Mayo Clinic and Coleraine Jumping Camp

The whole team in Coleraine, MN. Credit: USA Nordic

Even without going to Europe yet this summer, it has been a busy season of traveling already! We started out with an all-team  trip to Minnesota to work with one of our new sponsors, the Mayo Clinic, followed by a ski jumping camp in Coleraine, MN.  After a quick 10 days at home, we headed out to Steamboat Springs, CO for our annual training camp and 4th of July competition. Its been a hectic but productive few weeks to say the least!
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Starting this season, USA Nordic and the Mayo Clinic entered into a 5-year partnership which we are all psyched about! We started off this partnership by bringing all the athletes from both ski jumping and Nordic combined national and junior national teams (about 40 athletes) to Minneapolis to do all sorts of tests. We did lots of blood tests, a concussion baseline test, an ECG, a bone density/ body composition scan, a nutrition consultation, some physical testing, and finished with a VO2 max test. All of the information that we got from these tests will be super beneficial for us athletes and our coaches to know what our bodies are doing and keep track of changes over time! The national teams will head back to Mayo Clinic in early August and I'm already looking forward to being back! 

After our time in Minneapolis at the Mayo Clinic, we drove north to Coleraine, Minnesota for a 4-day jumping camp with all of the teams still together. These were our first jumps of the year. It is always exciting to jump again but at the same time it can be frustrating as well. After being off of the jump for almost 3 months, I struggled a little bit to get back to having jumps that I was happy with, but by the end of the camp it definitely felt like I had made a little bit of progress. 

This was my first time to northern Minnesota, and although I had heard stories of the bugs and the weather,  I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But the stories did not disappoint. On our second jump session of the camp, we were able to take 2 jumps before the rain came in. Even though we water the hill in the summer for jumping, it was such a torrential downpour that there was too much water in the track for us to jump. One of the local jumpers hydroplaned down the track and at that point, every coach of every team decided to call it a day, understandably. In addition to the weather, every athlete ended up with countless mosquito bites up and down there legs. Being from Utah, the 2nd driest state in the US, I can honestly say I was not a fan of the rain and mosquitos that we experienced while in Coleraine. 

This training camp was much more relaxed than our typical Nordic combined training camp. Compared to the typical camp of lots of jumping mixed with lots of hard cross country training, this camp felt much more laid back. We did a lot of group activities together since this is one of very few times that all of the USA Nordic national and junior national teams were together. We had a lake day at one of the coaches' family camp near Duluth, MN and went to dinner at coach Blake Hughes' mom's house. It was cool to get to hang out with all of the juniors since we unfortunately have very limited interaction with most of them. All-in-all I had a super fun time, and can't wait to go back on another all team trip!

After Coleraine, we travelled home to Park City for about 10 days. Our coaches wanted us to not jump when we were at home so that we could focus on jumping technique in the gym and do one last week of cross country training without the added time and pressure of ski jumping. Two of our coaches flew back over from Europe and then we headed out to Steamboat for our annual training camp and competition week. More on that next time! 

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Dinner on the Lake. Credit: USA Nordic