penalties (out of 20 shots). I ended up 3rd, and feel I'm just where I want to be at this time of year. The last couple weeks of fall are going to be important, but I'm already getting psyched for snow!

Racing at Soldier Hollow

Since there are no World Cup trials spots up for grabs this year for the women, everyone seems much more relaxed than last year, and I feel I've been able to focus more on getting in one last big push of training. We will have a Sprint time trial on Monday and then one more week of training before we all scatter. I'll be home in Boise for a week before heading back to Lake Placid for a couple weeks of training and then off to Sweden for the pre-World Cup camp and racing.

Soldier Hollow Panorama

It's been great to be out here with (mostly) beautiful western fall weather while our friends out east contend with not enough snow to ski on, but too much to rollerski with. Everyone is eager to get this season rolling, but we'll have to stay focused on training for just a few more weeks before we can switch to race mode.