race report

Well, let’s start this off that I spent the entire months of November and December training for long fall line descents, technical skinning and kick turns, and long bootpacks. Well as much as I could do living and working in Edmonton where the largest hills hardly top 40 meters in vertical.

Although there was some strong winds, heavy snow, and high avalanche danger that prevented snow safety crews from making the upper reaches of the race course safe, I was extremely disappointed that I wasn’t able to take advantage of the skills that I had been working on all winter.  I mean, come on, we are supposed to be tough backcountry skiers!

The start of the race was delayed so that the course could be changed. It totally ruined my warmup and my legs stiffened up.

So anyways, the race was just a boring drag race up a cat track, Reiner was being a super jerk and set the skintrack straight up cat track! And he just skied away. What a guy, sets a track that is completely suited to his strengths and nobody else’s!

My goggles were iced up, and I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one who had this problem. Visibility was crappy and as we were skiing down the same route that the skintrack came up, I kept my speed under control, while everyone else just went blowing by me! Down lower on the cat track, I also gave the general public the right of way while other racers were weaving around them as if they were slalom gates. The wet snow was sticking to my skis and my skins.

Lap 2, Eric and Nick attacked while I was eating. The snow on Nick’s skins was leaving some huge holes in the snow and that made it very difficult for me to follow the existing track. I was able to press on, barely.

When I think of all the places where I lost some time: stiffening up after the warmup, but before the race; following Reiner’s steep track, skiing safely in poor visibility with iced up goggles, giving the public right of way, snow sticking to skins, taking time to eat, holes in the skintrack, lack of technical ski-mo elements, living in Edmonton, sitting in the car the night before the race instead of loosening up the legs, reduced solar activity disturbing the ion flow in my body, ¾ moon instead of a full moon, a hostel room that was too warm, eating 10 slices of pizza for lunch the day before, drinking some expired instant coffee before the race, I probably could have won the race.

if you made it this far without throwing your laptop or tablet at the wall in a fit of rage, good work. I hope you enjoyed the joke.