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Flagstaff is located in northern Arizona. 2,5h north of Phoenix and 1,5h south of Grand Canyon, on a plateau at between 2100 and 2400 altitude meters. Out of the plateau rices two mountains, Mount Elden (3000 altitude meters) and beautiful and majestic Mount Humphreys at 4300 altitude meters. When I see these mountains, I don't think about being at altitude. Americas largest Pine Forest surrounds Flagstaff and makes it very green compared to most of Arizona, which is desert.

In Flagstaff we have a lot of sun, this makes training much easier for us coming from the toughest winter in Norway the last 10 years. As always at altitude there is wind. This year it is just as windy as last year, but it's 5-10 degrees warmer :-)

I really appreciate being together with so many walkers in a training camp. Although we don't train at the same, we do train at the same place and that is motivating. The coaches also stay together and talk and exchange experiences, and that is really good! This first week some of us went to a restaurant together and one evening all of us had Pizza together at our condo. 18 people from the walking family ate 10 large Pizzas.
Through the years we have made many friends in the Walking world. Two of them, John MacLachlan and Ray Kuehles, visited us for a couple of days. We have also got to know some really nice people in the neighborhood where we train. One of them is "Dr. Galaxy", Art Wilson! His house is right where we start our hard workouts.

The first days of training we had a lot of gravel on the road. Then Tim Seaman made a phone call to the city and asked them nicely to come and clean the roads. Next morning the roads were cleaned and perfect for training :-) There are not many places where they would have done that!! Thank you "City of Flagstaff"!

My training has been better then I hoped for. Allthough I came really tired to altitude, I have been able to recover very well up here! I have done all the training Stephan told me to do and we are happy with that. Yesterday I had my first really hard workout of this season and that at altitude. The first one is always the worst and I get nervous as if it is my first race. It was very windy yesterday, but still I was able to do a very good workout. Both Stephan and I were happy. Now I am on my way out to do a 25km race walk training.

 

2009-03-08