Skiing in May

Normally as soon as the racing season concludes, I put my skis away and don’t take them out again until the we search for snow in early November.  But this year I’m way ahead of years past after enjoying great skiing at Craftsbury through much of April and now being on snow again in May!  Every year the US Ski Team hosts a training camp in Bend, Oregon and I’m really excited to be here for it this year.  We ski in the morning when the trails are still relatively firm and then run, bike, do strength, or rollerski in the afternoon after it has warmed up and the conditions deteriorate.  The snow pack is amazing and the skiing has been great so far.  We had a few really sunny days the first few days I was here before some weather rolled in bringing rain and snow yesterday.  But zeros were working great and I was just psyched to be skiing so definitely couldn’t complain.  Then this morning there was fresh snow and midwinter temperatures so we’re seeing quite the range of conditions.  The main focus of the camp has been volume and working on technique on snow but we’ve had a few group intervals sessions with another one on board for tomorrow.

The Canadian National Team as well as some other skiers from around the country are training here as well so it has been great to do some group interval sessions.  A couple days ago we did 6x3min of increasing intensity and it was fun to chase and lead in the big group.   Today we did 10sec speeds on lots of different terrain.  Trying to keep up with Olympic sprint champion Chandra Crawford and World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall was extra incentive to ski fast.

The US Women’s team in our matching pink training shirts on one of the sunny days.  (Photos Brian Fish)

It has also been fun to see Matt Briggs who is living in Bend now.  Pepa should be proud to know that we did our post workout run together today.