The past week has been a whirlwind! Before heading to Sochi, we had one last weekend of World Cup racing in Toblach, Italy. Saturday was a 10k individual start classic race. I wasn't racing this, but my teammates had some awesome results. All five of our girls were in the top 22 and the highlight of the day was Erik Bjornsen not only scoring his first World Cup points ever, but doing it in style with an impressive 18th place! Sunday was a skate sprint and we had six people qualify for the rounds. I was not feeling quite on top of my game, but I qualified and ended up 19th and it was still a solid day. On Saturday night, we were saddened to learn about the passing of Torin Tucker. I was lucky enough to overlap with Torin for one year at Dartmouth and he came to my house a couple times because he was in the same class and good friends with my brother. The thing I will remember most about Torin is his smile - he was a really happy person and that rubbed off on the people he surrounded himself with.
Here is a nice piece Karina Packer wrote about Torin. Dartmouth Carnival, the Supertour, and the Olympics all start this weekend and I know there will be a lot of people out there skiing for Torin.
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| Summer run with Torin |
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| It was a lot of fun having the Fullers in Toblach for the weekend and Steve took some great photos. Here I am during my qualifier. |
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| Some crazy haired ladies |
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| Our new boots from Kik! |
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| Liz, Ida, and me |
After the race on Sunday, we packed up and drove to Munich where we had a day of processing before heading to Sochi. We had a relaxing morning on Monday before the storm hit. When we arrived at processing, we had about three hours of "shopping" ahead of us. We were outfitted by Nike and Ralph Lauren for our Olympic gear as well as Bjorn Daehlie for our race suits and warm ups. In addition to about two huge boxes of new clothes, we got our Olympic watches, rings, and phones. We've each been provided with a tablet to use during the Olympics that comes with minutes, data, and texts which has been extremely helpful with keeping track of each other here. Here are some photos from processing!
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| Psyched Sodie! |
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| Ides in one of our many Nike sweatsuits |
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| from pink to... red, WHITE, and blue! |
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| This is how we're supposed to look |
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| Andy sporting his closing ceremonies outfit |
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| Sophie and Sadie |
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| Team photo where Erik and I thought it would be a good idea to hold hands. Turns out it looks a little more like a wedding photo now! |
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| Stars and stripes! |
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| Just a bunch of excited Olympic rookies about to go through processing |
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| Opening Ceremonies outfits |
Between the excitement and the shopping marathon, processing was pretty tiring. Luckily, all we had to do was go to bed and get ourselves on the plane the following morning. We had a charter flight to Sochi with a bunch of other US athletes. The flight was easy, lasting about 3 hours, and we touched down in Sochi at about 2:40 Sochi time (this is 9 hours ahead of EST). After arriving at the airport, we had to collect our bags, go through security, and make the trek up to the Endurance Village. Even though the process lasted a few hours, it was relatively seamless and we arrived in our village with just about all of our baggage! There are three athlete villages here. There is the coastal village, the mountain village, and the endurance village. We are living in the endurance village with all the other cross country skiers and biathletes. It's about an hour away from the coastal village and we have to take a gondola up the last section! It was pretty cool because everything was cloudy down below and the we hopped off the gondola into the sunshine on top of a mountain. Here are some photos from our travel day.
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| Sadie and me with one of the Sochi volunteers |
