Dear, "Famous" Person

For this week's English assignment, we had to write a blog post directed at our "ideal reader".  This person should be famous and an expert in their field. Honestly, my ideal reader is my friends and my English teacher. If I had to choose someone "famous" to write to, it would be Jessie Diggins. Jessie Diggins competed in the 2014 Sochi Olympics for cross-country skiing.

Dear, Jessie Diggins

I doubt you know this, but we have actually met a few times. Before you begin to think I am some creepy stalker, I actually met you at fast and female (fast and female is an event that girls ages 6-18 can go to and meet/talk to famous female winter olympians) last year and the year before that.

I always knew that you were a great skier, but I didn't truly understand why until I met you. You were so good because you were willing to work hard to accomplish your goal. You knew what you wanted and what you had to do in order to get there. You are an amazing skier and it is so inspirational to see you skiing so well.

It isn't just your ability that I find inspiring, but also your bond with your team. The U.S. women's cross-country ski team has done so well in the past few years. Not only has your team placed well, but you also have a strong friendship with all of your teammates. The videos that your team has made inspires (mostly entertains) everyone I know who skis (so basically just my ski team). My ski team will always talk about the videos your team makes and how inspiring it is to see how close everyone on your team is.

I also admire how excited you are every time you win. I know many people who will win races and not even blink an eye because that's what they always assume is going to happen. I will see pictures of you on the podium and you always look so happy to be doing what you are doing (and doing well too).

See what I mean... (photo courtesy of her blog)

You are also very thankful of the people who helped you get to where you are today. When I was reading your blog post about your win at the world cup, you were sure to thank the people who waxed your skis and coach.

I am aware there is probably only a .000001%  you'll ever read this, but if you ever did I would just like to say how inspiring you are to aspiring cross-country skiers.  If you ever happened to stubble upon my blog, I would hope that it would remind you of what it was like to be a young cross country skier again.


- Claire

Ski, Sleep, Race, Repeat

The other weekend when my cross-country ski team went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a ski race. Once, we arrived we unloaded all of our gear from the van and got our room assignments from our coach. We were staying at the antler inn, a small motel 30 minutes away from the race course. I was staying with Victoria and Sydney (another girl on my team). We went to look at the race course 30ish minutes later. There was only one problem we looked at the wrong course.

We got back and unpacked all our stuff. Again, we faced another problem, we had two beds and three girls. In the end we decided to push the beds together, so that each person would have more room. Then came the problem of decided who had to sleep in the middle. We decided to handle it like we handle all other problems, rock, paper, scissors. Victoria ended up losing, so she got the middle that night and I took it the next.

Later that night, after we had all waxed our skis, we went out to dinner at a pizza place. However, Mila (another girl on my team) and I were still waxing our skis when they left for dinner. A few of the older kids on the team knew how to get there, so they waited for us and then we walked over. We got there and had to sit at a table by ourselves because the rest of the team didn't save us a table (thanks guys). Anyway, we ate pizza and went back to our hotel rooms.

The next day was race day. The first race was an individual start (meaning that everyone starts 15 - 30 seconds apart) and it was classic (the one that looks like walking). I remember thinking that the race was really difficult and I believe that I ended up getting 15th (maybe 16th).

After the race, our coach drove us out of town to go goat ( possibly sheep) watching. We spent almost an hour looking at the goats (possibly sheep) and they came up to the side of our van, which was cool. Our one problem was that Kate, Mila and I wanted to go see the new Star Wars movie at 4:00 and it was 3:30. We ended up making it back just in time to go see the movie with some of the other kids on our team.

The goats or sheep (no one really knows) Photo Courtesy of me 

The girls who saw the movie liked, but the guys hated it and thought it was too predictable. Anyway, we went straight from the movie to a Thai food place (Thai Me Up). It seemed inevitable that we would go to a Thai place at least once on this trip because of the abundance of Thai restaurants in Jackson. I'm not joking there were probably six Thai places in this tiny little town. I am not particularly fond of Thai food, so I was not stoked to say the least. Kate and I happened to order really spicy food (mostly Kate) and could hardly finish the meal.

Kate, Mila and I had not waxed our skis yet, so we tried to leave early to get a head start on waxing, but none of the older kids would let us leave (they waxed their skis when we saw the movie). They told us it was team bonding or something like that, so we wasted five minutes of precious waxing time arguing with them. We ran back to the hotel to go wax our skis only to find our that they put away everything we needed to wax with. We ran up to our coaches' room to ask him what wax to use and ended up ranting about the whole thing to one of our coaches for about ten minutes (thanks for putting up with our rants).

