September 09, 2011 (Boulder, CO) – What does it mean, to train? Does it mean that every day you go out and pound your muscles until you cannot stand? That you go and charge up the biggest, steepest, hottest hill there is? Or do you go and seek something else? Do you choose an easier path so that you can push harder tomorrow? The hardest sacrifice we can make is to fight a little less hard so we can die another day.

Training your body is much easier, I think, than training your mind to accept that it cannot always fight. Sometimes you have to turn around and walk away, and embrace the fact that you cannot always push your limits. College is not for making yourself the best you can be at every minute- college is for showing you what doesn’t work, so you can figure it out in the middle of the night when you have a research paper due the next day.

So here we are, in college now. Some important lessons have been learned, like coffee really is the most important food in college. All nighters? Let’s have ‘em EVERY DAY!! Workouts at midnight and 2am? Let’s do it. That’s really the stuff that keeps the collegiate athlete going. You didn’t finish your paper until 10pm? That’s okay, just cram in a few interval sessions in the dark, run around your living room for a while and crash on your couch with your head shoved in-between the cushions. If you forget to set an alarm you can be woken by the hysterical screams of your roommate informing you that you are late for the workout this morning, only four hours after you finished your last one in the dark and rain and storms of the ever changing and indecisive weather of Boulder.

That European roommate is flapping her arms and jumping around the living room trying to wake you up, the same one that two nights ago made tin foil hats for you both and raced around on a flat field in a thunderstorm in the pouring rain. But someone told us we were dumb jocks, we were really just living up to their expectations.

A fireball of energy from the Czech Republic, she is as ferocious on the ski trails as any hulking male Russian sprinter, but at home she is bouncy, laughing, opinionated, and ginger-loving. Perhaps a side effect of the bright red hair that adorns her head- gingers love ginger? You need not go to the Czech Republic to know everything about it, you need simply to live in the same apartment for a while and you will learn all there is to know about everything from the washing machines to the food to the training.

She is too flustered now to speak English, she is chattering away in a flood of language you don’t understand but you imagine means something like “move your butt, workout in ten minutes!!!” You whirl around, grabbing your roller skis, boots, helmet, gloves, dropping things everywhere and running out the door, sparing a last glance at your other teammate and roommate.

Your engineering roommate hasn’t gone to bed in the last three weeks, her fingers are fusing with the keyboard of the laptop computer that is her major and her life and her love. Yelling her name in her ear only spurs her to even more impressive words per minute, stopping only to tap on the TI-89 Titanium Plus Edition graphing calculator beside her. She mutters something about torsion, gesticulating furiously at a screen full of Mathematica code. “See? See?” You don’t see. Her external monitor is bigger than you are, but so full of files of Java, C++, and random math equations that nothing can be deciphered. She doesn’t go to the team workouts, she doesn’t ever stop her eternal march of death grinding away at the pile of homework that is always in attendance next to her, interwoven with a stack of math and computer science textbooks as high as your ceiling.

You know she trains, her roller ski boots are always sweaty, her shoes always spattered in mud from workouts in the rain. But when she goes, you have no idea, because evidently it’s true- engineers do not sleep and the engineering jocks must clone themselves in order to get their training in – something they must teach in the intro level engineering courses.

She is a walking encyclopedia, any math or science question you ask will be answered if not by her, by one of the nerd friends eternally glued to the other end of her phone. But rarely will the answer be understand any more than the t-shirt she is wearing that reads “304 Not Modified.”

It is no wonder the US Ski Team discourages their athletes from attending full time school. The lessons you learn while living at college are the lessons that last a lifetime, that teach you about the other world, the world of academia. If our skiers stepped into this world, their view would be tainted, and they would realize there is more to life than just sports. And sports are really about doing as your job something that is, in the grand scope of the world, completely irrelevant.

It is much better to struggle through years of books, and spend a lifetime developing your mind so that you are not satisfied with living in simplicity. To fight a bitter battle in school and come out on the other side facing a lifetime of work that has no joy, is simply work. Or perhaps, as my roommate likes to put it, work where the distance is perpendicular to the force.

Be careful if you choose to live the dream, because if you fall too far, burn too many bridges, walk the wrong path, your life will shift more suddenly than a Czech sprinter can down a beer, and the dream will disappear into the vast collection of the BFG.

