Looking for the US Noco boys to fire it up in Lahti, Finland tomorrow at 9am est in the 2 man team relay.  Team 1 is Bryan and Taylor Fletcher, USA 2 is Brett Denney and Nick Hendrickson.

Go boys, go USA!

Best punch line for:

What do you get when you put a Biathlete and a Nordic Combiner side by side on a treadmill doing classic?

Win's a 2010 Bjorn Dahlie jacket from me and some kind of squarehead triple stripped Adidas thing from Teela.

Ever since we switched our nationals to fall it has become a more serious competition as it is the first test heading into winter for all the new found form instead of an april after-thought.  It has also opened the door for us to put the event in some places that could not typically host a spring tourney.  Norge proved to be a great host club and saturday was a really successful event.  We kicked off with the small hill jumping championships and with over 75 competitors it took some time to get through 3 rounds.  During which hundreds of people came to partake in the festival atmosphere around the base of the ski jump.  Though not the crowds of 5k+ they command in the winter it was pretty good for football season!  

Bryan Fletcher really showed his strength on the jumphill outdistancing Johnny Spillane and I by enough to get a 30 sec head start for the XC race.  And though I was sure we could catch him in the challenging 10km, which wound relentlessly up and over the back of the jumping hill, he managed to increase his lead by 10 sec over the first 5km.  So with half the race over and nearly a 40sec advantage I thought Bryan would take the title easily but Johnny and I were able to pick it up enough as Bryan faded to make contact with just a km remaining.  From there we all backed off a bit to try and recover for a move and in the end it was a 3 way dash for the last 200m.  I managed to edge out Johnny at the line!  Its a good motivation for the beggining of the last prep phase to know you are close to where you want to be.  What was really great about the weekend was seeing the strength of our up and coming junior squad.  Alec Gantic of Steamboat jumped to 2nd place in Nordic Combined and 17 year old Eric Lynch had a great jump and a fast race managing to outsprint Taylor Fletcher to take 5th place right behind Todd.  

In any case a former Nordic Combined Development athlete Dan Englund has put together a really neat video of the weekend.  His companyAerial Vantage Productions gets some really unique shots using a remote control helicopter to to follow jumpers through the air and skiers on the course.  Enjoy!

 It started saturday August 27th in Oberwiesenthal, Germany with my first Summer Grand Prix Nordic Combined event in a couple years.  A normal gundersen competition with one jump on the k-90 followed by a 10km pursuit.  I finished a lackluster 30th after blowing up mid-race trying to keep up with Taylor Fletcher but the day was highlighted by older brother Bryan's 8th place and near podium.  Also we had a youngster Eric Lynch a second generation Nordic Combined talent ski in his first A level competition in which he really held his own with a solid performance.  

Day 2 was Sunday another competition in the same venue but instead of a pursuit race we did the first ever Nordic Combined "Penalty" race.  in this format the winner of the jumping got a 10 sec head start on the field and the other 70 of us mass started for 6 laps around the 1.75km cobble stoned hilly nightmare around downtown.  The kicker is that depending on how you jumped you had to do a certain number of Penalty laps during the race as such: jump 101 or farther: 0 penalties  

jump 96-101: 1 penalty

jump 91-96: 2 penalty

and so on up to 6 laps!  Oh, and if you fail to have a telemark landing add one penalty or worse crash, add 3!

The penalty was a lap around the inside of an outdoor hocket rink off to the side of the course just past the cobbled section and you could choose when to do your laps 1 at a time or all at once on any lap.  

I wanted to hate this race when I heard about it but honestly it was pretty interesting and the tactic of when to take the penalties added alot to the race.  I had 1 penalty and I chose the 3rd lap to do it, I went from leading to 5th about 25 sec back.  After a couple more guys took their penalties I was in 3rd and there I stayed danging 25-30 sec behind the leading duo and pulling away from the field slowly.  Ultimately I finished on the podium my first since 2010.  

It was off to Czech Republic from there to play 18 holes of golf (walking with my clubs on my back) in a little NC get together on monday followed by another competition in Liberec on Wednesday where I skied a strong race but finished in 24th.  All in all it was some solid contact with the other teams and decent results in a very strong field.  After the race I beat for the Prague Airport to try and make it home in time for race #4.