Anyway the next day was a skate mass start race (mass start is when everyone starts at once). Kate and I were neck and neck the entire race, which was good because I think it pushed both of us to go harder. I ended up getting 13th in that race, which I was really happy about. However, some of my teammates ended up getting hurt. One girls dislocated her shoulder and another kid sprained his lcl (which apparently is in your knee). Both of them are doing much better now. On the other hand, many of my teammates got on the podium and had awesome races (shoutout to Julia, Sydney, Leah, Skylar, Mila and whoever else I missed). Everyone else did really good as well!

A picture of my ski team after our last race. Photo Courtesy of my mom

All in all it was a good trip and I can't wait for our next race in Boise.

How Nordic Skiers Waste Time... (Nordic Conversations #2)

My cross-country ski team had a race a few weeks ago in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We left at 8:00 am on Thursday and raced Friday and Saturday. The trip was interesting to say the least, especially the five hour bus ride.

Early Thursday morning my entire ski team loaded our stuff in a van and chose our seats for the next five hours. Three of my friends and I wanted to sit together on the bus and there was only one row with four seats, so we decided to claim that row for ourselves. That was a terrible mistake. Everyone loaded all of their cross-country skis into the van and little did we know that they all hung over the tops of our seats. I spent the first two hours of the drive sitting in a very uncomfortable position trying not to get hit in the head with ski bags. Once we were out of cell range (yes, I am aware how bad that sounds and no we are not entirely phone dependent people) my friend Victoria and I decided that we should look through our camera rolls on our phones to kill time. Her camera roll was full of cool, artsy pictures and mine was just screenshots of things I sent my friends (yes, I am THAT person).

The picture we stopped to take... Photo courtesy of moi. 

When we stopped to take pictures, I decided that I was going to move up a row, so I wasn't getting hit in the head with the very annoying ski bags. There was only one person in the row in front of me, so I decided to sit there. That was interesting because we didn't really talk...  I was just awkwardly sitting there on my phone, but I didn't have service so I just stared at my lock screen for almost an hour. Eventually, a group of kids on my team decided to play cards and the only card game all of us know how to play is BS. So, that was what we played. I was a little skeptical of playing BS because the last time I played with the team, I lost and ended up losing a bet (that I did not know about) too. Anyway, we played BS for an hour or so and then went back to doing our own thing. Oh and I won one round by the way, so you know that was fun...

30 or so minutes later one of the girls starts telling us a hypothetical scenario. She is setting the stage for us and begins her story. She said "Ok, so imagine you are biking to college..." She was immediately cut off by almost everyone listening because why would you be biking to college? Anyway she continues her story, "So, you are actually on a tandem bike with a murder". Again her logic was flawed and everyone made sure she knew that (why would you ever be on a tandem bike with a murderer?) She continued on again "You arrive at a gas station (we all asked why you would be at a gas station if you were on a bike, so she changed it to a gun show), ok fine you arrive a gun show" Very questioningly we said "Ok..." and she continued on "What do you do?". So, to summarize you somehow end up at a gun show with a murder who is trying to kill you. What do you do? Most of the kids on our team said that they would run and take a gun for possible protection.

Before you begin questioning our mental health (more specifically my friend's), I would just like to say that... Actually I have no real explanation for my friend's hypothetical scenario. Anyway, that was the story of our five hour bus ride to Jackson Hole. Check back for another post about the rest of the trip soon!

Nordic Conversations #1

Why Are European Countries So Funny?

This was Victoria and I. Photo courtesy of this website. 

After realizing how weird the conversations I have with my cross country ski team are, I have decided to start a new series on this blog called Nordic Conversations. So, this is the first in my series nordic conversations. This one happened just the other day and it was the time Victoria and I laughed so hard that our stomachs hurt and we couldn't breath over European countries.

It all started when we were waiting for Victoria's mom to pick us up from training. We have a European countries/capitals test in two weeks, so we decided to try and start studying. We went onto quizlet and found a European countries/capitals flash card set, so we decided to start using those flashcards. I began quizzing Victoria, it started out with me asking her what the capital of ______  is, but then at some point we just started uncontrollably laughing about European capitals.

