Kjetil

This morning, we rollerskied a lap around Anchorage. We have hundreds of kilometers of paved multiuse trails throughout the city for rollerskiing, and it's become a tradition on this team to do a 50km+/- rollerski loop from the UAA campus down Campbell Creek to the ocean, along the shoreline, and back up Chester Creek back to UAA just before the snow arrives and we switch from wheels to skis. The weather forecast led us to believe that we'd probably be slogging through an inch or two of new wet snow. But fortunately, the overnight snow never came and we had good conditions.

(Notice the new snow on the Chugach Range east of town.)

After about 45-50 kilometers of double-poling, we arrived at Andrew's house, where he and Sara had been slaving over breakfast, which they had waiting for us when we arrived.

Chefs Andrew and Sara

Well, it's nice to have these multiuse trails available for a nice long, safe double-pole workout.  But rollerskiing isn't always so safe. Sometimes rollerskiers and automobiles don't mix well together. Sometimes rollerskiers crash when attempting to ski down huge downhills. And that brings us to the story of Kjetil Dammen, former UAA skier, who skied for us in 2005 and 2006 before returning to Norway to begin his professional racing career. Now he races for Team LeasePlanGo, focusing on the Swix SkiClassics marathon series (Marcialonga, Vasaloppet, etc).  Kjetil was out for a five hour rollerski tour with his training buddies Thomas Alsgaard, Oystein Pettersen and a few other guys about seven weeks ago when they had a massive crash on a big downhill with bad pavement.  Several skiers were injured, but Kjetil got the worst of it with a pelvis broken in three places. Ever since then, Kjetil's been lying in bed because his doctor won't let him put any weight on his leg. But this week, he got permission to get up and hobble around a little bit.  He's hoping to be back in racing shape by January.  His big racing goal, the Vasaloppet, isn't until later in the winter, so he's hoping to be back to 100% by then. But don't take my word for it, you can read all about it yourself here, here, and here. 

Get well soon, Kjetil!

By the way, you can also check out BraDammen (#46) and his UAA racing suit (worn by another guy) on this Norwegian TV ad from a few years back.