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Sunday
Mar072010

Vancouver to Lahti 

Well that was definitely an experience. The Olympics are unlike any event we participate in and it really is an incredible thing to be a part of. I’m sure there was a fair amount of coverage going on over the past two weeks so I won’t go into the racing too much but it’s obvious that it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me. Crashing out of the sprint was pretty tough to take and definitely took a lot of wind out of my sails, but I was also lucky enough that it wasn’t the defining moment of my Olympic experience.
 

It was so frustrating for me because I felt great… and had been feeling awesome all week leading up to the event. I wasn’t too nervous, I wasn’t too calm, just excited and ready to race so when I wasn’t able to make up the time in qualification after my little trip off course it was pretty devastating. I know I was fit and fast enough to make it to the final, but that didn’t mean a whole lot after placing outside the top 30, so all I could do was look to the next event and wait for another day to prove myself in the sprint.
Although I didn’t have the same medal contention feeling in my other two events I was really thankful to be able to race two other times during the Games, and each event was super exciting. Starting the first leg of the relay at the Olympic for the US is something I have dreamed about since I was a little kid so it was amazing to get that opportunity. When you’re skiing in an event like the Olympics you really feel how cross-country skiing is anything but an individual sport and you’re part of something bigger than just your event. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t a very successful Games for me, or the US XC team for that matter, but as a country we killed it. And as for our ‘team USSA’ we had a record breaking Olympics, scoring more medals in the ski and snowboard events than in the history of the organization. For me thats a major motivation, because once the XC team can truly pull our own weight the US can confidently say we are the best skiing and snowboarding nation in the world. And I know we’ll get there. It was great to have my buddies Johnny and Billy there to kick ass and give some perspective. Johnny was always reminding me that after being World Champion in 2003 he had to wait 7 years to get a shot an an Olympic medal. And the NC crew came through in big way.
So with the Olympics behind me I’m definitely ready to look ahead to the world cups and finish off the year strong. We flew all the way from Vancouver to Lahti Finland last night to get ready for this weekend. The schedule for this weekend is a 30k on Saturday and a relay on sunday. There is also ski jumping and Nordic combined events so we might even get to throw together a relay despite having a small team. so now that the madness of the Olympics are over I’m going to be back on the bloggin and tweeting and all that so stay tuned to follow the team throughout the last month of racing.
here are two of the three pictures I have on my computer from the Games. I’m really bad about taking pictures

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