Quick Check In

Thursday I frantically managed to make a home/locker in the “HotelEMENT” but decided to take a nice evening at home with Jen and shove off at 5 a.m. Friday to make it to the Sprint Race of the 2015 Wasatch Powder Keg at Brighton Resort.  Fifteen minutes to suit up and pin a number and I was slamming my heart and lungs into an anaerobic wonderland for two five minute sessions of skinning tight icy switchbacks, a short booter, to another short skin and some gates to bash on the way back to the finish line.  Sprints are a love hate for me because they hurt sooo much more than 100 miler, but they’re for 5 minutes, so the endorphins come flooding in with way less overall output.  However, at 9000′, and with no warm up, they left my lungs feeling scorched the rest of the weekend.  Seventh wasn’t bad, then it was down Big Cottonwood canyon to a night’s sleep at David Hoffman’s family house in SLC (my teammate for Sunday and a racer friend from Bozeman).

Saturday held the individual race and the biggest and most competitive field at a skimo race I’ve lined up with yet this year and probably for quite some time.  I was late getting into the corral after my warmup and made the very poor decision to not take one of my anti-Reynaud’s pills figuring it would be warm enough today to not need them.  WRONG! As I clack away at these keys my fingertips feel like they are coming back from falling asleep.  I started somewhere around 50th at the start and it was a long flat haul before we hit any sort of climbing so I found myself realizing that while starting near the back takes off some pressure, it also creates an excess of work to try and make it back towards the front of the pack.  Minus the wooden fingers that botched every transition, my race went very well and I think I made the right decision to keep myself from hitting the anaerobic threshold ceiling to be safe racing at elevations nearing 11,000′.  I’ve been doing the racing thing long enough to know my body and how close I can put it to the limit before I have to back it off, and that’s generally the formula for a good endurance race.  Racing high for the next few days made me cautious to step too close to that edge and caused me to be a little more conservative.  It made for a race where I had little whereabouts of where I was in the pack, but in one way or another I moved my way steadily upwards.  One particularly rowdy descent on a refroze south face that was “backcountry” really helped me gain back some time as the skiing was breakable crust for nearly 2000′ and somehow I managed to ski it well while I zipped past various racers who had harpooned into the crust and were left struggling to free themselves from it much like quicksand.  In the end I ended up lucky number 7 again, which bettered my expectations by a lot and made me feel like the hard work this last 5 months is really paying off.  After getting back down to SLC and being greeted to 60 degree sun, I figured it’d be best to break out the road bike to “flush the lactate” on a mellow spin… You guessed it, I found myself grinding up Mill Canyon for a beautiful little road climb that probably was more than I should’ve done the day before the 8000′ technical teams race.  Excess sushi and a PBR tallboy took care of that deficit at an awesome little joint called Sushi Groove where a 3-piece instrumental band jazzed out some Radiohead and Pink Floyd covers.  Dave also managed to find a screaming deal on some super light Rando stix and had them mounted and ready to rise Sunday morning.  With daylight savings the start line came around early and cold (don’t worry, I took my pill this time and my hands stayed warm almost the whole race) and fortunately the excitement of the big day and peaks to climb dulled the pain in the legs from yesterdays effort during the first long climb.  The second led us up an awesome section of fixed ropes where we utilized via ferrata kits and ascenders to shimmy up through steep snow, rotten facets and rocky cliff bands to the top of Millicent Peak, and then it was down again to the base.  Four more big climbs later, Dave and I made our final descent to the finish line with a solid race free of any problems and some fast and furious skiing for a 4th place finish in the teams race.  I think we were both really happy with that performance, and our tanks were emptied.  Well at least mine was, Dave decided he better tour up and over to Alta to meet his family while Katie took me home to pack up and hit the road.

After cleaning up and organizing the Element, hanging up the boot liners, skins, and skinsuit to dry on the “clothes line” I made a last second decision to head for Steamboat Springs to check it out and hopefully see a couple of old friends.  A few hours later I was welcomed into Garth and Erica’s home in the ‘Boat with a delicious lentil loaf (sounds icky, tastes yummy) and a cold IPA.  It was great to catch up with G and E and it was like we were still neighbors.  Monday morning Garth and I had a smashing breakfast at Creekside and then made our way up to ski some lifts in the sunshine.  I was blown away at how big the ski hill was and we had a blast laying railroad tracks down fast and smooth groomers for hours mixing it up with a little bumpy tree skiing as well.  It was probably the only day this whole year I have ridden chairlifts and truly had a blast.  My new 7 summits Dynafit skis blew me away with how solid they could hand high speed carving.

That night I drove down to Beaver Creek to meet Billy with RIDGE and today holds some recruitment meetings and hopefully a sunny tour up high to try and remind the legs they still need to be good skinners for another 5 days while I make my way down to Crested Butte for U.S. Ski Mountaineering Nationals.

Hope you all are enjoying the sunny spring!

Thanks as always to my family, wife, RIDGE, Dynafit, CAMP and friends for the support and encouragement!