Adventure

After a hard week of training on the glacier, a recovery week was much needed. I took advantage of an easier week and went on some fun adventures in Alaska with my sister, Kristy. We drove 7 hours East of Anchorage to the McCarthy Kennecott area, located at the foot of the Wrangell Mountains. The drive there is not an easy one, seeing as it takes over 2 hours to drive the last 50 miles. We loaded down the car with bikes, backpacks, rain gear, tent, food, water, and everything else we thought we might need for the next five days.


In order to get to McCarthy, you have to park at the end of the road, cross a foot bridge and walk or bike 1.5 miles. Even though the town is quite small with a population of about 40-50, it is a popular tourist destination in the summer. Five miles up the road is Kennecott mine. This area is full of artifacts and history from its mining days in the early 1900's. Copper was discovered in Kennecott in 1900 and the mines and the town of Kennecott were built quickly after the discovery. By 1938 the copper deposits in the mountain were gone and the town was completely abandoned. Over the 30 years that the mine was up and running, $200 million in ore was extracted, making it the richest concentration of copper in the world!


We had fun exploring the old mining town and reading about the history from that time. We ventured out on some cool hikes that took us to a couple of the mining sights. As you can see from the pictures, several artifacts were left by the miners long ago.


Despite some pretty wet, rainy weather and a few run-ins with bears, we had a great time!

During my time in AK, I went on several hikes in the Anchorage area. It does not take long to drive out of the city and be in the middle of nowhere. Kristy and I took advantage of a beautiful sunny day and ran back to a lake called symphony lake. The views are always beautiful there, rain or shine.


I am back in Ketchum and looking forward to a 10 day training camp with the U.S. Ski Team in a week. Fortunately, the team is coming to Sun Valley to take advantage of the great facilities and the endless trails we have in this area. Looking forward to some good training! I'll keep you updated!

A Big Week of Skiing!

I just finished up a 26 hour week of skiing on Eagle Glacier! The glacier is located just outside of Girdwood, Alaska and sits at 5,500 feet. Thanks to Alaska Pacific University Ski Team, I and a few other guest athletes were invited to train at their August camp. We spent the week focusing on skiing and skiing only. Days were spent skiing twice a day, reviewing technique, resting, eating (a lot!), and sleeping. The accommodations were nothing fancy...25 people bunking in one moderately sized building with one kitchen, and two bathrooms. But I do have to say that we ate like kings and queens up there!

The skiing was great! In August the snow is usually a bit wet and slow and crevasses become visible. These conditions are not always the most fun to ski in, but it is good to practice in because you never know when you will have to race in them! (The conditions were similar to those found in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics.) Our first couple days were filled with sunshine, but that quickly changed to clouds, fog, rain and wind. The weather changes very quickly up there...you might begin a workout in the sun but it might change to rain and fog by the end. While the sunny days were fewer than the rainy and foggy days, it was those sunny days that made up for the less pleasant ones. I have to say that it is one of my favorite places to be on a nice day!

A great advantage of going up to the glacier is getting the opportunity to train with new people and a different team. It is always interesting to see how other teams train and to try new things. APU has a great team of very talented athletes, so it was fun for me to get to train both easy and hard with the girls.

After being surrounded by white snow and lots of white clouds for a week, it is fun to hike down into the lush green forests. A two hour hike across the glacier, down scree, glassading on snow, and bush-wacking through thick brush brings you to Crow Creek road.

Overall the week up the glacier was very successful. Many hours of good hard training were put in the bank. I am sticking around Alaska for another 10 days to enjoy some fun adventures and to spend time with friends and family.

Up to the Glacier I Go!

I flew into Anchorage Thursday evening and I am headed up to Eagle Glacier this afternoon to ski for the next week. It is always nice to spend a week or two on snow during the summer. In the midst of all the summer time roller skiing and training, getting on snow is a good reminder of what I do and why I do it.

It sounds like conditions are good up there and hopefully the weather will cooperate! On a sunny day it is the most beautiful place in the world....if the wind, rain and fog set in, it can get a little old.

Sorry for the briefness of this blog, but I will be sure to give a full update with lots of pictures when I return in a week!

Looking out over the glacier

Mixing it Up

My oh my...the summer is slipping by way too fast! It is already the middle of July and it feels as if summer just began!

The past couple weeks I have been enjoying some new modes of training. Despite my cautious timidity on a mountain bike, I've been biking more to work on getting over my fear of falling. Luckily, mountain biking is one of those things that the more you do and the more you work on it, the better you get! I am getting better at riding more technical trails and I'm actually riding over all those roots, rocks and stream crossings. I have yet to improve on my downhill speed though.