Every side of the world lives in this apartment, the ex world cup skier from the Czech Republic, who declined the Olympic team to come here to America. The Californian surfer, whose bloodlines are so full of athleticism she might as well have been bred to compete, who instead chose the most difficult major at the most difficult school she could. And then there is me, I am the broken skier. No one wants a broken model, they return it to the store and get a new one. If the warranty is past, they simply buy another. But sometimes, you find someone who loves you because you are different, and keeps you and embraces all that is you. Sometimes, people take the time to fix that which is broken, and it comes back stronger than before.

Who isn’t broken, really? That is, if you take the time and effort to look. But in all our shattered glory, in a time of need, we found each other. And it is this school, this team, that brought us together to rebuild ourselves again, which is really what college is all about.

February 04, 2011 – The first three weeks of college were a whirlwind of adventure. I quickly learned how to navigate a large university campus, met many wonderful people, saw a glimpse of Boulder, and remembered how to write academic papers and do homework. However, unfortunately, I also explored the local hospitals multiple times, and not as a student, rather as an emergency room outpatient.

I began the semester enrolled in four courses, Writing and Rhetoric, German, Music Appreciation, and Science of Human Communication. German was definitely my favorite! Unfortunately my constant vomiting, nausea, and stomach pain worsened dramatically over the course of the month. After spending two nights in the ER, I decided to drop two courses to allow for more rest. I was hoping this change would be enough to get me through the semester, but my health kept spiraling downward quickly. I withdrew from all my classes and came home to find a better solution. I’m bummed that I can’t complete the semester for many reasons, including that that I won’t be living with friends and getting to know the ski team. As frustrating as it is, health always must come first.

Now I am back at home in the care of my parents and doctors, and we are in the midst of researching our next step. In the meantime I am trying different medications to stabilize my stomach pain and weight loss. I’ve also enrolled in a couple online courses to keep myself entertained and distracted when I feel well enough to focus.

It’s been snowing like crazy since I returned home, and we have at least 3 feet of powder on the ground. It’s happened twice now that I’ve been rushed to the ER during a major snowstorm (bad timing, huh?), so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my stomach stays happy when we get hit with another six inches on Saturday. I can’t wait to get healthy so I can enjoy the cross-country trails! But for now I’m learning how to be a really good couch potato and a gluten-free chef! I am avoiding a number of foods that have been proven to irritate my digestive system, like gluten, wheat, dairy, casein, eggs, soy, corn and vinegars. I’ve concocted a bunch of inedible dishes experimenting with alternative flours, milks, and egg substitutes, but the other day I made my first tasty loaf of bread, as well as a few other dishes! There seems to be a high demand for gluten-free, dairy-free foods these days, so when I discover a recipe that tastes good I’ll post it!

Berry Coconut Ice Cream (dairy, soy, gluten free)

Ingredients:
2 cups frozen berries
2 cups cold coconut milk (So Delicious works well)
¾ cups sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp xanthan gum

Pour coconut milk, sugar, vanilla, and xanthan gum in blender. Blend on high until sugar is dissolved and mixture is frothy. Add one cup of the frozen berries and blend until smooth. Pour mixture into ice cream maker and start churning. After 10 minutes add the remaining berries to the ice cream mixture. These berries give the ice cream texture. Continue churning until mixture becomes the same texture as custard or soft serve ice cream. Either serve immediately, or freeze for later use. It’s best when a little softer than ice cream, so if you serve it after freezing it, first take it out of the freezer and let it soften for a few minutes before serving.

Quinoa with Vegetables (gluten free)

Ingredients:
Quinoa, cooked
Olive oil
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 small yellow summer squash, sliced
½ sweet potato, peeled and chopped
½ to 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 yellow carrot, sliced
Sea salt
Pepper
Dried herbs to taste
Fresh herbs for decoration

Follow instructions on quinoa for cooking. In separate frying pan, sauté onions in olive oil. Once onions are translucent add the garlic and sauté for 1 to 2 minutes. Add all remaining chopped veggies except the tomatoes and stir-fry until tender. Add salt, pepper and herbs to taste. If you like slightly cooked tomatoes add them to the veggies and sauté for 1 to 2 minutes until the tomatoes skins wilt. Then combine the veggies with the cooked quinoa. If you prefer raw tomatoes, add them to the quinoa after stirring in the sautéed veggies. Sprinkle with fresh herbs before serving. This salad is good warm or cold, but I prefer it cold.

