First two WC weekends are done. I’m fairly unsatisfied, but the past two weeks have had some positive moments as well (this is only regarding the racing- life has been totally fine :)).
First weekend was in Finland, which was crazy cold and felt like Fairbanks. Last weekend was in Norway where I consumed a significant amount of farmed salmon (sorry Alaska) and brown cheese (sorry white cheddar).

This upcoming weekend is in Davos. I like the course here so I’m excited. It’s always tough to deal with the altitude, but that challenge is kind of fun on World Cup.

The annual altitude camp in Park City is kind of how I separate summer and fall training. The dumping of snow and hunting opportunities in September maybe might have actually gotten me into that fall vibe… either way I had a successful camp in Utah.

After Utah Jess and I moved out her apartment in New Mexico. Proudly made the move in two days then made a 16 hour drive to Montana. Bozeman has the best donut shop btw…

After a quick stop in Bozeman Jess and I went to AK to get a solid 3 weeks on snow before we left for Europe. The time in AK went by super quick with lots of time spent driving to snow at Hatcher’s Pass, making great meals, and packing up/dealing with errands as I won’t be back to AK until April.

Autumn. I’m going to do a bit of a photo dump from the second half of the summer. For a quick reflection I would say life has gone well the past two month with the exception of my mystery six day fever that included a day in the ER and ended with an IV. Other than the fever all other aspects have been groovy- training a ton, work is chugging along, visited Jessica in NM, revived the sourdough, went fishing and some mellow days laying low.

This years race was pretty special for me cause my parents and sister’s family came to watch. I’m pretty sure they’ve never seen me do a mountain running race before so of course I’m stoked to have had a good day while they were in Seward.
The conditions during the race were super muddy and slick in the trees. I’ve never seen the mountain when it’s muddy. I visit Seward when it’s blue bird 🙂 The morning of the race my APU teammate, Forrest, showed me a new line up the initial cliffs, which was considerably better than my line in the mud.

So the recap: great couple of days in Seward. Awesome race, great cheering, and fun group of racers to spend the day with. I felt fit and managed to stay on my feet so it’s back to a big block of nordic training- once my legs feel good again.

I recently joined Jessica during her six week clinical rotation in Durango, which basically means I’ve had a CO altitude training camp. Sense all my accounting work is done remotely it really doesn’t matter if I’m here or in AK in regards to getting work done. I do try to spend time in Anchorage so that I remain a contributing teammate at APU and participate in community.

Training went really well in Durango. I put some emphasis on double pole, strength training, and building up my running miles for the rest of summer.

After the races in Falun, Sweden Scott, KO and I traveled to Davos to hunker down for a three week training block. A few days after arriving here I learned that I was named to the World Championship team. Super stoked!

So with three weeks to train I made a plan with Erik Flora and have been charging pretty hard since I got here. I’ve only raced six times this season. Normally I would have about 15 races under me at this point in the season. I would say I’m relatively fresh and so I’m taking this opportunity to train hard and make some race type efforts via some tough interval sessions. It is going well so far and I’m enjoying my time here.
When I’m not training I’ve been doing a ton of accounting and bookkeeping work, played some Banana Grams, watching a few ski films with Scott, and I’ve spent a fair bit of time at meals.

I think we travel on Feb 21 to Germany to settle in before World Champs. The 30km skiathlon is on the 27th.

That’s the quick update for meow.

Such a relief returning to the action and feeling pretty strong. In all honesty I felt stronger than my results showed on paper.
I struggled a bit in the classic portion of the 30km skiathlon, but felt awesome in the last 15km skating. I moved into 30th and got out sprinted at the finish line and ended the day 32nd.

I scrambled the first leg of the 4×7.5km relay. My leg went quite well up until my pole broke and I lost the pack while searching for a replacement. Sadly, the gap that formed in my leg then left the rest of the boys on my team skiing in no-mans-land. They all skied good times so I’m excited about the next relay opportunity, which is hopefully at World Championships.

Fun week to travel and roommate with Hunter. He raced well in his first WC ever! Jack made some sweet skis for us. Stoked to be here with lots of APU teammates and friends.

Travel to Finland was as easy as it could ever be. The plane was nearly empty so I got a four seat row to myself. I was able to sleep at least 7 of the 9 hour flight from Seattle to Amsterdam.

We got to Finland and first thing we had to take a Covid test and once we received negatives we were allowed to start training at the venue. The trails in Lahti are in perfect shape. The race course has nearly a 3ft base of man made snow. The non race trails are in great condition as well, which is awesome for getting off the long steep climbs on the race course.

On November 9th, I lost my sense of smell after having a stuffy nose for the two days prior. My plane ticket to leave Alaska for the season opener world cups was on November 17th. These weren’t even the type of sniffles I would have normally considered a cold- just the type that would make me decide to push intervals back a day or two. I actually did exactly this, but on the third day I woke up and couldn’t smell my morning coffee, and I knew it wasn’t just your average cold. I quickly went and got a covid test, but didn’t get “official” results until day 5. In the meantime, I assumed I had covid, which was reinforced by the inability to smell my stinky ski boots or taste half a bottle of sriracha poured into my soup. I started taking things very easy, finding it difficult to make it through a 25 minute mile on the treadmill on my basement with the infamous “covid headache” after doing cruisy 7-minute miles just days before. Needless to say, I did not make my flight to Europe, and instead have been focused on my health and recovery ever since.

It has been super difficult to take over two weeks off recovering from Covid-19. Prior to Covid I had been doing my first big on-snow training block and feeling awesome. I did an hour of threshold intervals the day before the ‘sniffles’ set in and it was nearly effortless. I did the set on a known route in Fairbanks that I have done since I was 14 so it has become a solid gage of fitness for me.

Nonetheless, I am doing much better now. I had a few tough days, but in general from what I know via echo, ekg, chest x-ray, and blood labs I believe I am recovering well. Thanks to the cardiologist and my coach, Erik Flora, I have a structured plan to return to full training in a conservative and progressive approach. After two weeks completely off from training, I started back with some walks. After that I did a week of 1 hour skis each day. Last week I did 2×1 hour skis per day; this week, I am doing roughly the same but allowing the daily volume to reach 2.5 hours if I feel energetic. This might seem like a lot, but I am used to doing two sessions per day that are each two hours in duration in addition to high intensity training sessions. Relatively to my normal, right now I am doing all my exercise at a crawling pace. Polar watches was super generous and sent me a brand new watch that helps me ensure that I keep my pulse within the specified range.

With my progression, I hope to be near 100% around Christmas and return to racing for the second half of the season (assuming no complications along the way).

The silver lining of covid and not heading to europe: After quarantine I was really excited to get outside and see family that I only get a chance to see a few weeks a year.