July 24, 2013 (Eagle Glacier, AK) – This year makes for the second year in a row that the NAWTA camp has invited a special guest to join us for our Alaska camp. This includes a week of dry land training in town and perhaps, more intimately, a week of on-snow training on Eagle Glacier. Last year we had Aino-Kaisa Saarinen of Finland and this year we are joined by Astrid Jacobsen of Norway. Needless to say, it’s been awesome having her around and we’re all excited to have a new, close friend on the World Cup next season!

We were curious what other people, specifically Norwegians thought of Astrid’s decision to join us in Alaska for close to three weeks – particularly in an Olympic year where some folks aren’t into “taking chances” or trying something completely new. Her answer? She said that some people wondered why she would leave the best Women’s team in the world to come and train with US… however, she alluded to the fact that she was interested to see what we were doing, and how we train. She was impressed by the US Women’s quick improvement and wanted to experience it for herself. She acknowledged that Norway has been the best for a long, long time and it’s not as hard to *maintain a tradition* as it is to *create something notable* from a place where very little existed beforehand.

Skiing was Astrid has been a treat as I would consider her one of the best technicians in the world, particularly in Classic. On top of that, Astrid is a world-class person too. For example, she is on my chore-crew here at Eagle and this morning she made homemade scones for the entire group at 6am. Considering the fact that she is gluten free and cannot eat them herself makes it all the more impressive. Then, after the morning’s skate interval session she told me what I was doing well and what she thinks I can improve upon – AWESOME! Also, she proposed a round-table discussion later in the week to talk about what she thinks our team could improve upon and conversely, what kinds of things she’ll be taking home to her team.

Obviously everyone skiing at a high level has performance goals and many of them include clocking a better time than the competition and even one’s own teammates. However, what’s fun about having Astrid here is that it feels like we’re all trying to improve each other through exchanges of information be it ski technique, training philosophy, or baking bread. I’m psyched for the rest of the week and the upcoming season…… time to go and klister my skis for the afternoon classic session!

Thanks to NNF and the entire Nordic Community for supporting, following, and cheering us on!

– Holly 🙂