This spring, I moved back to Bozeman to ski professionally for the BSF Pro Team. I am excited for the opportunity to train and race for the team I grew up skiing for. Back in the day, I always idolized the Pro Team athletes and knew that I wanted to be just like them. Well, now I’m in their shoes and cannot wait to work with and inspire many of the junior athletes working their way through the BSF program. What makes this summer so awesome is that we have 8 Pro Team athletes and 14 collegiate athletes all training together. Each person in the group has their strengths and each person acts as an inspiration and role model to the younger athletes and community as a whole.

Last weekend, the pro athletes had the opportunity to run a few of our technique drills with some of the junior athletes. I was impressed by the talent they all had. What I saw is a bunch of kids with more talent than I had at that age. The sport of Nordic skiing is growing in our community and it shows. I am excited to get to work with the junior athletes again soon.

At this point in the summer, we are three weeks into training as a team and everyone seems to get along well, pushes each other in training, and strives to get better on a daily basis. It has been fun getting to work with such a driven and inspiring group.

On Wednesday, we began practice with 20 minutes of plyometrics and warm up exercises before getting on skis for our intervals. It is a recovery week so we wanted to keep the intensity volume a bit lower while still focusing on technique. The workout was three sets of 6x~30 seconds of 5k race pace. I really like these workouts because you get to go fast, hammer some solid technique at speed, and can maintain that technique through the entire set because it is relatively short.

All in all, the training has been great thus far. Getting to work with Andy is pretty special. It’s not everyday that you get to work with a 4 time Olympian and World Cup medalist. He brings new ideas to the table and has pushed me as an athlete. I have done new exercises that really seem to target some of my weaknesses. I can’t wait to keep working on things together and hopefully achieve great things together this winter.