Ski Buddy Sign Up

Hello APU Devo, Junior skiers, and Parents,

The racing season is in full swing and we have APU skiers racing well all over the map! We may be in many different places racing at various levels, however we are ALL part of the same team-- doing incredible things in the pursuit of the fabulous sport of skiing.

I thought that a great way to stay connected and support each other would be to implement a ski-buddy system between the Elite Team and the up-and-coming racers in our junior program. The focus of this is to offer inter-team inspiration and encouragement.

This is how it will work:

*We will pair up our Elite skiers with 1-3 junior/devo skiers. All year-round and winter session members are invited to participate. The main form of communication in this "buddy system" will likely be through email, since many of the Elite/Uni skiers are often out of town racing. However, when both “buddies” are at the same ski function, they can have a chance to say "hello", cheer and support their buddy.

*You can anticipate on ~1 mode of communication per month from Jan-March 2011.

*If you are interested in participating *please email me at katieronsse(at)gmail.com ASAP. You can say for example, "Bobby Smyth is in."

Parents-- if you would like to be cc’d in your child’s buddy correspondence, please let me know.

As soon as we get a roster of everyone interested in participating, we will pair you up. You can expect to receive an email from your buddy, letting you know with whom you are paired.

*If you have any questions, concerns, or comments throughout the project, please don’t hesitate to email me at katieronsse(at) gmail.com. If you not hear from your buddy by Jan 30^th, please let me know.

This is going to be fun! Keep racing fast and hope to see you on the trails!

~Katie Ronsse

US National Championships: Classic Distance

The classic distance races kicked off here in Rumford, Maine. I can't help but brag about my teammates, since they took 1st and 2nd in both the mens and women's races and had many outstanding performances off the podium too.

Women's podium: Morgan Smyth (APU), Sadie Bjornson (APU), Morgan Arritola (US Ski Team/SVSEF).

It was Sadie's first National Championship (Kris Dobie photo). A little known fact is that Sadsarue was also a World Record holder back in the day...in the 100m skate! Sadie is a young lady loaded with talent and will likely be a big part of the future of US Skiing.

It was also great to see Morgan Smyth (above in a Kris Dobie photo) back on her A-game! Morgan is a former National Champion and former US Ski Team member but in the past has spent more than a fair share of time plagued by sickness and injury. She joined the APU team in the spring and has contributed to making our inter-team dynamic playful and fun and she has been racing wicked fast.

Here's our coach Erik Flora giving a splits and encouraging James Southam (APU) as he skis to a 2nd place overall finish. Lars Flora (APU) won and David Norris of Fairbanks, AK was 3rd! A great day for AK.

10k Classic. photo credit: Ian Harvey of Toko

As far as my personal race today, I executed my race as planned and raced my heart out-- even though my finishing result was a less than desirable. As my wise Dad once told me,

"Everyone who has ever trained hard, expected great results, and got something less knows humility was purchased for the price of a race bib."

Any day with a race bib on is a good day. A good day to test my limits and challenge myself, and a good day to celebrate the success and fitness of my teammates and competitors, if not my own.

Great job to all the racers today. Thanks to everyone out on course cheering for me, taking pictures, giving splits, and to the volunteers and coaches who made it happen.

Here I am, flattered to have Lynne Zimmerman's support. Lynn has been making the trip out to Rumford each race day to cheer me on, volunteer as needed, and take pictures! I met Lynn's daughter, Heather Zimmerman, when we both studied abroad in New Zealand and she instantly became one of my lifelong best friends and an irreplaceable adventure buddy. Since Heather retired from the CXC Elite Ski Racing Team, she has been able to fulfill her desire to devote her energy to service work in an underdeveloped nation. After working non-stop at a "real" job for a year, she saved up enough money to spend a year on a 1-year volunteer service project where she is teaching English to the Tibetans in the foothills of the Himalayas. I agree with her mom when she said, "I couldn't be prouder of her".

Thanks for reading and expect more updates soon. I can't wait to sprint again on Saturday!

Katie

The Bug

Our team chemistry this year has exceptionally fun and positive which has made training, traveling, and racing very enjoyable. As a whole, the team's results have also been outstanding. One of my teammates wrote about this very thing and explained it quite elegantly. I wanted to share it with you.