Onion and Tomato Flat Bread Focaccia (gluten and egg free)

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup Sorghum flour
1 cup Potato starch
½ cup gluten-free all purpose flour
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 ½ tsp sea salt
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried herb mixture

Yeast:
1 Tbsp Active dry yeast
1 ¼ cups warm water (110º F)
1 tsp raw sugar

Wet Ingredients:
4 Tbsp Olive oil
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp lemon juice

1 egg, or Ener-G egg replacer for 1 egg (1 ½ tsp Ener-G plus 2 Tbsp warm water whisked together)

Toppings:
Sliced tomatoes (I used cherry, but anything will work)
Sliced yellow onion
Herbs and salt

Combine yeast with the warm water (110ºF) and sugar in a large glass measuring cup. Set aside to proof.

In a large mixing bowl combine all dry ingredients. Once yeast has proofed add it to the dry ingredients along with all the wet ingredients. Stir to combine. The dough will be wet and won’t hold together like a wheat bread typically would. Grease two 9 inch round pans and lightly flour with gluten-free corn meal, or gluten-free flour if you can’t eat corn. Pour dough into pans and shape into rounded, flat loaf with wet hands. Place sliced tomatoes and onions on top of the loaves and sprinkle with herbs and salt. Let rise in warm place for 1 hr (75-80ºF), or place in warmed oven for 30 minutes. Preheat Oven to 375º F and cook for 25 minutes. Remover from oven and transfer to wire cooling wracks immediately. If you are a garlic lover you can sprinkle chopped garlic to the top of the loaves before cooking.

January 14, 2011 (Boulder, CO) – After two years of traveling across the country to compete at The US Nationals in Alaska, the races finally were held on my home turf: Rumford, Maine. Ironically, I was unable to compete. I’m on the long road to recovery, after suffering from a severe digestive disorder for the past eight months. Lucky for me, these races will be back in Rumford at this time next year!

For now my job is to rest, recover, and enjoy college life. This week I started classes at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO as a freshman. Being a student again is an adjustment after being out of school for a year and a half, but I think I’m going to like it!

Summary of my illness
The human body has one goal: to live. Left alone, it’s pretty good at it. However, when outside stress amounts to more than the body can “handle”, occasionally, the body’s natural coping methods become detrimental to this goal of simply living. Apparently, the body starts to shut down the less necessary systems, like the digestive and the immune systems, and focuses all of its energy on the heart, lungs, and brain, when it reaches a state of chronic fatigue.

Just as technique is one movement, the complex internal network that gives us life is one, unified collaboration. So it makes sense that a slight imbalance can trigger a domino effect. There is a tremendous amount of research and scientific findings in the medical field for the typical sedentary human, but there seems to be much less information about the athlete’s body and how it copes. I hope that by sharing my medical experiences, other athletes will be able to avoid getting lost in medical mysteries.

According to my latest medical diagnosis, two stress fractures, a long standing infection, two invasive surgeries, plus daily training and racing demands, all occurring in just one year’s time – on top of long standing asthma and extreme food intolerances – fatigued my body beyond it’s ability to function normally.

In order to cope, my body began shutting down systems, one of which was the digestive system. I’ve seen a wide range of doctors, all of who contributed a piece of the puzzle, and continue to add to my growing quiver of medical knowledge and recovery process. I do not have one clear diagnosis, but rather a collection of theories. The recovery process is going to be long, occasionally with small set backs, but I have faith that my health is improving slowly.

I would never have imagined that I would experience this medical nightmare, but it has opened my mind to whole new fields of knowledge that I might not have explored otherwise. I have become fascinated by both traditional and alternative medicine (now understanding why it is called the “practice” of medicine). I have explored my artistic passions (spending hours designing and decorating elaborate gingerbread castles, creating my own crochet stitches and patterns, making brochures); and have learned what it means to hold out hope. It’s not always easy to have faith in a better tomorrow when there is no foreseeable solution in sight. I learned how to live day by day, and remain in the present moment; relishing in the limited pleasures, fighting to overcome the seemingly surmountable obstacles, and always believing that I could, and would, overcome this illness.

I am not alone on this journey. I’m forever grateful to the dedicated team of family, friends, coaches and doctors who have stood by my side, advocated, listened, fought, laughed and shared stories with me. (My parents are probably qualified for medical degrees after these past eight months of accompanying me to all of my various doctor’s appointments!)

Now I am at the University of Colorado in Boulder starting my college experience. I won’t be racing for the team this year as I recover, but will hopefully be on the roster in the fall. Bruce Cranmer, the CU Nordic coach, has been extremely flexible through my set backs and I’m looking forward to have him as a coach.

Good luck to everyone for the 2011 season ahead!