Good day everyone!  And good luck to those racing Pia's Classic today at Kincaid!  Things are starting to ramp up at the Canmore Nordic Center...... more and more teams every day, different languages overheard on the trails.  It's sweet! 

This is a picture of Chandra Crawford, the Canmore "hometown" girl - also the sprint Gold medalist from Torino.  It must be sweet to have the world's best skiers come to YOU to race!  How sweet would a World Cup in Anchorage be?! 

Canmore truly seems to be a nordic-oriented town.  There are poster advertisements every 5 feet downtown, even in vacant store front building.  

If you squint your eyes you may even be able to pick out Kikkan and her mom, Deb, complete with pink hat and scarf!  I took a picture of one - sorry for the glare.

Training went really well today.  I've been feeling pretty junky the last couple of days due to a hard week of training, followed by three days off (I NEVER take three days off!), long travel, and then arriving at altitude.  Today I did 6x45-60 seconds at 10k race pace on the race course and felt great once I got up to speed.  I've had that sensation a lot this year - feeling bad at low speeds and distance pace, and feeling awesome at Level 3, 4, and 5.  Erik says that it's beacuse my "high end race muscles" are in shape.  I suppose that's a good thing! It's funny because I think that a lot of ski racers want to feel really good all the time.  One thing I've learned this year is that you don't have to feel good to race well.

If you are curious about following Friday and Saturday's World Cup races (I'm starting both) you can find links to startlists and results on the Alberta World Cup Academy website here:

http://www.albertaworldcup.com/main.php

Here are just a couple more fun pictures to end the post with....



The media is starting to show up...

Can you see the venue in the reflection of my glasses!?

This is my women's only group that had to put up with having a male coach for the second time this year last Wednesday. Sorry girls.... and thanks Casey for leading. (Thanks to Gail French for the pic and thanks to Gail French and Gail Hoefler for the beautiful leis!) 

More to come including pictures from the venue... 

Enjoy your day! 

Holly :)