Thursdays travel was long but I made it home by mid-afternoon after catching the Paris-Salt Lake direct.  And Friday I was back on my bike for the 2nd time since Leadville to preride the opening 10 miles of Park City's infamous Point 2 Point race.  Brutal! Those opening 10 were mostly hard single track and I hoped that later in the race it might ease up....

Saturday morning I walked outside at 5:45am after a mostly sleepless night (indigestion, baby up, etc...) to find that my windshield was iced over and it was pitch dark.  I rallied with my buddy Bryson Perry to get everything ready and out the door to get to the start line.  We were lucky that we could park at the US Ski Team training center by the start because most of the field had to ride out in the dark from town!  And seeing as it was 36 degrees at 6:30am it was not that nice to be sitting around in spandex.  We lined up at 6:55 and race director Jay Burke informed us that the race would commence after 100m of neutral around a gate.  With that said it was on and though I tried to move up the strong group of frontrunners quickly had the race going full gas onto the single mile of 2-track. After hitting the single track of rusty shovel in about 30th I knew my chances of winning were about done which I quickly became pretty happy about.

PCP2P, if you haven't heard of it, is about as pure a mountain bike race as you'd (n)ever want to do.  Among it's 78 or so miles is about 76 miles of singletrack and 14,000 ft of climbing (and gnar-kill descending).  It will beat you up, make you cry, and when it turns uphill once more 3 miles from the finish line will make you murderously unhappy at the volunteers pointing you up and away from the finish line.  

It requires the utmost fitness and focus and ton of food and drink.  Without getting overly detailed into my own personal religious experience I'll tell you this:  I consumed a camelback of water, 4 bottle of sports drink, 4 bottles of water, 2 cokes, 3 probars, a sandwich, a HoneyStinger Waffle, multiple handfuls of Stinger chews, 20+salt pills and a 7-11 Hotdog with ketchup.  All of which and especially the hot dog I aquired from my good friend Jeremy Teela, who I anxiously await feeding in next years PCP2P.  I rode for 8 hours and 17 minutes rarely stopping except to eat/drink and stave off cramps.  And I felt GOOD most of the time!  Good being a relative term, but since I did not chase down the likes of Alex Grant and Tinker Juarez I settled into my own pace thereby eliminating a lot of pain.  In short I thought people were crazy when they called the Leadville 100 a "road race," but now I'm definetly gonna say "Leadville is a (really hard) total road race!"

Needless to say I took 3 days completely off and just now am considering getting off the couch to try and start putting the pieces back together for next winter! 

Don't worry we've being doing our intervals on rollerski's.

   Truth is that as much fun as this summer has been I'm truely looking forward to skiing for a living again.  I'm hankering for Sochi and everything that lies between now and then.  Long ass bus rides, strange hotels, ridiculous foriegners yelling at you about something in another language and you have no idea what?!  Then the good stuff, awesome days racing, training, just out and about in other cultures.  I want it all (for at least a few more years) but right now I need like two extra weeks before Suomi. 

    This past summer I rebuilt my WHOLE(of a) house in Park City.  Somehow managing to toss that in between post Olympic madness on the road, a few NRC stage races, and of course slowing down for just a few to marry my sweet heart Katie Koczynski Demong!  New windows, doors, floors, additions, decks  all day everyday for many many days.

In any case, we finally got on snow.  5 days in a row even!  After doing a fair bit of skating out at Whitepine, a back country day at Alta and some intervals I'm starting to finally feel a flow that has been missing of late.  

Hopefully the snow holds up, I'll do the best with the time I've got before heading out.  Regardless, I am amped about Worlds in Oslo and especially the prospect of skiing for four more years!

Enjoy this:

As fasterskier.com has already pretty much covered pre-race I will simply add that local favorite Duncan Douglas is according to my phone call last night, "too busy counting calories down in a Hospital in Newark, NJ covering 80 hrs of shifts a week!" to some defend the title.  Looks like whoever wins this thing will need an * denoting the lack of a full field.  That being said the Biathlon team is also out in Park City, Utah for their annual camp.  

