September 06, 2013 – Check out the latest from fleet-footed Liz Stephen who’s on a roll breaking running records left and right; Jessie Diggins talks about the real meaning of Road to Sochi; Ivan Babikov shares his thoughts on the Snow Farm; and Noah Hoffman covers Salt Lake, intervals and hiking with a couple of pals…

Liz Stephen
Race to the Top of VT and Maisie in Maine
It’s been another good week.  I traveled from Utah to Vermont on Friday, after a solid week of training in Utah.  I did some great sessions with the APU team who was training there as well and it was nice to have a few housemates as well!  Though it has been tough to say goodbye to the Moore family, at least it is just a few hour plane ride away to Cleveland, so I will be heading there for a visit soon I am sure.  I arrived home to Vermont to my parent’s new puppy, Maisie, and have had a blast getting to know her.  Yesterday, Ida and I met to do the Race to the top of Vermont, a run up Vermont’s tallest peak, Mt. Mansfield.  It was a really tough run, 4.3 miles on an average of 11% grade dirt road, but it was a great test of fitness and I was feeling good, especially with all of this extra air!  It was a really fun day, and we were able to raise some money for our Vermont Olympic Hopefuls Fund which was really cool.

Jessie Diggins
Bye Vermont, see you next Spring
Can we discuss this whole “#RoadtoSochi” business really quick? What if the road is really more of a running trail? What if part of it’s actually #aquajoggingtoSochi or #yogatoSochi or #dirttrailtoSochi? I get a kick out of the term “road to Sochi” because it implies that it’s a fairly straightforward and surefire way to get there. Besides, you actually can’t get to the Olympic village by road, anyways…you need a gondola and then a snowmachine and then you walk. But that’s beside the point.

My point is, there are sometimes a lot of roadblocks and switchbacks and probably a few cul-de-sacs thrown in on every athlete’s quest to make the Olympic team. The road goes up over huge hills and straight through a gym and parts of it are probably on the AT trail. Although this year hashtags and getting thrown down on twitter right and left and everyone’s suddenly super uber interested in what it takes to get to the Olympics, it’s more than just a one-year process. I’d guess that most of the Olympic team will be made up of people who have put at least five years of their life into this, and have been put down thousands of hours of training. So next time you see a reference to this mythical road to Sochi, know that there’s a whole lot more going on behind the scenes, and that it’s never a solitary road, but filled with pit stops manned by coaches, trainers, family and teammates all working to get us there!

Read more here.

Ivan Babikov
Thoughts Out Loud from Down Under
You know that feeling when you doing something that you love, over and over again and don’t get bored, or when you visiting a place for a first time and keep coming back there every year and never get tired of it? You actually are falling in love in that place more and more, year after a year. I hope you have THAT kind of place in your life, but for me it’s a south island of New Zealand. Our team has been coming here for a summer (winter time in Southern Hemisphere) camp on the snow for a 9 straight years, I’ve been lucky to ski on New Zealand snow for six years in a row.

Read more here.

Noah Hoffman
Salt Lake, Intervals and Hike
Yesterday my two friends that are visiting me this week, Rachel Bachman from Colorado and Brayton Osgood from Vermont, overlapped for a couple of hours. We went to the Great Salt Lake, something I did for the first time in June. We had a picnic on the beach. It was a wonderful day with a little cloud cover to keep it from getting too hot. Yesterday afternoon Brayton went to another friend’s house for dinner and Rachel hung out in a park while I did level 4 (race pace) roller ski skate intervals in North Salt Lake. We did it down in the Salt Lake valley so the workout was at a lower altitude. It was hot!

Read more here.