Thank you Cassie25fh for making this quizlet

After thinking about it, we decided that the laughing fit began with me asking Victoria what the capital of Bulgaria is. She didn't know, so I gave her a hint. The hint was that it was the name of a girl we were talking about earlier. Sofia. So, to give you some back story, there is this girl. Her name is Sofia, if you didn't catch onto that yet. She is also a nordic (cross-country) skier, but she lives in Idaho. I met her last summer when both our teams went to Canada and went on a hike/run together. She told me that she used to be the 6th best alpine skier in the country for her age, but then quit because she had a bad season. I was severely questioning why she quit if she was that good, but let her continue with her story. She told me that last year was her first year ever nordic skiing. I had not payed that much attention to her races last year, but wanted to see how she placed this year. Two weeks ago we had a race in Yellowstone and I was shocked when she passed me by how good her technique looked and how fast she was going. I told this story to Victoria and she remembered that Sofia passed her as well and "made her feel bad about her technique cause she was so good". Sofia placed 7th in that race and we (Victoria and I) are still  questioning how she could have done so well if she only "started" skiing last year. Anyway, for some reason we both found that hint to be funny and we both started laughing. 

The next question I asked her was "What is the capital of Germany?"... She didn't know, so I gave her a hint. I said that the capital had a wall that was named after it. The ______ wall. She still didn't get it, so I said the fall of the _____ wall and she didn't didn't know and then I told her what it was (Berlin) and we started cracking up. I'm not really sure why we found this to be humorous, but for some reason we found it to be really funny.

Then I asked her "What is the capital of Brussels"? I gave her a hint, it's a food. She rapidly blurted out the first word that came to her mind... Hungary... Then we both started laughing again. 

Then I asked her "What is the capital of Switzerland"... She didn't know and when I told her what it was, we lost it laughing again for some reason I don't remember. The next one was when I asked her "What is the capital of Turkey?"... Again she didn't know, but it reminded us of another funny story. Earlier that day in geography I asked if Turkey was considered a part of Europe or Asia, our teacher said Asia. Right after without really thinking about it Victoria asked "What about Istanbul?", he said well that's apart of Turkey, so no. That one was really the breaking point we started laughing and couldn't stop for at least five minutes. We were laughing so hard we couldn't breath, our stomachs hurt and we were both crying from laughter. 

You are probably sitting here thinking that this was the stupidest post you've ever read in your entire life or you are wondering what is wrong with us. If I'm being honest I don't know why everything was so funny to us that day, but it was. If you're telling yourself that you've never had a day where everything was funny to you, you are lying to yourself because it happens to the best of us. Oh and if you're thinking we are really bad at geography as well, this was our first time studying for this test, so don't judge us too harshly. Also there were a lot more inside jokes that added to the cause of the laughing fit, but it would either take too long to explain them or I couldn't write about it because it was about something someone did. 

Claire 

How Geoguesser Ruined My Life

The other day after training I was talking to some of the guys on my ski team. We were talking about geography and they asked me if my teacher had us play a game called "Geoguesser" yet. I said no and asked them what it was. They told me it was a game that dropped you in a random place in the world and then you had to guess where you were on a map. You are able to spin around and see a full 360˚ view of where you are and sometimes it will let you move forward and backwards. You can choose if you want to be dropped anywhere in the world (this option will literally drop you in the middle of nowhere) or only famous places (Rome, London, New York, etc.) or even just the US. It also gives you the ability to challenge other people to see who can get closer to the exact location. I thought it sounded interesting and I said I was going to go home and try it.

A picture of their home screen. Photo courtesy of me from the geoguesser website

A picture of the actual game... Leave a comment if you know where this is. Photo courtesy of me from the Geoguesser website

I forgot about it until the next day when my friend (Victoria) came in to Pre-engineering telling me about how addicting it was. So, naturally I had to play it. Now I would just like to state that I am not usually the kind of person who plays games during class or games in general. Anyway I decided to try it. I was instantly addicted. We played it for the first fifteen minutes of class, until the sub came over and chewed us out for playing games during class. We had had two assignments that we were supposed to do, one was a project proposal and the other was to design something in SketchUp. Victoria and I really wanted to get back to playing the game, but we knew we couldn't until we finished all of our work. So, we decided to race to see who could finish the assignments (the best) first. We ended up finishing quickly and went back to the game. The sub came over again and chewed us out for playing the game again, but we told him we finished all our work and he left us alone.  About ten minutes later the sub came back over to watch us play and give "advice". His advice was terrible. I was dropped in stonehenge for one round of the game. I thought it was in Scotland, but the sub kept telling me it was in Southeast Asia. *Side note, Stonehenge is in England. Then, I was dropped in the Vatican. I was like "I think I'm in the Vatican" and the sub told me "Um that's definitely not the Vatican". I didn't really believe him, so I guessed the Vatican anyway. Low and behold I was right, I was in the Vatican. 

