May 29, 2011 (Bend, Oregon) – Today marked Day 7 of the US Ski Team’s Bend Camp, so exactly one week of training with the new group of coaches and athletes. It has been tons of fun, and more importantly, tons of fun to erase all the scary stories and assumptions about this group of people! It has been a joy getting to know some of the older athletes, training alongside them in a non-racing situation where stress levels are much lower, and energy is much more accessible. To top it off, team Canada has been training along with us for all the workouts… and you know what they say about Canadians… so how could it not be amazing!

We have been getting lots of group training sessions together for intervals, technique work, speed workouts, DP intervals, running, strength, and just distance skiing. It is amazing the energy and excitement that comes out of simply training in a line with five other US girls and three Canadian chicks that are just as pumped and stoked as you are.

Then you add in some matching pink shirts… and it begins feeling like training with my APU team! Bottom line, it’s only one month into the start of a new training year and we are all fired up to do something big. Between all the hard working and fired up Canadian and US ladies, we have the hopes of becoming the new Scandinavians… minus the “Carl Gustav, can you hear me?” comments.

The weather has been a little crazy since we got here. Not the typical west spring weather I have experienced for my entire life growing up… but then again not a disaster. For the first couple days we had a mixture of sun and clouds, followed by a few days of pouring rain and cold wind that managed to make you feel pretty hard core when you finished the workout. Nothing compared to an extreme day on Eagle Glacier… but pretty good for the west. We’ve had some frustrating and tricky waxing days – but every day we have finished the workout accomplishing something. Luckily ever interval day and speed day has been nice weather, so I really can’t complain. When I hear all the stories and news about the other parts of the country right now, I consider myself VERY fortunate!

As with every training camp, the days have been packed full. Between training twice a day, trying to fit in a short power nap, meetings with various resources the US Team has, homework, and eating… there is not much time to spare. We have been packing it full! We alternate dinner duty between coaches, girls and boys, so tonight the girls got excited and put together some Shish Kabobs, something I have never managed to attack on a ski trip, but they turned out awesome. It’s always nice to find new things to make for a large group, as we travel in huge bunches all winter and summer. It makes me appreciate those mothers that are cooking for large families every night. That would be hard!

From here I have four more days of camp, hopefully one huge crust ski, a couple more intervals sessions, some gym work, some sports psychology talk, nutrition talks, hopefully a BBQ if the weather clears up – and an extremely important tournament of baseball against Team Canada.

Thanks to Pete Vordenberg for many of these pictures!