Author: Erik Bjornsen

It has been a while since my last post, which I apologize to those people checking my blog regularly. I will try to do a better job the rest of the season.

Last Sunday I left Anchorage to start my 6 week long trip to Europe. We will be traveling around hitting up some of the most competitive races in the world. The trip was set up by the US Ski Team and is designed to be a stepping-stone to the World Cup. The coaches selected about 15 athletes from around the country, most of them around the same age as me. I’m really excited and honored to have been one of the fifteen selected to be here racing for our country. I hope to put together some really strong races. Our first stop is where I’m at now in Madona, Latvia. Madona is an interesting little town. I’ve travelled to some places in central Europe and last year I went to Finland and Estonia, but this place is much different then any place I’ve seen. I get the feeling that most people are right around the poverty line. When traveling in foreign countries I try to meet at least a couple of locals. You can learn a lot about the culture and atmosphere this way. My first impression when walking around town was that people were kind of glaring at us. After stopping and trying to communicate with them (sadly I can only communicate in the only language I know), I realized that they were quite friendly towards us. I think that the people are just looking at our large group with curiosity not anger. I was talking to the receptionist at our hotel last night and I asked her about what most people do for work around town. She said that a lot of the men where loggers and then she went on to talk about how little work there is right now. She said she would come into the hotel every third day and that she felt very lucky to have the job. Madona is a very neat place and I wouldn’t mind coming to race here again. I’ve never been to Russia, but this is what I imagine it would be like.

Yesterday was my first race here in Europe, this tends to be the hardest one for us Americans. I’m not sure why. Maybe it is the time change and the fact that I’m usually lying horizontally at the time I’m now trying to race. It was a skate sprint and I qualified 36^th, second American and 1 second out of making it to the heats. I’m sure it will only get better from here and I’m really looking forward to the next race.  

Merry Christmas everyone! It’s dumping snow here in the Methow…. Pretty sweet! Just got back from a ski with the family. Doesn’t get much better then this.

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I raced today at Sovereign Lakes, first Noram for a couple of years. My top result in the past was 32nd place. Today I qualified 7th and was able to ski up into 3rd, for my first Noram podium. Pretty excited!!! Check out this link for a full race report- fasterskier.

Hello readers, I’m now in Silver Star, Canada and it is AMAZING here. The trails are always corduroy and the sun is always shinning. This is the best skiing in North America, well besides the Methow of course. We arrived monday night, so this was our fourth day skiing. Today we did race prep which involves an easy ski warm up with a couple times around the sprint course at near race pace, then a little cool down. I felt pretty strong, still a little sore from strength a couple days ago but I have gotten use to that being on the APU team. Erik Flora, our coach pretty much believes if your not sore your not pushing yourself hard enough.

Last weekend we raced in Bozeman, Montana for the second Super Tour series this season. The first day we had a skate sprint and a skate 10 kilometer race. I started a little slow in the sprint and finished just outside the top ten. I was not super stoked about this result but I still had one more chance that day to put something together. I went out in the skate distance race really hard and ended up finishing 8th, 3 seconds from 6th which happens to be the last position that receives prize money. A pretty good race for myself but that is also some expensive 3 seconds. It’s amazing when you are out on a course for close to a half hour and it comes down to just seconds, I guess every second really does count. The second day was a classic 15 kilometer race this ended up being my race of the weekend. It was an interval start race, meaning that each racer starts on their own, in this case the gap between each skier was 30 seconds. I started right around the middle of the pack with Sylvan Ellefson, a podium finisher from the previous weekend starting 30 seconds behind me. Sylvan ended up catching me right around half way through the race and followed me for 3 or 4 kilometers before taking the lead. I then gave it everything to hold on to him for the last 4 kilometers.  We definitely had a good pace going the last half of the course because we ended up finishing the race in first and second position. Sylvan winning by thirty seconds and me beating the third place person by ten seconds.

Yesterday we had a long ski easy and had to stop a couple of times to shoot some pictures of us sailing over the bumps on the fast downhills. Fun stuff!

Well, here is little update from the last couple weeks. Sorry I haven’t been great about updateing my blog. But, with the combination of finishing up classes at Alaska Pacific University online and having limited internet access it has been a little hard. I am at a coffee shop finally getting a decent internet connection. We are currently in Bozeman, Montana waiting for our second weekend of the Super Tour circuit racing. Last week was the first three races of the circuit in West Yellowstone, Montana. I threw down some decent races posting an 8th place and 13th place in the sprints. In the skate distance race I was 33rd, and finishing with my best for the weekend a 3rd in the classic distance. It was the best Super Tour result I have had and I also posted the best FIS points result of my life, 43 points. Pretty sweet! Might have pre-qualified myself for the Under 23 world championships but I’m not sure about that yet. Either way, pretty exciting way to kick of the season. Now we are hoping to race Saturday and Sunday up at Bohart Ranch but there is only about three inches of snow so we will see if they can pull it off. Here are some pictures from last week thanks to Ian Harvey, head of Toko wax and equipment. Just picked up a new glove sponsorship with Toko. They make some really nice gloves you should definitely check them out here.

So little change of plan. It’s way to cold to race in Fairbanks. We will now be racing tomorrow in Anchorage as an unofficial race between the three Alaska college teams. Alaska Pacific University, University of Alaska Anchorage,  and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

It does look a bit on the chilly side, I think I will bring my long johns.

Skiing and training here in Anchorage has been super nice though. It’s been cold and lots of fresh snow! Here are some pictures;

Alaska Pacific University campus has got to be one of the better looking university campus’s around the world.

 Sadie just left for the World Cup, this is bad news for the rest of us at the ski house because now there is no one to do the dishes…. Not really, I’m actually really excited to watch her climb her way up the results list on the most intense racing circuit in the world. Good luck Sadie!