Then came next period. We had to take a test on our computers and we could do whatever we wanted after. That's right you guessed it... I played more geoguesser. While I was playing the kids behind me started asking what I was doing. I told them I was playing geoguesser and it was like the most addicting game ever. Then they started playing too. This was when I realized I liked the game so much, I started spreading it. 

I didn't get a chance to play it again until I got home. When I got home I realized that you could challenge people to games, but you had to create an account. I hate creating accounts for things, like if I download an app, but you have to create an account for it. I usually just delete the app. For some reason this was different, I wanted to challenge people, so I created an account. That night, I challenged two of my friends, my dad, my brother and my mom. I ended up spending the whole night competing with my friends and dad. It got super intense my friend and I ended up creating rules like no using google, no getting help and even time limits. The same friend and I even ended up competing to see how close we could get to the exact location. You might be thinking "Isn't that the point of the game". Yes it is, but this was different we were trying to as close as possible down to the nearest meter. I also ended up face timing with one of my other friends and playing with her for over an hour. By this point I was literally putting off homework to play this game. 

My record: 7.5 meters from the location on the map... I'm pretty impressed with myself :) Photo courtesy of moi

The next morning my friend Laisa, texted me asking if I had looked at canvas for our french class yet. I responded no and went to check it. She asked me if I saw "it" yet and even though I didn't see "it" I responded with oh my gosh anyway because I was clearly missing something. She text me back saying "I was sitting there reading it and I was like I wonder if Mrs. Hurner (our teacher) even told Claire". I was sitting there like wait, did she even tell me what? I went back and looked at canvas and it said "Claire is responsible for coordinating this effort". If you were wondering, no she did not tell me this. I got into class and the sub asked me if I was Claire O. I replied and yes and he started going over the lesson with me and I was like hold on what's happening. Apparently I was supposed to help the sub. I honestly tried for the first ten minutes of class, but then I kept getting sassed by these 8th graders, so I gave up. 

That was when I got an email for a geoguesser challenge. So, I accepted. That was a terrible mistake. My teacher tells the sub that I am supposed to help him and I just sat there playing geoguesser all period. It got to a point where there was a big geoguesser challenge going between half the class. This was the point where I officially accepted the fact that geoguesser has ruined my life. 

That is the story of how geoguesser ruined my life. I have the game linked in multiple places including here, so you should really give it a try. Or actually maybe not, just warning you it's addicting. 

- Claire 

Going up

My Roller skis

You remember when I said that Agony Hill was the hardest time trial ever. I stand corrected. This skate roller ski time trial was actually the hardest thing ever. EVER.

Last week, my coach told us that we were doing a skate roller ski time trial on Friday. I didn't think much of it when I first heard about it. Then again when I first heard about it, I didn't actually know what it was like. The next day at training I started asking around to see if anyone on the team had done it before. I knew the kids in my grade hadn't done it yet, so I started by asking the tenth graders. They said they hadn't done it either. Then I asked the 11th graders and they hadn't done it either. I then thought that this was probably a new time trial that he just came up with, but just to be sure I asked the seniors. Only two of the seniors on my team remember doing this... three years ago. One of them said that it was all uphill, 5k long and really hard. The other one told me that it was short and easy.

When Friday finally rolled around I had no idea what to expect. I kept getting mixed responses, some people said it was all uphill and really long and others said it was fairly flat and short. I decided to prepare myself for a mostly uphill, medium length time trial. My team met at a park near the place we were starting. Our coach told us where to go during the time trial or what the course was. I'm 98% sure that he said something along the lines of "Ok, so you're going to go up on this road and then take a right, then the road will curve left, but stay straight and then take a left, a right, and another right"... I did not have the mental capacity to memorize that and surprise, surprise I was going first. Oh well, I guess I was just going to have to go with it.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, GO! And I just began the time trial. I started off on a slight uphill section and started going a little too fast. I thought to myself this isn't too bad. That was because that was the flatest (or most flat) section of the entire course. It got very steep, very quickly. I felt like it was never going to end. Ever. It was so steep and so hard that I couldn't feel my arms anymore and I was only six minutes in. Somehow I kept going and hallelujah I saw my coach. He told me before I started that when I saw him that meant I was almost done. I got a sudden burst of energy and skied really fast (actually I was still going pretty slow, but it felt fast), until he shouted "Nice job, you're almost a third of the way done". I slowed back down to my normal pace and thought "what the heck, you said I would be done when I saw you".

