September 17, 2009 (Concord, NH) – We’re stoked to announce that the Fischer XC Team with many well-known top xc skiers will be keeping readers up to date this Olympic season at the new SkiTrax Skier Blog section re-launching soon as the entire site is being revamped. The Fischer Team includes Adam Swank, Brayton Osgood, Colin Rodgers, Nicole Deyong, Evelyn Dong and Sylvan Ellefson, Kate Whitcomb, and even team manager, Chris Hall, will share his thoughts and tricks of the trade during the season from time to time. Check out Brayton Osgood’s first blog with more to follow soon…

Brayton Osgood – Bring on the TTs
Hello SkiTrax readers! It’s always exciting to start a new blog and open my training up to a new audience. Since there are probably a few of you who aren’t fully up to date on my off-season so far, I’ll use this blog as a chance to play catch up.

Summer training in Bend has been relatively normal, which is to say pretty awesome. The sun came out in mid-June (about the same time the crust skiing ended), and the clouds have only recently returned. I usually get a little whiny about three-months of non-stop sun (seriously), but this year I planned my summer a little better and took a trip home to VT for a couple weeks in August. By all accounts I picked the nicest two weeks of the year to be in the east, which means I didn’t actually see a lot of clouds. Only one day of rain back there, but it was a great change of pace.

Of course, escaping the sun wasn’t my main motivation for going home. The chance to see my friends and family (and Fenway Park) was the real reason for my trip; as an added bonus I got to switch up my training a little. I spent a couple of weeks running and roller skiing around my old stomping grounds, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It set me up to spend the fall in Bend without the monotony that can come from spending the whole year training in the same place. Finally, a trip home in August served as the natural divider between the two parts of my training year.

As August gave way to September, my focus shifted to the hard workouts that must come this fall. We (XC Oregon) have already done two time trials this month, and my next one is scheduled for Sunday. Roller ski results don’t mean much this time of year, but the efforts are what count. With two months until the start of the season (which is the start of the points chase for me), now is the time to start the final preparations. I need to get to the start line in West ready to race – not trying to remember how to race. I can’t think of a better way to do that than by practicing my racing. Bring on the TTs.