December 04, 2012 (Quebec City, QC) – I’m kicking off this short update with this awesome cartoon, drawn by the FIS carticature guy Thomas Zipfel:

The US women are officially in the "World Cup Salon" © FIS

We just arrived in Quebec City, Canada last night after a long day of travel from Ruka, Finland. Whew! But traveling back West is always so much easier on the body than going east, so I think the crew is doing really well.

The Swedish Media (and all of Sweden!) were super friendly to our team, and we had a couple articles. My favorite? Peter, one of our Wax Techs, getting recognized for making Kikkan’s boards so fast! I think the people behind the scenes in the wax rooms never get enough attention, so it’s great when an article gets published about all the hard work our staff does!

Peter's Newspaper Article! © courtesy of Jessie Diggins

There was also an article of the girls team, and of course we put it into google translate to find out what it said. The results were hilarious because of the imprecise manner of translating, so here’s my favorite quotes!

– “Diggins know several times how dryer disappears and the legs fold itself.”

– “I love Kalles caviar. I can eat much anywhere and I do not have no bread, says Liz Stephen and laughs.”

– “Nor do they have any high wages or obese sponsorship agreement that boast.”

– “I have always good skiing when I compete. We have had many great robbers before, but as soon as they have done progress with us as they leave U.S. to any other country.”

Birds Eye View of the stadium in Ruka © USSA Nordic

The last race of the Ruka Triple was another solid day for the US girls – all of us in the top 25! I was initially pretty hard on myself for screwing up what started out as a great classic race; somehow in my race-state-of-mind-fog I miscounted the laps and started sprinting with one lap to go. So, not suprisingly, I totally died going up the last hill and lost myself a lot of time and places. But there were also a ton of good things going on that day, especially seeing my teammates perform so well! Lets hope that’s my only “dumb blond race moment” of the year .

The Classic Pursuit start in Ruka © Nordic Focus

Ruka was sweet, but I was so happy this morning to wake up to sunshine and see the light! It’s going to be easy to stay awake here for sure.

In the airport we got to meet up with more of the USA crew for Quebec and Canmore – qualifiers based on the US Supertours in West Yellowstone and Bozeman. I’m SO PSYCHED they’re here and I can’t wait for the entire group to finish getting here!

Racing the Classic 10km © Nordic Focus