Kicking off the Summer

         Well, my old cross country coach used to say that skiers are made in the summer, and he is absolutely right! Our new training year started a few weeks ago, and for this time of year we focus on doing lots of long, easy workouts. This is to build a "base" for the rest of the year. Essentially, we give ourselves a huge endurance platform that we can continue to build upon for the rest of the year. Also, we are not yet ski jumping at this time of year, so that makes it a lot easier to do lots and lots of biking, running, and hiking (and a little bit of roller skiing) without having to worry about being too tired to ski jump. 
           This marks my first summer of being on the national team. That means that I have switched teams, switched coaches, switched training plans, and switched gyms, among other things. As you can guess, this is a pretty substantial transition, and one thing that has been nice has been having a group of people to train with. For last year, I didn't always have a training partner (mostly in the fall), and this year I've only done workouts by myself by choice. Having people to train with is one of the biggest motivators because it turns a 2-hour run or a 5-hour bike ride into a 5-hour conversation with your buddies. This may not sound like much, but it keeps me from getting into my own head and saying "why are you even doing this, Jared?". So, with my transition to the national team, one of the things I am most stoked about is being able to train with people all (or at least most) of the time. 
            As we kick off the new year of training, I am also going to try to keep my blog more updated. I think that this will help me and anyone who actually reads this (honestly not sure if anyone does) keep track of how I am feeling throughout the year. When you train as much as Nordic combined athletes do, it is easy to overwork and burn yourself out. My hope is that by updating how the year goes on this website, I will be forced to think more in-depth about how I'm really feeling. If that interests you, please continue to check back!