Everyone slept extremely well last night -- no big surprise -- and was up and at 'em for breakfast at the Scandic Park Hotel in Stockholm. (Except Ian and Noah, who managed to sleep for 13 hours and were a bit late.) Breakfast was insanely good; lots of good breads, meat, yogurt, coffee, juice, cereal -- the usual hotel breakfast stuff, only better -- as wel as cavier, pickled fish, steamed broccoli, blueberry and rose hip soups, cheeses, sandwich stuff. It was very good.

Coffee here is excellent -- very strong. Maybe the equivalent of adding a shot of espresso to a cup of coffee. I also had Lipton Blue Fruit and Forest Fruit teas for breakfast. The candy is strange. These seem to be the most popular flavors for sweets in Sweden, in descending order: Salty, licorice and cola. I might have mentioned the salt-licorice gum yesterday, but I also had weird gummy pacifiers that were salt-cola, and circus peanut-esque mushrooms that were cola flavored.

Our run took us through Stockholm and to an island with a lot of park trails. It was fun and good to get moving before we packed up 16 people in three seven-passenger vans, along with 16 ski bags (on the roof) and all their baggage. Travelling is cozy.

                                                                                                                                       Ben Fick, Tad Elliott and Reid Pletcher outside of our hotel, post-run. 9:30am, Stockholm, 01.25.06

We checked into our hotel in Falun, which is about half a mile from the stadium of the ski area, and then headed over to check out the ski are. Skiing was pretty good -- we did about 45 minutes to get moving, with some speed relays and overvelocity pick-ups.

Dinner was at the hotel restaurant -- not quite smorgasbord, just a buffet. Two types of potatoes, rice, bread, some sort of Stroganoff, reindeer loin in something like bearnaise, gravlax and some salad (including something like coleslaw, only with vinegary dressing and pickles in it). Very good.

The team is doing well -- everyone is getting along and getting what they need to do done so far. We race on Saturday, so tomorrow we're doing some easy (level 3) intervals and some speed, and then heading into Falun for lunch and to look for a hardware store (extension cords). I will be looking for more unfamiliar candy as well.

Skiing pictures tomorrow.

-- Jason Cork

This trip is supported and funded by the National Cross-Country Ski Education Foundation.  Buy goods that support these trips or donate today at: www.nccsef.org