Park City & Fourth of July

8/7/2014

The week of the Fourth of July is a busy and hard week in the US Nordic Combined World. Everyone on the National team is in town and we all do several small comps together. The first of which is a roller skiing time trail in Steamboat Springs. For those of you who know Steamboat we start at the beginning of Steamboat Blvrd where you turn off of Mt. Werner Road. From there we go all the way up through the sanctuary, once we hit Fish Creek we then turn right and head up to the top parking lot where the finish line is located. I was very excited because this year I improved my time by a little under 2 min. My time this year was 28min and 12 sec. The next day we had a jumping competition in the morning on the K60m hill. We use the results from this for the roller ski race down Lincoln Ave on the morning of the fourth. This race is very fun because we are the pre-show for the parade in downtown Steamboat so we have lots of spectators out watching us race up and down Lincoln Ave. It is a more fun oriented race then a serious one but it is always nice when the training from spring comes together and you do well. If you would like to look at results from this event click here. After the morning comp we then had a long standing after the parade. This was a huge success as we used it as a fundraiser event for the sport of Nordic Combined. There are four rounds to this competition and I made it to the third which I was happy about. This week was very fun and rewarding week that everyone enjoyed.

Naming of the US Nordic Combined National Team

At the end of the Fourth of July jumping competition the 2014/15 US Nordic Combined National teams were named. On the A team: Bryan Fletcher, Taylor Fletcher, Billy Demong. On the B team: Adam Loomis, Ben Berend, Brett Denney, Michael Ward. On the C team: Jasper Good, Nicholas Madden, Ben Loomis, Aleck Gantick, Erik Lynch. I am very excited to be named to the National team and all of the opportunities that come along with it. I am looking forward to taking advantage of every opportunity I get and having a great season!

The 2014/15 US Nordic Combined A, B, and C teams

K90m and K120m hills in Park City, UT

At the beginning of summer my SSWSC team and I made a trip over to Park City, UT for a small jump camp and for some of us, physical testing. At the beginning of the week we started jumping the 90 meter hill which was extremely fun because we have been jumping a 60 meter hill all summer. On the second day of being in PC we were able to go to the Center of Excellence (COE) for the US Ski Team to do a small workout. They have a small roller jump there with a harness that goes around your waist in order to help us think about getting our hips high on the take off. If you would like to check out a video of that you can watch it below. The next day we jumped in the morning and in the afternoon we went into the COE again for our VO2 Max test and another heart rate level test. This was very fun as the max test is all you've got, you wear a harness so that when your done and you collapse you don't hurt yourself on the treadmill. Luckily I had a fairly calm end to my test. You can watch it below as well. The next two days that we were in Park City we spent jumping the 90m hill and the K120m hill. On the last day of jumping I set my new PR for training on the big hill. If you look at the K120 on the right in the picture above there is a small red line after the small white line in the middle of the hill. That is where I landed, with a jump of 131meters it was the longest jump I have ever done and the most fun!

Roller Ski testing at COE

Roller Jump Training at COE

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