This is gonna be the day-to-day type blog. Uploading pics takes forever but it’s worth it. More descriptive blog next up.
Mascots Bing Dwen Dwen and Shuey Rhon Rhon welcoming into the village plaza. (Some shops, lounges, and tourist things)
First impression of the trails: hard. Long hills and slow snow. Sunny though!
Village cleaning guys. The stick brooms were everywhere.
Olympic rings bridge. Chinese engineers do not mess around.
Boys opening the 3 DUFFELS of clothes. Crazy. Great trading material.
Trying it on with good energy
Vermont catamounts on a jog. Had to stay in the village. Lots of loops.
Early days under-glove thermal layer testing.
Our apartment in the background. All the US xc guys were in one together.
It actually snowed quite a bit while we were there (for the area). Wind blew everything off the hillsides very quickly though.
Covid tests every day. In our building if we were down before 10…
…but usually near the dining hall because we were sleeping IN. Kinda just gradually went to sleep and got up later and later as it went, because we’d never go to the venue before noon really.
Stick brooms making an appearance at the entrance to the dining hall.
Friendly welcome inside.
Spent a lot of time in there.
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Not exactly top-quality food, but it wasn’t too bad. The lighting/presentation doesn’t really do it any favors. Ended up eating a lot of dumplings, steamed + filled buns, rice, chicken, and pumpkin (actually not a ton, but more than I’ve ever eaten…tastes a little like sweet potato when steamed hard). Really looking forward to well-cooked stuff, and more sauce variety. Soy only goes so far.
Ben showing off his head size and enjoying more dining hall time.
Leaving the dining hall (on the left)
Doing our own opening ceremony
Had to flex the fits. Hit me up if you wanna buy anything ;)
Chilly but happy
Failed water run. No drinking water on tap in the apartments
Pretty nice!
chill vibing
Never very fast out there.
Making sure matt doesn’t have a gun in his pants
The guy that maxes my skis: Karel Kruuser
This guy grinds for me all winter to give me fast skis, and he does really well. He also gives me a lot of these Estonian chocolate bars, sometimes when I really need them, and sometimes when I just want them. Best one was when I had to drop out of the tour. “Oh well if you’re done then here’s this!!” Saved the day. Huge thanks to all he and the full wax staff does. It’s such a big part of our sport and it’s very comforting to know I’m not being held back by skis (just slow because of myself). <3
Kevin and I got treated to nice food at the hotel near the village (where the techs stayed) on the last night.
Pretty sweet landscapes here! On the bullet train to closing ceremonies.
team staging before staging
Bird’s Nest stadium. Crazy big!!
Kev!
Pretty cool
Tons of bags on the charter flight Beijing to Helsinki. With the Finnish gold medal hockey team and a lot of skiers and other stuff.
Toasted.
The Olympics were a crazy, great experience! Got to hang out with my friends a bunch and get closer to some other ones from different nations. Got a bunch of cool clothes and got to ski at a crazy venue. Also got to visit China! Really thankful to the organizer and volunteers for being really friendly and making everything smooth.
Pretty bummed to have not raced that fast, but it didn’t come totally out of nowhere. Haven’t gotten back to fully normal since my Christmas-time cold, and I gotta take that into consideration. Still did everything I could, and put absolutely all of my energy out there, so I can’t be too mad. Looking forward to many more years of racing and more shots at this huge event.
Now onto Norway for U23s!