"The APU girls team definitely has something special right now. I've been trying to boil it down, put my finger on it, & identify it but I can't..... People have asked me what it is, wanting to create the same thing amongst their team(s) but I don't know that it's reproducible. Some how we have the right people, with the right chemistry, at the right time. We have great coaches, hard working, professional wax techs, and good attitudes. We live for hard workouts, we switch leads in intervals, we give each other feedback on ways that we can improve. Most people view cross country skiing as an individual sport but it can be so much more than that.

I think that good results and good attitudes are infectious and we have the bug. Once someone breaks through, everyone else starts doing well. There is a domino effect and it's awesome." - Holly Brooks

In fact, her entire blog post is very well done. You can check it out here.

Brent Knight, another teammate of mine and fellow Atomic athletes, just posted a great video introducing many of the APU athletes. Thanks for putting this together Brent. Check it out!

US National Championships: Classic Sprint

It was a phenomenal day for our women's team on the first day of US National Championships in Rumford, Maine. Teammate Holly Brooks came home with her first National Championship title and Morgan Smyth, Sadie Bjornsen, and myself were the next three Americans! As training buddies and very close friends, we were all ecstatic to get to excel together at a high level.

Morgan Smyth, Holly Brooks, Katie Ronsse, and Sadie Bjornsen right after the A-final of the 1.3k Classic Sprint (A Flying Point Road photo). Those are some truly happy smiles.

Ronsse, Brooks, Bjornsen, Smyth. Eliska Hajkova of CU actually finished 2nd, however since she is from the Czech Republic and since its a US National Championship race, they did two medal ceremonies, one in which Morgan and Sadie were awarded the silver and bronze medals. I just missed medaling as the 4th American (5th overall), but was happy to contribute to the 1-4 APU sweep!

Morgan Smyth and I giving a congratulatory hug post race (Flying Point Road photo).

Teammates Kate Fitzgerald and Becca Rorabaugh lunging for the line in the Women's B final (Andy Canniff photo).

Other members of our team had some great results as well-- both on the men's and women's side-- and results can be found at the Chisholm Ski Club's website.

APU Ladies Women's elite team: Kate Fitzgerald, Becca Rorabaugh, Katie Ronsse, Holly Brooks, Sadie Bjornsen, Morgan Smyth. We took 6 of the top 11 spots! Kikkan Randall (also an APU athlete), is the lone American woman representing the US at the Tour de Ski World Cup series right now so she couldn't be here...but she surely would've added to the teams dominant performance.

Ronsse, Brooks, Bjornsen, Smyth

It was a very rewarding day of racing, and a day I felt very fortunate to be able to share "high-fives", hear cheering, and get messages/emails from so many close friends. For example, Jan Buron and Ben Arians who coached me from age 10-20 on the Alaska Winter Stars team were out there cheering (in between supporting their current athletes), as well as my former college coaches, Dave Stewart and Hennie Kashiwa of DU. Throughout my years of training and racing, there have been a great number of people who have supported me, so I felt lucky to get to share one of the more memorable days of my skiing career with many of those people in addition to my current team.

Erik Flora (my coach) with Casey Fagerquist, Carl Schauer, Eric Strabel, Mike Matteson... a world class waxing squad. They keep very busy preparing and testing fleets of skis for each of our 26 APU athletes racing here at Nationals. I couldn't ask for better waxing support. I am also fortunate to get to choose from a rocket fast fleet of Atomic skis.

The next race has been postponed until Wednesday, as the weather is getting colder and the race organizers are expecting to be able to make snow. The organizers have done a lot of work to battle the warm temperatures and rain, which has included bringing truck loads of snow. The course wasn't exactly pristine and white, but they did a great job at making it suitable for race skis and putting in solid tracks.

Here's what the sprint course afternoon before the sprint race (fasterskier photo). This was after truck loads of snow were dumped on it, and they did A LOT of work after this as well to make the tracks race-able. I can only imagine how much work goes into putting on a high profile race such as this one. Thanks to every volunteer who is making it possible for us to race!

Here's our team having fun doing a little shoveling.

Thanks for reading,

Katie