Training with Purpose

Since my last post I have traveled quite a bit! My last few days in Alaska brought me on yet another adventure. I traveled south of Anchorage, to Homer, and enjoyed some great camping, fun, food and play with my family. We took a water taxi across the bay to Halibut Cove and spent some time kayaking, hiking, and gallery walking; the small town is known for their amazing art talent. The weather was perfect and it reminded me why I love Alaska so much!

A view of Grewink Glacier

My mom and sisters, headed to Halibut Cove

A beautiful sunset, with Mt. Illiamna in the foreground

I returned to Ketchum for a short three days before I was on the road, headed to Whistler B.C. for a training camp. After 16 long hours of driving in the van, and pulling over for a 5 hour sleep, we arrived in Whistler! We are currently training with the U.S. ski team in this wonderful town, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics. As always, it is exciting to be here training at the venue, becoming more familiar with the town, and training with fellow competitors.

Part of the crew, lined up and ready to start intervals

The focus of the training camp is intensity...we have five interval sessions in a span of ten days! It is great to be training with some of the strongest athletes in the nation. We are focusing on improving our transitions, our speed and just becoming familiar and comfortable with the courses. Being here gives us the opportunity to visualize and imagine what it will be like to race the course and sprint the final 300 meters to the finish. Each workout is done with complete focus and purpose. The final countdown is on...every month, day, hour and minute counts!

Adele, working on her stand-starts

More from Whistler to come!

An Alaskan Adventure

I am currently in Alaska, enjoying the "Great North" summer. Twelve hours after stepping off the plane, I found myself in one of the most beautiful landscapes ever!...on Kesugi Ridge. I surprised my sister for her 30th Birthday and flew up to Alaskaa couple days early to join her and her friends for a 2 day backpacking trip on Kesugi Ridge. This ridge is located North of Anchorage in Denali State Park and offers amazing views of Mt. McKinley! While the weather was nice, it wasn't quite clear enough to see the entire mountain.

The scenery from the top of the ridge

The backpacking crew!

To acsess the trail along Kesugi Ridge, it is a 1,500 foot hike up to the ridge. The ridge is fairly mellow with some gradual ascents and descents. The ridge trail follows a broad alpine tundra plane past ponds, across creeks and around granite boulders. If you find yourself in Alaska and are looking for a good backpacking trip with amazing veiws, I definitely recommend Kesugi Ridge! It is beutiful!

Hiking the trail along the ridge

Me, among the fireweed!

August is a great time of year to go hiking and backpakcing in Alaska because the berries are bountiful! Within the first hour of hiking we found blueberries, watermellon berries, cloudberries, crowberries and soapberries! Yum, yum, yum! We picked a bag full of blueberries to make ourself some "camp-made" blueberry crisp! It was great!

Busy, picking blueberries for the birthday crisp

Watermellon berries. They are very juicy!

As for training, it is going well. I have been doing a majority of my training by myself since I've been in Alaska, but it has been good to focus on doing the "right" workouts for me. I have been doing a lot of classic rollerskiing and double-poling. I am trying to give my legs a little break to relieve some soreness and fatigue that has built up over the past couple weeks. Hopefully with the right training and the right amount of rest, they will be back to normal soon!

My sisters and I

I am in Alaska for another week and I am looking forward to a recovery week filled with some fun adventures in Homer, Alaska with my family. I will keep you posted!

Recovery Week

After a quality week of training in Utah, this past week was a recovery week...a chance to get rested and do different activities! Recovery weeks are not always easy for me; I am one who does not like to take a day off. Instead of filling my recovery week with "off days," I used "active recovery" to fill those days. In other words, I used low impact activities such as biking, swimming and double pole to let my body rest and recover. Every other day I either swam or biked to all my legs to recover from the fatigue I'd been feeling for the past couple weeks. This was a good way to give my legs a break and get them back under my feet.

Double pole intervals

In addition to doing new and different activities, recovery weeks are a good chance to get out and explore and travel new areas. This past week I drove through Yellowstone National Park, over Beartooth Pass, and into the Gallatin National Forsest in Montana. The drive was absolutely beautiful and I saw several buffalo, grizzly bears, coyotes, and moose. I went for a run at the Insideout Trailhead and explored the beauty of the Gallatin National Forest.

The beautiful scenery in Yellowstone National Park

We saw hundreds of buffalo

...and yes, they have the right of way

My recovery week also allowed my to spend some time at the YMCA Kids Summer Camp. We had fun making "kitchen creations" ranging from rice krispie treats to chocolate covered bananas. We also had fun painting eachothers faces...although Alonzo wouldn't let me paint his face after he painted mine!

Alonzo and I with our painted faces!

Sara, showing off her butterfly face

It was a good week and I feel rested and ready to hammer into my volume week!