This isn't going to slow down, is it?

I think over the last two years I've been waiting for life to slow down, but I've come to the conclusion over the past few months, that maybe it's only going to get more hectic. The change in my mindset recently however, is that I'm not apprehensive or anxious about it, I'm looking forward to it.

I've learned a lot about myself over the last few years on many levels, but one of the more important things I've realized is that I can handle juggling a lot of seemingly unrelated things all at the same time. Even looking back on my college years when I was working, going to school and playing baseball, living life at 1000 miles an hour is something I'm good at and can excel at.

I'm currently typing this blog post from the business lounge in the Warsaw airport and have been on six flights in the last 7 days and have two to go today. I've been in Bucharest, Romania and Wroclaw and Warsaw, Poland, and the last five days have absolutely been like sipping water out of a fire hose. Downtime has been non-existent, but it was a successful trip. I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish on this trip and only had a few moments trip where I was struggling to keep my eyes open.

I am relatively sure that I've spent more nights living out of a suitcase than at home since I left for Vermont back in December. Although, there are still times that I have to remind myself that I signed up for all of this - both work and personal travel - and that I am very lucky to have all of the opportunities that I have, it seems more so recently, I have to do that reminding (or have Nancy remind me) less frequently. I am less anxious about what the next few months may bring and am focussed on making the most of wherever I am and whatever I'm doing...so, I guess, here's to living life like a headfirst slide into first base!!

More Utah Pictures

Here are some more pictures from my trip to Utah. Following the two days of Alpine skiing, I put my nordic skis back on for a couple days and actually went snowshoeing the last day we were there. Needless to say, I was physically exhausted when we got on the plane to come home, but it was an awesome trip and an awesome place in the world.

I skied at Alta one day, whose "nordic center" is sort of a joke, but they let me ski anywhere I wanted around the downhill skiers and didn't charge me anything. They basically just told me not to get on any lifts. Despite the trail system being non-existent, the surrounding mountains were pretty epic. It certainly beat doing laps around the north meadow at Mendon Ponds that's for sure.

Here's a picture of me with Solitude in the background. I dropped Jamie off for work (at Solitude) and headed up to Alta, which is about 2 miles further up the Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The following day, I went skiing at Soldier Hollow, which is where all the nordic events were held at the 2002 Olympics. The trails were great and it was about 50F out, so I was skiing in a t-shirt.

This is from the highest point on the course. The area is so wide open that you can almost always see the XC and biathlon stadiums. It was sort of like skiing in a huge bowl.
The last day we were in Utah, I went snow shoeing. We had initially planned on downhill skiing, but ran out of time. My legs were still thrashed from downhill skiing earlier in the week, so I wasn't heart broken. This picture was taken at Solitude.

Pretty awesome scenery, no doubt about that.

Left to right - Jamie, Kevin and I at a pub in downtown SLC.

I'm headed to Romania and Poland this week and am headed out for my first bike ride of the season in a few minutes, so I'm sure there will be plenty of new adventures to come soon enough.

First powder skiing experience

Since getting back into Salt Lake City on Saturday night, I've done two days of alpine skiing and two days of nordic. The first day downhill skiing was up at Deer Valley in Park City on Sunday night. It was relatively straightforward skiing, although it was snowing really hard and was difficult to see at times, but in general, we basically got off the lift and skied down, nothing crazy. Park City was a pretty cool town.

Monday however, was a different story. We went up to a resort called Solitude in the "Big Cottonwood" Canyon. They had gotten about 20 inches of new snow the previous night, so this turned into my first experience "powder skiing". We took three lifts to the top of Solitude and got off the lift and traversed across a ridge for about twenty minutes to the edge of the trail and then skied down through untouched knee-deep powder. It definitely took some getting used to, but Kevin and Jamie are both very experienced skiers and were able to coach me through the first few turns down a pretty steep pitch. We ended up doing three runs from top to bottom of this whole adventure. It was a lot of fun and quite a workout (both the traverse and the actual skiing). I'm pretty sure I used some muscles skiing through that stuff that had never been used before. Below are some pictures I snapped from the day.

This was the end of the traverse where we started skiing down.

