Monday, December 2, 2013

Kuusamo and YIPPPEEEE!!!!!!

The New Friends of Liz Design is in!!! The neck warmers are a SERIOUS hit, so fleecy and soft!  Thanks to Corinne for designing this year's print herself and HUGE thanks to Skida for all the incredible support.

First of all, this blog is dedicated to my good friend and teammate, Noah Hoffman who had 2 personal best performances this weekend in the Ruka Mini Tour.  We raced the first World Cups of the season in Finland and it was what you call a "mini tour", basically a 3 day stage race, each days results accumulating to create an overall winner on Sunday.  Noah skied to a personal best finish of 9th in the overall Tour at a very well attended World Cup with over 120 men racing, but also posted the fastest time of the day in Sunday's 15k skate race!!!!  Congrats to you, Noah, for all of your hard work and dedication.  This is just the beginning for you.

The weekend is also dedicated to Sadie Bjornsen who had personal best finishes, posting the third fastest sprint time of the day on Friday and snagging a 7th place in the 5k classic on Saturday!! Sadie has persevered through many injuries and seasons of discouragement but has always been a positive light on this team and it is so fun to see it finally all coming together for her.  Congrats Sadesie.  You are just about to tap into your true abilities and it's going to be fun as hell.

The website CrossCountrySki.US has the entire EuroSport feed of every Cross Country World uploaded to the internet, just for all of you avid fans out there, but maybe not willing to get up at 4 am to see us compete on the weekend. TOTALLY get that!

You know you're back in Europe when the signs read things like this.

We have a bit of a pink getup this year...

Kikkan coming into our sauna after the cold walk that we do to and from each meal here in Kuusamo.

Kuusamo may be cold and dark, but not in the bowling alley!  Team bowling night had us rolling pretty high numbers this year, like triple digits!

Jessie, Simi, Soph and Ida

Chanukah is being celebrated here on the road this year with dreidel games, a menorah, and potato latkes made by Noah!

Athlete social set up by Kikkan after our biannual athlete meeting.  Kikkan has worked really hard to get the athletes a say in what happens with our sport.  I feel really lucky to be represented by such a  professional.

We have had a ton of birthday's this fall so far.  Andy turned 30 on the 30th for his golden birthday and the team got him 2 rocking chairs for his cabin porch in Vermont.  Our wax tech Peter's wife, Tina, made Swedish Bulle for the occasion as well! YUM!!!

And the Norwegian ladies came over and sang to him:)

Kuusamo stadium with the jump in the backround.  It was a cold weekend, but not as cold as it has been here in the past and the snow was really good.

We got some TV coverage leading up to the event.

And Matt got some too!

We are now in Lillehammer for this weekend's World Cup's which are a 10k classic on Saturday, which I will not start and the first 4x5k relay of the year on Sunday, which is also the only one before the OWG one, so it will be fun to throw down and see what we can do!  Until next time....




1 comment:

Steve said...

Great start to the season for you and the team - back in Montpeculiar, we are psyched for the team and for you!