Good Times in Norway

​This past weekend felt like a quick trip to Norway as I am already back in Slovenia. The World Cup weekend was located in Trondheim, a very cool town. It is right on a river and our hotel was literally on the water. Although the sun wasn’t out for very long each day, the combination of a lot of snow and clear skies made for beautiful days! 

Our hotel on the water in Trondheim

​Norway is one of my favorite countries that we travel to for several reasons. First off is the incredible Nordic culture that surrounds everything skiing. When driving through towns you see people walking around with their cross country equipment or getting on the local buses to head out for a Nordic ski before work, during lunch breaks, or really any time of day. There are so many trails to ski and with a good amount of snow everything was in perfect condition. It was rather cold in Trondheim, on the first day of skiing during official training it was kind of funny watching athletes ski down hills in a speed skater tuck with their hands behind their back because the wind would cut right through your gloves and freeze your hands. The jumping hill in Trondheim a very fun and big hill. We had challenging conditions throughout the weekend however it’s an outdoor sport and I was still able to have a great time. I have gotten to a great good vibe mentality on the ski jump and it helps me enjoy every jump more and more. I was able to maintain that through the weekend and put down some solid and consistent jumping in every round! Although the result sheet is not the sole factor on how I feel about my competition weekends I made a step forward in my career in Trondheim. I finished in the top 30 scoring the first World Cup points of my career. I was even happier with these results because my personal performance continued to trend in the right direction. The weekend was made even better because my teammate and good friend Ben Loomis scored his first World Cup points, Taylor also finished in the points, a weekend with all of us in the top 30 is a stepping stone for our team that we all we pumped about! If you want to check out results click here, photos below. 

​After Trondheim I traveled back to Slovenia and our apartments here in the town of Ratece. As I have said before it is very nice to be able to come back to this place, do laundry, cook for ourselves and get some great rest. The majority of USA Nordic happens to be in Slovenia right now and it was super fun to get a day of training on the ski jumps with tons of other American athletes. Our entire Nordic Combined team is in town right now and it is super nice to be able to catch up with everyone as we are all going a million directions throughout the season. I have another weekend of competitions in Klingenthal, GER before we take some time off from comps to start our preparations for World Championships, more on that later!