Into Ski Season

To get myself jump started on the up coming nordic ski race season I packed my bags and hopped a ride up to the land of Canada for 10 days around Thanksgiving.

Paul Smith and I headed up north of Quebec City and stayed with the team from Burke Mt. Academy. We trained, ate, slept, watched hockey, and goofed off. It was lots of fun. The kids from Burke are a great group...and very solid skiers too. Pete Phillips and Matt Johnson are great coaches. I definitely picked up some very useful technique tid-bits doing workouts with them.

I got to try out a bunch of new equipment from Alpina. Some pretty trick stuff. Everything was new to me so it was nice for the equipment and I to "get to know eachother". I really like the Peltonen skis a lot. I was just using their second level skis, called the Zenith, for training - and I was surprised how many people asked me about them. I've never had a pair of Peltonens before, but apparently many other people had a pair at some point in their ski past - and have good memories. All I know is I like the new ones. I also really liked the Exel WC poles - very stiff. Although, while I was in Canada I was trying out a slightly longer length (162.5) than I've used before. I've cut them back down to 160cm - and it feels much better...amazing the difference a little 2.5cm can make.

Then, the day before Thanksgiving Helen showed up with the cavalry - her mother, father, other brother Evan, and their Swedish exchange student. We skied a couple days together and had Thanksgiving dinner. We even did a day of Alpine skiing at Mont Saint-Anne. We did a day of x-c skiing at Saint-Anne as well - and their nordic center is outrageously good (which everybody always says, but you don't really know until you go there). And they only had a couple of their trails open at the time. I can't imagine what its like there when they have all 214km of trails open.

Racing starts this coming weekend in Vermont - with the Bolton and Craftsbury season openers. I was a little tired after getting back from Canada, but I'm back into a good training groove now. It'll be fun to hit the gas. We got some good snow today - with more coming in the next few days. It's going to be a great winter! Get some wax on those skis...