Here's a shot of a couple skiers making their way towards us on the traverse.
Kevin (in red) and his uncle taking a little breather on the way out. It was pretty steep, not sure if these pictures really do it justice.
Kevin and Jamie getting ready to ski down through the chute to the right in between the trees. These apline skiers have all kinds of lingo for getting after it on a powder day, not sure if I understood half of what they said during the day. Kevin did give me some good advice though - "just always remember - if you fall, it's really soft everywhere. If you lose a ski though, you might be up here a while trying to find it and get it back on." I did fall a couple times, but managed to keep all my equipment attached to me, so I didn't have any of those issues.
Here's a shot from the end of the traverse. I took this right before I headed down. Not going to lie, I was a little nervous, it looked wicked steep.
Jamie and Kevin again.
Nice view out in the Honeycomb Canyon.

Here's a shot up the hill after I skied partway down.

Overall, it was a really fun day, and at the end of it, I was totally fried. It did give me a new appreciation for why people become ski bums though, I get it, skiing through this stuff is a lot of fun!

I took some really good pictures from nordic skiing days at Alta yesterday and Soldier Hollow today. I'll post those in a separate post.

West Yellowstone, MT

I'm back in Salt Lake after heading up to West Yellowstone Friday to race the Rendezvous 50km race yesterday. The race itself was ok, I was hoping for a better result, but considering that I was in Rochester, NY on Thursday, flew to Utah, then drove to Montana, and screwed up the wax royally, it was all in all as good as I could have expected. I ended up 29th and 3rd in my age group, I'll write more about the race itself later, which was quite an experience in it's own right. The venue, and atmosphere however were absolutely awesome and I now understand why these marathons are such a big deal and people travel from all over to compete in them. It was a really cool experience and I'm really happy I went. Huge thanks to my buddy Jamie who not only drove up with me, but also helped me out in the feedzone and was cheering for everyone, the only thing he was missing was a legit cowbell.

Here are a few pictures that I took during my ski on Friday once we got into town.

Amazing tracks and scenery, I definitely can't wait to head back!

A new ski adventure on tap

Anyone that reads this blog might be thinking that the months of December through March are one big ski adventure (and in some ways it is), however, the majority of my races are only at a handful of locations in the Northeast. For example, I've made the drive to Lake Placid three times this year for a total of five races. Other than last year's trials in Minnesota, I've never competed in a ski race that's further than an 6-7 hour car drive away. However, later today I'm flying out to Salt Lake City, where I'm going to meet up with my buddy Jamie, who I played baseball with in college, and tomorrow, we are driving up to West Yellowstone, MT where I will compete in the Rendezvous Ski Marathon on Saturday.

West Yellowstone is something of a mecca for US cross country skiers. Every November, there is a huge ski festival the week of Thanksgiving which also represents the first SuperTour races of the year for the elite XC skiers in the US and Canada. I've never been out there and am very much looking forward to skiing and racing on these famous trails. I'm not sure what to expect about the race itself. This will be the first year that I've done two 50km races in one winter. The LP Loppet was exactly a month ago and I'm sure that I'm recovered from that and feeling pretty good, but my race in the Loppet wasn't spectacular to begin with, so who knows. The other obstacle involved in this race will be the elevation. I've never raced at an elevation higher than 3-4 thousand feet before. WY will be about 7,000. I've gotten some good advice from some folks that have though, it includes:

- Don't worry, just stay hydrated, that's the biggest factor.

- You're going out there on Thursday and racing Saturday? That's the worst combination, good luck!

- You'll be fine, just don't do anything stupid, like you did in Lake Placid.

- There's nothing you can do except stay under control. At least it's not a sprint, that would hurt a lot more.

- You're screwed, just enjoy the trails.

The confusing part is that everyone of the people who gave me this advice has actually skied this exact race. So, given all of this sound, yet conflicting advice, I'm a little nervous. It'll be an experience though, and I'm looking forward to getting out there and getting the race going!

After the race, we're headed back to Salt Lake, where Kevin is skiing with his uncle (who lives in SLC) and father. I'll spend the five days after the race doing a combination of downhill skiing (maybe let gravity do the work for a change), back country skiing, and some nordic skiing. Basically, I don't have much of an agenda after the race other than to scope out what it's like to ski in Utah and the surrounding area and hang out with my buddies. Jamie's moving out of SLC after the winter, so I figured it was pretty much now or never to check out that neck of the woods.

I should be able to update throughout the trip as long as I can get on the Internet.