On the eve of a brand new season

Well Folks, it’s that time of year again.  We’re back in Ruka, Finland amongst the frosty trees and almost constant darkness.  The World Cup circus has arrived amid a flurry of new uniforms, friendly faces and booming music in the stadium.  The dawn of a new race season is finally upon us!

As I get older I find that the training season seems longer and longer and I get more anxious to start racing.  So it’s great that the season is finally beginning!

We kick things off with a classic sprint race today.  It’s a challenging course with a big uphill into the finish.  I opened my season with my first classic podium here last year and have been in the final a couple of times.  This is a good course for me.  I had a good workout with my teammates on the course yesterday and I’m really looking forward to seeing how my shape comes out.

At the opening press conference last night I was relieved to hear the other athletes echo my own feelings, that predictions for this weekend are pretty frivolous as we all don’t really know where we stand until we start racing.  It was good to be rubbing elbows with the likes of Bjoergen, Johaug, Kowalczyk and Kalla again.

Enough talking, here are some pictures from the week and we’ll just see how this thing goes!!