After last year’s suprise party (I nearly jumped out of my skin, I was so suprised!) and getting to see all my friends when I came home from the ski season, I thought there was no way any welcome home party could possibly top that. But yesterday at the Lake Elmo ski center, Kris Hansen and Ahvo Taipale organized such an awesome Nordic event that I was blown away! Around 140 people showed up and I got to see so many friends and meet new people. It always makes my day when I meet a young skier who tells me that they want to go to the Olympics one day. Even better – when they say that they are GOING to get to the Olympics!
The Welcome Home party (while I was giving a talk about the season) (photo from Skinnyski)
I learned that the Stillwater City Council declared April 20th “Jessie Diggins Day”, and at first I thought it was a really well planned and elaborate joke, because there was no way they could actually do that! But nope, it really happened. I was overwhelmed! We raffled off some fantastic prizes from my sponsors including a pair of Salmon skate and classic skis, a One Way pole tube and poles, and Marwe rollerskis. And my favorite part was handing out posters to the kids and hearing what clubs they skied with!
Giving out posters (photo from Stillwater Gazette)
Kris Hansen, my high school coach, showing the World Champs medal to her daughter (photo from Stillwater Gazette)
Signing posters (photo from Skinnyski)
In case you haven’t heard from the tone of my last few posts – I’m loving being home. Picking my sister up from school, going sledding at Afton Alps, seeing my friends home from college. I had to include this last picture of Cass. He found a bird that hit the window and didn’t make it, and he was fiercely protective of it because he wanted to present it to my Dad. He wouldn’t let me take it from him, and I had to bribe him with treats!
Cass - way too proud of himself for finding a dead bird
About the Ironman Bike Ride – I’m still signed up, but now the distance has changed. I got my Dad to sign up for the ride with me, and he insisted that if we were going to do it, we might as well do the 75 mile ride. And heck…why not just ride out the front door, and bike to the starting line? And if it’s a particularly nice day out, we’ll ride as far as we possibly can.
When I was little, my Dad never talked about how to be tough. He never lectured on how important it was to be mentally in the game, to be able to ride out the aches and pains in a long race. Instead, he led by example. He simply went out and did it. I remember going to cheer him on in marathon races, and now it’ll be fun to do a long distance event with him.
So with that in mind, I went out for a ride today and did a little math. And it’ll probably take us about 5+ hours to do the whole thing. I’m actually pretty excited, because I know that we’ll make it, it’s just a question of how ridiculously sore I’ll be afterwards, having done very little biking beforehand. I guess we’ll find out!
