Just the Beginning

I'm a little overdue on updating everyone on what's going on in ski world. Since my last post, we've been on snow for almost 3 weeks, raced our first SuperTours in West Yellowstone, and we're currently in Bozeman, Montana for the second weekend of SuperTour races.

Finally getting on snow has been the best feeling! Nothing feels better than being able to do distance sessions on real snow and new terrain, whereas the thought of another two hour rollerski on the same roads was making me want to snap my rollerski poles in half. Luckily, I didn't, and we all made it through some tricky days when the roads were too wet to rollerski, but there wasn't quite enough snow on the trails to ski. Hello, bounding time trials!

It was so nice to get to West Yellowstone last Tuesdsay. I've been coming to West for Thanksgiving since I was in middle school, and I think I've only missed 2 years since then, so in some ways it feels more like home to spend turkey day there than at home in Park City. It was so nice to catch up with friends and family, and talk with ski reps and coaches that I don't usually get to see during the summer. 

I think that my friend Annie (P) on the Stratton team had the best insight on the first races of the season: they're a win-win situation. If you do well, you get great confidence going into the rest of the season. And if you don't do well, it's okay, because a) sometimes it takes a while to find ski speed again, and b) there are so many more important races left in the season! Unfortunately, I had one of those "what am I doing out here??" type races in the skate sprint, which was probably a result of travel fatigue, a big adjustment to the altitude, and not having my mental game quite down. I tried to stay positive and was able to turn things around a little bit in the 10k skate individual, which was good because that race format is usually one of my least favorite. I finished 14th in a competitive field, and now I'm really looking forward to the races in Bozeman. Even though it rained here, the klister skiing is really good and hopefully it will freeze up enough tonight to make for some fast sprinting tomorrow! 

Stay tuned for updates from the Bozeman races, and in the meantime here are some pictures from the last few weeks:

We did get some skiing in Vermont before we left. Here we headed up Stowe Mt. and then sketchily descended. Turns out that edges do come in handy sometimes.

Once we arrived in Bozeman, we did our usual Costco run. It takes a lot of food to fuel 9 skiers and 4 busy coaches/wax techs!

We weren't really sure how we would fit the boxes in the van, as it was almost full from ski bags and duffels before our food run...

But everyone got a box on their lap, and we somehow fit everything, at least for the 1.5 hour drive to West

GRP ladies training on a rare sunny day in West

Finishing the 10k in the altitude pain cave. Thanks to my brother Dan for the pic!

Watching the men's 15k distance race. Here's Alex Schulz

Gordo on the first climb of the course.

Pete climbing

Our men's team celebrated Movember. Just look realllly closely, the mustaches are there I swear.

Great to be back in beautiful Bozeman! We're happy to have much warmer conditions than last year, when they had to cancel one of the races due to temperatures that mostly stayed below -10F.

Hammering some pre-race intervals on the Bohart course with Caitlin and Kaitlynn. Photo cred Anya Bean

And smiling on the recovery!

Thanks for reading!