Yesterday the US and Australian Nordic Combined squads had a little "fun" comp that culminated with a race up the shorter albeit steeper side of whiteface.  Yes thats right the Aussies have decided to take up the sport!  With veteran XC skier Ben Simm leading the charge with 17 year old prodigy Jackson the two have joined us in Park City and now Lake Placid to learn the ropes.  While they jumped the 40 meter here in LP we put them into the pursuit race at appropriate intervals.  The Camerota bros Brett and Eric nearly tied for the win in the jumping with yours truely trailing by 0:28 and Bryan Fletcher another 0:18 back.  Ben Simm was thrown into the mix starting 2:00 min behind.  Good for me seeing as Ben recently swept all 4 races at the Aussie Championships and has been flying in recent intensity sessions!

After 9.3km and about 28 min of racing I was able to hang onto a 0:15 advantage over Simm who had mowed through the field and he was closely followed by Taylor and Bryan Fletcher for 3rd and 4th.  So high hopes for the budding team from down-under.  It speaks well to the future of the sport that a new country is joining the fray, as well as jumps opening and reopening across the country like the new venue slated for Aspen, CO.

Following tomorrows slugfest we will be having our annual Flaming Leaves jumping and Nordic Combined Comps on Sat and Sun at the Olympic Jumping Complex.  Jumping starts at 11am both days and the Nordic Combined portion will take place on the rollerski loop at 8:30 am Sunday morning.  If you want to watch the NC skiers duke it out prepare to park at the Horse Show grounds across the street as the gate to the venue won't open until 9:00am.

Hope to see you out here!

First off I want to point out that Dewey Mountain is probably the most challenging ski area in world as its narrow trails wind and dive through the woods in a manner that requires fierce concentration.  Though it's primary 8 kms or so of skiing lie on a mere 30 acres, the heavily forested slope on which they meander offer brief glimpses of upcoming corners and diving downhills mere seconds before you find yourself cutting hard and dropping in.  It is the perfect venue for teaching young kids how to ski and get their survival skill set. As an adult I ski Dewey for an hour or so and ive done it all, albeit each steep uphill gasping for air and trying not to break into a snow plow screaming down the descents.  Much of this definitely contributed to a foggy memory I have of walking down the trail after getting the worst of a tree stump during a game of Chinese Downhill (which was the Thursday night high-school practice routine) one broken sacrum, and I believe a good friend of mine by the name of Mike Stemp may have had a concussion.

But as we reflected over lunch there is a lot of history that went into Dewey Mountains existance as well the history made by the boys and girls who grew up skiing there.  The Mountain was originally set up with a rope tow in 1941, but after a season of nearly no snow and with WWII coming on the operation shut down.  In 1980 the town invested in starting a trail system and by 1981 the trails designed by Craig Ward from Aspen, Co opened up and under the lights a lively scene of youth programs and races grew on cold Adirondack nights.  A whole host of young families with kids from 4-10 years old rallyed a few nights a week to Dewey Mountain for practice.  Among that group of kids many of whom continued to ski through high school and beyond were a few who made a career out of Nordic Skiing.  I was one of those youth as I started skiing at Dewey in 1985 as well as Timothy Burke, both of us have for the past 25 years made skiing our lifestyle and our pursuit.  And last season both of us did something no other American has done.  I won a Gold Medal in Nordic Combined in Vancouver, and Tim held the Yellow (golden) Bib as the World Cup Leader for a chunk of the season.  Two big firsts for American nordic skiing, from two little boys who grew up skiing the World's toughest Nordic Venue!

This afternoon I attended a kick-off party.  It was a huge gathering of people at Dewey Mountain.  Since 1981 very little has changed at Dewey, and although the youth program is strong and building this group of people is gathered to kick-off a drive to rejuvenate the mountain, it's facilities, and it's trails.  The people collected here range from Congressman Bill Owen and ski Historian Nat Leduc, to the next generation of lollipoppers and bill kochers...  The parents of the new generation are meeting the parents of my generation.  It is a reunion of all those that have called Dewey home in their lives and a union with those that will call it home.  I am so eager to see how this project will grow and develope.  It will in many ways be much like when Dewey was first built in 1981 when the town, the village, the donors, and the volunteers came together to make it happen. 

Right as I was leaving Dewey Mountain this afternoon a little boy came up to me and his mother asked him, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"  He replied sharply, "I'm going to ski like Billy Demong!"  That's kind of creepy to hear if you are me.... But such a huge start toward building the next generation of Dewey Mountain Olympians!

Hammer Down!