With the end of the season cancelled [ :( ] I’ve had a lot of time in Anchorage this spring, and thankfully not too much of it actually inside. Outdoor activities were always allowed in some form, so I took advantage of that to do a ton of fun winter and spring stuff I wouldn’t normally be able to do.

Got to do some snowmachining with my dad and brother. This is from Petersville, south of the Alaska Range.

With a break from training, and still good snow, I was able to do more backcountry skiing adventures than I have before, and I had a lot of fun with it. Good exercise on the way up and a lot of fun going down!

Skied the Girdwood cat track that they use to bring alpine skiers up to access more terrain. Some steep stuff on the nordic boards but we’re beasts and made it work.

Right in the middle of perfect conditions and full snow depth in Anchorage, lots of people were throwing down big ski days. I had a weekend where I did 60km Friday, 100km Saturday, and 140km Sunday. This picture is from Sunday where I joined Tracen and Luke on a 100-miler. Pretty fun stuff but I was definitely done with it after that. Real props goes to Jack Consenstein for skiing 200km out of spite!

Luke and I weren’t satisfied with the end of the season, so we had a day where we did 6x1km sprint intervals at maximum effort by the end. We also did a mass start 30km classic race on the day of the last race of the season to “celebrate”. Some friends came out to heckle and cheer and that get good! That effort made me happy I was done.

Not everything is sunshine and perfect snow. I did what I could some days!

Started running pretty early to prepare for real training loads. Arctic Valley leg beater with Luke.

Hatcher Pass has been good even into mid-May! Lots of good and some not so good sessions up there. Very thankful for Mat-Su Ski Club grooming so late!

This is from 2 days ago. Real training going down now. Track intervals to work on some basic fitness, I also used it to work on running form and efficiency.

At the time I’m writing this, it’s May 10th, I’m one week into legit training, and I’ve got 2 high-volume weeks ahead of me. Big focuses are recovery and working on general base fitness. Skiing is tapering down, and running, biking, and roller skiing are going to be my main modes of training. Always fun to get back into it!

Thanks for reading! I’ll try to do these every once in a while, I like sharing stuff this way, it seems like a pretty fun insight on things.

P.S. All these activities we drove separately and tried to stay apart and not share food. We may not have been perfect but we tried, and I’m thankful for not having too many restrictions. (I’m really sorry if you had to stay inside!)