Along with mountain biking, I've enjoyed a few road bike rides as well. Now, just to give you an idea...there is one highway through town, so you have two options: 1) ride north OR 2) ride south. While the terrain options are few, I've learned that it's a great alternative to running and roller skiing and helps to mix up the training. It probably helps when you are borrowing someone's road bike that's worth $10,000!!!

I've incorporated some swimming into my recovery workouts, although let me tell you....I got suckered into swimming with the masters swim team the other day, and they are FAST!!!! whew! It wasn't much of a "recovery" workout. After a 500 m warm-up, we proceeded to do 5 sets of 3x100m and then 10x50m every 45 seconds! After swimming about 2,500m in an hour, I was exhausted! I am still deciding if I want to go back this week.

We tried some new resistance speed training at practice. Our speed workout on roller skis consists of a 30 min warm-up, then 3 sets of 6x20 sec speeds with various techniques. We tried something new this time...we put a bungee around our waist and then pulled our coach behind us on a skate board. While it sounds and looks a bit bizarre, it was a good way to add resistance while trying to keep the tempo up. Hopefully it will make us strong! Here's a picture to give you an idea...


I am looking forward to a trip to Alaska in two weeks! A couple teammates and I am joining the APU team and skiing on Eagle Glacier for a week. Should be some good training!

Until next time!

Happy Forth of July!

Usually the 4th of July finds me celebrating and enjoying the company of friends and family in Seward Alaska, but not this year. I am currently in Sun Valley, Idaho in the midst of moving! I have to admit that moving is not much fun...lots of cleaning, throwing, lifting and not to mention really exhausting! I am trying to get it all done as fast as I can, so I can put my feet up tonight and enjoy some dinner with friends and go to the fireworks!

A lot has happened in the past two weeks! To begin, last week we celebrated Olympic Day at the YMCA. Olympic guest athletes, Morgan Arritola and Jon Engen joined in on the fun. The day opened with a video from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. The video got the kids really excited! Morgan gave a talk about her Olympic experience and the importance of respect. We've been trying to instill the YMCA core value of respect, so it was very appropriate. We preceded to go to the park and play games, do relays, and enjoy some cookies and lemonade. The kids had a great time and it was fun to see their excitement for the Olympics.


Now that summer has finally sprung, our team decided to hike a peak last week. Not much to our surprise, we tromped through a lot of snow! We hiked Hyndman Peak, approximately 12,000 ft. We knew we were going to run into a lot of snow, but we didn't anticipate post-holing for 2 hours! Despite the long trek through snow, we had a great time! It was a beautiful, sunny day, so there wasn't much to complain about.

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Have a happy 4th of July!
Cheers!

It's beginning to feel like SUMMER!

I was beginning to wonder if summer was ever going to arrive here in Sun Valley. It has been a long, cold spring. This past week felt more like summer and it looks as if more sun is just around the corner...just in time for summer solstice, tomorrow!

With the longer days of summer come some busy and fun-packed days! While I am in the thick of training, I am also spending much of my time at the YMCA summer camp. Last week we enjoyed taking a tour of the world, exploring and learning about a different country each day. This week we had fun finding treasures in scavenger hunts all over town! We have 20-25 kids each day, and they arrive every morning with a bundle of energy. It's been really fun to work with the kids day in and day out.

Julian, sporting his Samurai hat

This coming week we are exploring the difference between magic and science with some fun experiments. On Wednesday, June 23rd, I am organizing a celebration for Olympic Day. I'll be sure to update on all the fun activities of the day.

The girls having fun at the park

Until then....keep enjoying the summer!

Update

The last two weeks in Bend helped me jump-start my volume training for the season. We spent 2-3 hours skiing at Mt. Bachelor in the morning and did a dryland workout in the afternoon. My total volume was more than I had done since last fall. It was good to get back into the training schedule, despite the less than desirable weather. We experienced some snow the first few days, until it turned to rain. Unfortunately, our 3 hour over-distance ski fell on the day where it poured ALL day! Bend is usually known for its sunny days, but that was not the case this time.

We managed to have one sunny day!

I returned to Sun Valley just in time to help with the Sun Valley half marathon. While I was a little jealous not to race in it, I had fun helping with the Kid's Zone. There were several activities for kid's including the bouncy castle, face painting, relay races, karaoke, and a kid's running race. Here are several picture from the day's event: