Norway Round 2 Is a Wrap!

Well as many of you know, I just went to Norway once again. This time was ski and race specific travel. This will be a bit longer and detailed blog but, I promise lots of details and photos!

Our trip had a bit of a rough start. 5 of us, Brandon, Ryland, Savannah, Caitlin, and I, left the Reno airport Friday morning at 4am. From there we flew to SFO. My teammate Brandon had a different connection to Newark, so he was able to hop on a plane in SFO. Our plane though ended up being delayed due to a late inbound crew. This caused us all to miss our connection in Newark to get to Oslo. So we then had a 24 hr layover in Newark, New Jersey. Let me tell you, that's one hell of a town. Instead of being depressed, camped out in our hotel room, we made the best of our situation and hit New York City for a day! It was not a bad way to spend a day, but we would have all loved to have been in Norway at the time.

New York City Detour

Finally on Saturday night, we were able to catch a flight out to Oslo. So after over 40 hrs of travel time, we finally made it to Oslo! There we were met by my host father for the week, Svend. He drove us all into the city and dropped the rest of my team off at their respective host families'. He then took me to his place where I would live for the week along with Brandon, who had already been there for a day. Upon arrival, I met his son Anders. He was running out the door to go to a relay race that day. That afternoon, we SBA athletes met up and went for a nice skate ski! The trails in Oslo are so much fun. There are over 500K of groomed trails!

For the week, we all had local transportation passes which made life a lot easier. We are all able to hop on the T-bane and meet wherever we might decide. For the most part this was at the end of line 1, which is basically the top of Oslo and a place called Frognerseteren. From here we can access most of the trails.

The Crew after skiing WC trails

Monday morning was probably one of my favorite skis. We met at the top of line 1 and from there skied down to the Holmenkollen trail system. The trails were in the works of being all set up for the biathlon World Cup races later in the week. We were a little skeptical about skiing the trails as there were no other skiers out there, but we went for it. We were doing a speed workout, so we just started following the courses. Whenever we were doing a speed, the volunteers would all yell at us "Heia, Heia, Kom Igjen!". We skied the 5k course twice on perfect grooming.

 That afternoon we went to the city for a while. We found some sport shops which were super cool. Everyone says that Norway is super expensive. That is true except for the nordic gear. It's amazing how cheap all the nordic stuff is here! That evening we went to the Heming sport complex for a easy run and some core.

On Tuesday, we were all suppose to meet at Frognerseteren at 8am. We were all meeting Bjorn for a nice classic distance ski. Well all of us made it on time except for Ryland. After waiting for 40 minutes and having no way to contact him, we decided to just go ski. This was also an awesome ski! I could have sworn we just kept going down and down and down with a little bit of uphills, but somehow we ended up at the same place we started. We skied on a pretty big variety of trails, narrow grooming, wide grooming, and snowmobile trails. Most trails are not groomed every night and get a lot of use. This makes the trails a little rough and more difficult to ski on, but I think this is a factor to why the Norwegians are such good skiers. They are used to rough ski conditions which helps a lot with balance and agility. And then when they are on a nice trail system they are really able to kick it in. Also on this ski we went through a spot where 20 Norwegians took on over 200 Germans in WWII.

Games with Oslo NTG team

Following our ski, we went to the Oslo, NTG school and did a balance and agility workout with Bjorn's NTG team. Following that, we went to town for some sightseeing and lunch. Here we finally met Ryland after finding out he set his alarm wrong and went on a ski with his host family.

We also met up with Hannah and Martin in the city who just came from the U18 Scandi races in Sweden.

The Next morning, our whole travel team together now, met Bjorn and his NTG team at a different trail system down in town. We went for a fun ski with the younger team and played some games and drills with them.

WC Stadium from Ski Jump

That evening we did a interval/speed workout at the Holmenkollen with the Heming team. This was super fun to ski with them during some intervals.

On Thursday morning we went for an easy classic pre-race ski. After our ski, Øyvind took us down to the Holmenkollen to watch some of the Biathlon. Thanks to the US team for some stadium tickets! The fog stayed in the stadium for most of the women's race. After the women's race, we went up to the ski museum and then to the top of the ski jump. The fog cleared just in time! We had a pretty amazing view all around! It was cool to see the difference in this view during winter! We then watched some of the men's races in the afternoon!

Our view of the WC races

Fans

It's so cool to see how much pride the Norwegians take in this sport. We were literally in the heart of nordic skiing all week. Everywhere you go, there are people just walking around with nordic gear and it's normal. Nordic is the lifestyle in Oslo. Everyone knows how to ski and how to use their pride. On race days everyone is dressed in Norwegian colors and cheering everyone on!

Skate Race

Friday was the first day of racing. Brandon, Ryland, and I raced a 10k skate and Savannah a 7.5k skate. Going into the race, none of us knew the course. It was a pretty tough race, but we all were happy afterwards!

These first races really showed us how tough the competition here was. There were over 200 people racing just the 16 yr. old category. It was the biggest set of races I have competed in. I finished close to 5 minutes behind the leader. Thinking back on my race, there were areas I could have made up maybe a minute, but definitely not 5!

Ryland and I after the sprint

Saturday was the skate sprint. There was once again stiff competition for us guys. None of us US guys or the Heming boys moved into heats, but we all had a super fun day.

Wax Techs getting work done

Now I think I need to give a pretty big shout out to our wax techs for the weekend. Heming did all of our glide wax and most of our kick for the whole weekend. They nailed the wax and put some very fast skis on our feet! We definitely
had some of the fastest skis out there for the two skate races. A big thanks for all the time, effort, and wax these techs put into our skis.



I think one of the coolest thing about this sprint day was watching how the parents of the Norwegian skiers partied and cheered on the kids and teammates. We California kids have a very supportive and outgoing parent group but it's totally different than the Norwegians. Their parents go out on course with their chairs, set up camp, make a fire, cook some hot dogs, drink some beer, and yell their hearts out as skiers go by! They don't lack their nationalism or viking pride a single bit.

The Vikings

Hannah Bringing home the Victory! 

Now the actual coolest thing about sprint day was following Hannah's races. She had an amazingly awesome day winning the qualifier, racing all heats and going on to take the gold home! A huge shout out to her for being the first american to win Norwegian Nationals! 

Sunday rolled along and it was the classic day. We boys had to ski a 7.5k loop. I think this was my best race of the weekend. We all were pretty exhausted from a long week of skiing and seeing new things. I skied hard and was happy with my race! Again we had pretty good skis for the day! My favorite thing about this race was all the encouragement random coaches and spectators were giving me. I even got a couple of splits on course, but I couldn't understand what they were saying to me.

Classic race lap 2

A huge shout out to our host brother Anders for a solid race on both Friday and Sunday! Here he is skiing into the last hill on Sundays classic race! I think we are all super excited to have them come race in our Junior Nationals only three weeks from now. 

Anders with a solid race

Some of the Heming boys staying warm

Also a huge thanks to our two SBA coaches Martin and Caitlin for making this trip happen!

Our coaches Martin and Caitlin hanging out!

Overall this was a super awesome experience and trip! I think we all learned so much and are all excited to train hard and open up more doors for opportunities like this in the future!

Currently, Martin, Savannah, Ryland, Brandon and I are all sitting in the Denver airport waiting to get a flight home. We have not had very good luck with connections this trip and spent last night in Denver. We are now going on to 26 hrs of travel. Hopefully we will get out of here soon.