Sophie Caldwell: Desert Adventures and Park City Camp

After three big weeks of training back east, we packed up to head west for the majority of October. We are currently in Park City for our last camp of the year before the World Cup season starts up in just over a month. Yep, that's right...just over a month until the World Cup begins! We spent a few relaxing days in Aspen with family, friends, and some easy training before heading to the desert for some final adventures before camp started.

Foliage in Colorado and Utah is really different than it is in Vermont, but it's still beautiful!

Our long time wax tech, Peter Johansson, is here visiting us for a couple weeks with his wife, Tina. Peter and Tina are from Sweden and last year was his final season with our team, so as a thank you present, we chipped in to fly them over to the U.S. It's been such a pleasure seeing his smiling face in Utah! We had a big crew in the desert consisting of the Johanssons, a big group of USST athletes and coaches, and some other friends who live close by. We did a lot of mountain biking, site seeing, camping under the stars, and soaking up the sunshine and warm air before camp started. Last fall was the first time I had ever been to the desert and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite places. Growing up in the east, I had never seen anything like the desert, so I'm usually in awe the entire time we're there.

Sunset our first evening in Moab

Matt and Sim playing on the rocks

Taking a little break on a morning ride with Erika

Biker gang

Family pic of Parker, Hannah, and their dog Beaux

Arches

River dips instead of showers

Long run through Arches with Jessie, Matt, Liz, and Bryan on our final morning

Now we're in Park City for our annual fall dry land camp. It's the first time every person on our 2015/2016 team has been at a camp together this year. The main focus of our first week of camp is volume and acclimation. The weather has been beautiful, which has made it easy to put in some big hours. We'll see how long that lasts because it looks like a forecast of rain and snow is coming up. I guess summer can't last forever! In other big news, we have our two USST sponsors, Craft and L.L. Bean, coming on Monday to unveil our uniforms for the season, so look for pictures of us decked out in our new gear. We also end the camp with a mini tour the last three days which will consist of three roller ski races in three days. It will be good practice to throw on a bib before the big races start in November. That's all for now! Thanks for following!