It would've been a post on here, but the reporter that was covering us at the Olympics had read my writing and thought it would be cool if I did an op-ed for NYT. I agreed!

I really enjoy writing introspectively, which probably comes from hundreds (?) of thousands of total words written for my training logs over the years. I think it’s also when I write my best, so I was really glad to hear the reporter also liked it, and would let me take the story my way. She had been in Italy the whole time and had a sense for how my experience had been, so we agreed pretty well on the topic of overcoming some rough races.

I felt pretty relaxed about the writing, but realized I needed to step my game up a little bit, and appeal to a broader audience. I wrote the structure of it in a couple hours the day before the 50k, and spent a couple more hours editing, but in all it wasn't too hard. It definitely helps to write about something that I’ve already written and thought about so much so recently.

And, so far it seems like it’s been received well. I was worried a little bit about it coming off as too cliche “believe in yourself” or too whiny about bad things happening in cross country ski races, which in the scheme of all life struggles are pretty mild. Thankfully I don’t think that’s how it sounds, and I’m proud of sharing the story from my Olympic weeks, because I’m proud of what I did there.

Check the story out HERE

It was all around a pretty good experience! Definitely some bad times and some really good times, but overall pretty cool to be able to ski race for some high stakes with family and friends there. And always fun to have something that you care about a lot, even if that means it can be hard to eat breakfast from time to time.

Here’s a little extra blog with less meaning but more funny pictures.

Aftermath of getting too many clothes. Maybe don't need to wrap everything next time?

As I mentioned in the article, it wasn’t super easy to have such contrasting race experiences with my roommate, but I’m really happy with how I handled it. It helped a lot that the second thing Ben said to me after coming into our room ~3 hours after the sprint ended was “dude I’m stoked for the team sprint.” It was a huge vote of confidence when I needed it, and helped us both focus on what was coming up. Pretty great guy!!

Fan club was also working hard for two weeks

finding vert (the climb to here from that town below was ~1/6th of the climb during the 50k)

The most satisfying hockey stop (Gretchen Powers photo)

Closing ceremonies were cool! Major lazer played and the dance crews wore funny inflatable helmets

All-nighter at the airport was less cool

Wintry Falun was a treat after some stressful weeks

Lahti coming up now, and only a couple weeks until Lake Placid! Tickets and info here!

That’s gonna be a good time.