Motivation Monday – Caitlin Gregg Domination!

This weeks motivation is brought to you by Caitlin Compton Gregg, a Minneapolis-based Nordic skier vying for her second Olympic team. In case you don’t follow Nordic skiing (and I admit that I mostly just hear about it from my husband Nate) you should know that the USA Nordic women have been on a tear lately. Last winter Minnesota skier Jessie Diggins even won the USA’s first ever nordic skiing World Championship with Kikkan Randall in the team sprint. Seriously, watch that video!

The Nordic ski season kicked off this past weekend with the obvious big push towards this winter’s Olympics in Sochi. As I mentioned earlier, the USA women’s team is super stacked, and making that team will be incredibly difficult, as there are only so many spots for the few starting positions at the Olympics (and unlike running, many of the skiers will do multiple distances from the sprint to the 50k). At the World Cup opener in Finland this past weekend the US team had 8 women racing, and they started super strong (3rd strongest country in the world at the end of the weekend), so to break into that group to make the Olympic team will take a monumental effort (and unlike running, there is no specific standard to hit or even a set number of skiers that will be chosen).

This past weekend at the Yellowstone Ski Festival and the opening races of the US domestic season, Caitlin put up that monumental effort. In the two races of the weekend she crushed the sprint, and then dominated the 10k skate by a minute and twenty seconds. If she keeps up this pace she will make it very difficult to leave her off that Olympic team! So this winter while the running is more low-key, you can cheer on the skiers, and Caitlin!

And I know Caitlin reads this blog, so a big congrats from me! 🙂