Update #1 - 7 Days into the Race Season.

Seven days in to the race season, one race out of the way...

A typical lead in to the first race of the season, which is always in West Yellowstone, MT, involves a minimum of a week on-snow, testing skis and re-adjusting to skiing on snow... This year there was no snow, at least until 4 days before said ski race... My first race was on Saturday. The snow fell on Tuesday. I packed my car and headed up to Montana, arriving late on Wednesday. On Thursday I skied once and waited for my friend and sponsor, Nathan Schultz of Boulder Nordic Sport, to arrive with my race skis - skis i really needed to test before the first ski race... He finally did arrive late on Thursday night. I grabbed my skis and headed back to the hotel, where my service man, Clarke, and I spent a solid three hours preparing the skis for the next day...

Friday was day one on the new skis. We tested them, weeded a few out and decided on two pair that would be best for Saturday's 15k race... Saturday we raced... The race was fine, but not stellar. I finished 10th, which I would generally not be happy about but 50 seconds out seemed like a manageable gap given the lead in to the event... I didn't feel overly coordinated on snow and that made it impossible to really speed into the race... which is nothing more than a consequence of only having two days on snow prior to the race...

Just a portion of the skis I need to figure out...

After the race I had planned to head back to Park City but there is no snow... and I need to ski! I need to test skis and I need to spend time on snow... I'm not far from where I need to be in order to fight for wins... but that difference can only be made up by staying on snow... So here I am in West Yellowstone, by myself.

Town is not exactly busy this time of year...

I have nothing but time on my hands... which means I should be updating this blog a lot but I don't have internet! which is convenient... I have to poach it from a hotel across town.

I will be in Yellowstone until this weekend. After that i will likely head back to Park City for a few days before driving to Bozeman for the next SuperTour...

Screenshot from The Shining, aka The view from my hotel room: The only thing missing from my hotel the kid on the HotWheels tricycle... I'm the only one left.