Anyway I kept going up. I just sat there thinking about how I didn't even know it was possible for there to be this much uphill. I thought they were exaggerating when they said it was all uphill. The next time I saw my coach I didn't speed up because I just assumed I wasn't anywhere near finishing. At that point I kind of thought it was just going to go on forever. I was right, I was only about halfway through. I kept skiing (in an immense amount of pain) for another ten minutes until I saw my coach again. As I got closer, I realized that two of my teammates were stopped next to him. That meant one of two things, they either died (meaning injured themselves) or that was the finish. It turned out to be the finish! I used all of my remaining energy to speed up to get to the finish. Once we all finished we piled into the van and drove down to the bottom. It was only 3.5 kilometers, but it was still the hardest 3.5 kilometers of my life. And yes this time trial was even harder than agony hill in my opinion and I wasn't the only one who thought so.

As I was trying to come up with a title for this blog post, I remembered what my blog was called and realized that I probably should have seen an all uphill time trial coming.

Pain Is Only Temporary

Your lungs will be burning, you won't be able to move your legs anymore and you will be dying of heat, but remember that pain is only temporary. That is what I will tell anyone before doing agony hill. Let me start off by saying that agony hill is the hardest time trial we do on my cross-country ski team. It is not a long time trial distance-wise, but it feels like forever. It is only one mile long, but it has over 1,000 feet of elevation gain. When I first heard about this time trial three thoughts came to mind: what the **** is that, do we really have to do that and this is going to suck.

The first time we did this time trial was in June. It was over 90 degrees in Salt Lake. I was sweating before we even started. I was starting first and I didn't know where I was going because I had never done it before. One of my teammates told me not to worry about where to go because I would probably get passed and I could just follow that person. She meant for it to be encouraging, but you could take it either way. I asked her where the finish was and she replied that it was just at the top of that hill *points to the top of the first of four hills*. Another one of the senior girls gave me a pep talk before starting the time trial... Although now that I think of it she might have been giving herself a pep talk and I was just standing near her... She told me or herself "pain is only temporary and it will go away once you reach the top, you can do it". I found that really encouraging and thought of it multiple times during the time trial.

 I don't really remember most of what happened the first time because I have tried really hard suppress that memory. However, I do remember thinking that I was done at the top of the first hill, which was really only about 1/4 of the way to the actual finish. Also, that I was chanting in my head pain is only temporary for the first two minutes, after that I gave up and was cursing the person who came up with this time trial and my coach for making us do this and the girl who told me where the *top* was and pretty much everything else in existence. I also remember how I felt when I finished... my lungs were burning, I couldn't move my legs and I was dying of heat, but my teammate was right in the fact that pain is only temporary. It might be a long temporary, but it still goes away eventually. 

At the end of September my coach informed us that we were going to be doing Agony Hill again on Halloween. Everyone groaned and complained about doing it on Halloween, but at least it wasn’t the day after Halloween (which apparently it was last year). Flash forward to 7:00 am Halloween morning. Before our coach got to the spot where he was supposed to pick us up, we were sitting there talking about how absolutely terrible it was going to be. Also about how we were not going to be able to walk later that night on Halloween. When our coach arrived with the van, we all piled in and drove down to Salt Lake. On the way down there we listened to some interesting music... It was everything from EDM music to Ed Sheeran to Eminem. When we got down there, I was determined to beat my time from last time (26 minutes). I felt more prepared this time because I got a better warm up and actually knew where the top was. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the actual time trial because my thoughts didn't change that much compared to last time. Other than the fact I skipped chanting pain is only temporary and went straight to cursing everything. Once I finished and got over the fact that my lungs were burning, I couldn't move my legs anymore and I was dying of heat (I way overestimated how cold it would be and wore pants), I realized I beat my time from last time by over a minute!

I was proud of myself for improving by so much. My advice for anyone doing this time trial is remember that your lungs are going to be burning, you won't be able to move your legs and you will be dying of heat, but pain is only temporary and the pain will end when you finish (even if it is 24 hours after you finish).

Trust me it's a lot steeper in real life. Photo courtesy of me

- Claire