September 11, 2012 – Apple Picking! A staple of fall activities: Yum! In between some L3 intervals where the SMS T2 team hammered around while being observed by the NENSA coaches symposium, and afternoon strength, we went apple picking.

Apples are Erika’s favorite food so she was super excited! And I love picking fruits and berries and eating food in general, so it was a pretty good situation in the orchard today.

I think most of us favored the honeycrisp apples – all photos from Eric Packer.

A couple other random things, which I’m pretty amped on: So this post is going to be a little random and rambling, but will give you a look into what a typical week might look like when we DON’T have different camps going on.

Today the East Coast finally lived up to it’s streotype, and it poured cats and dogs all day long. However, nobody really seemed to mind since it hadn’t rained in a while, and the only thing we haven’t done this summer is float down the river in tubes because the water’s been too low.

Anyways. I’m not going to bore you with the weather. Let’s talk about me! Ahem. I took my final exam for my online (through the U of Utah) Psychology course this afternoon, and it was a big relief getting it done. I guess this counts as my first University class, although I’ve yet to set foot in a school. One class down….about 10 more years to go till I officially get my degree! My housemates were so nice helping me study and giving me the kick in the butt that I sometimes needed to get my homework done. Thanks guys!

And now that my class is done, I am free to focus in my spare time on learning guitar! For my birthday, my parents got me a travel-sized guitar which I AM IN LOVE WITH. Every day we’ve been jamming on it and trying to learn new songs (and yes, of course Justin Bieber made the set list!). I will post a picture of the guitar soon!

Speaking of hanging out with teammates, Erika, Sophie, Annie and I had an awesome girls trip to Manchester the other day, and project Jessie’s-going-to-wear-normal-clothes-now commenced. I have this very strong, very stubborn tendancy to wear only running shorts and cotton t-shirts. Not only during training…all the time (I do laundry though! I promise!). So the girls have been helping me find “nice” stuff to wear, and I’m extremely grateful, though it took a lot of persuading before I bought the dress.

We’ve also been absurdly domestic, and especially since Annie loves muffins, we’ve been experimenting with baking crazy cool muffins. I think my favorite was the banana-cinnamon-peach-oatmeal ones.

But don’t let the amazing kitchen antics fool you. These girls are strong, and the quality of the gym sessions has been super impressive!

Then, to cool down, we have yoga with the SMS kids at the school once a week. I love this and think it’s really nice because it lets you stretch in ways you normally wouldn’t think of, and you always leave feeling refreshed.

And now, every member of our SMS T2 Elite team has their own blog/website! Eric joined the crew with his the other day, and I’ve linked it on the right hand column with the others. Cool beans.

On Monday we drive up to Lake Placid to start the camp at the Olympic Training Center there, which is always a good quality camp, so I’m excited to go but sad to pack up my room and leave SMS!