back again!

Its been far too long since my last post in here, about 2 weeks to be specific, but these have not been the best two weeks ever.  As far as the last part of Steamboat world cups are concerned, I crashed in the classic, had a decent sprint result, 11th, got eliminated in the second round in the parallel, and had two very poor runs for a 17th in the final sprint.  Not completely horrible, but obviously not the results I was looking for on home turf.  Good news is I know I made mistakes here and there, and I know how to fix them.  Only I haven't really had the chance, last week it pretty much dumped all week and I had epic pow day after epic pow day.  Including on 30+ inch dump last monday that was pretty much mind blowing.

This past weekend we trucked over Alta, Utah for some regional races, the first of which was the second worst conditions I have ever races in, dumping snow and 50+mph winds.  It was more a contest of who got the least amount of wind, which I did not, so 3rd in the first race.  The second day I skied pretty fast, but 1 measly penalty somewhere left me in 2nd place on the day.  The course was really flat and easy so there was not much room for me to distance myself enough to have wiggle room, so that sucks but thats life.  On the bright side two awesome days of free skiing at Alta were well worth the drive.  That is probably my favorite place to ski of all the places I've skied in my life, pretty epic.

I have one week before I depart for Chamonix and the next set of world cups, so its time to put the fat skis away and get back to work!

A weird feeling

Today was a good day, a bad good day, probably the worst great day I've ever had.  (hows that for an oxymoron).  I finished today in 8th position, by personal best (great day), but my skiing, or at least how I felt my skiing, was terrible!  I didn't make any glaring mistakes, but I just make lots of little ones.  For example struggling off the jump (compared to the rest of the field I apparently aced it, but it felt pretty bad)  and 4 gate penalties.  However, I think that everybody else felt the same way.  Steamboat has had about a foot of heavy wet snow in the last couple days and we had about 4 inches to slip off this morning, so the conditions were not exactly easy.  I think the winners today were the people who struggled the least!  So I'll take it, and tomorrow, I'll get right back at it, wearing bib #5 which I have drawn in each and every classic thus far, talk about consistency!

And speaking of the winners, huge congratulations to Steamboats own Madi McKinstry who absolutely crushed it for her first world cup podium today in 3rd position!  That makes it a great day!

Hopefully I can match or better her results tomorrow!

Not much

Not too much to say about the last two days and the first two dual sprints...yesterday I skied pretty poorly and failed to qualify for the dual portion, and today I skied really well in the first run, but I jumped too far and in a bit of the wrong direction and I crashed out in the second qualification round.  So, the last two days have been lots of watching for this kid.  Soo too bad for me, but thats thats the way the cookie crumbles!  So we fly back to the US on monday and get after it getting ready for the US world cups!

Rjukan Sprint

Finally I've broken out of my 11th place rut!  I skied well today, not great, but well, and penalty free for two full runs, resulting in a 9th place finish in todays sprint!  I wasn't really impressed with the way I skied, other than the fact that I was penalty free, but I am excited about the fact that I finally had two good runs on a hill that has absolutely killed me in past years.  In the three years that I have come to Rjukan I have never once had a race better than 22nd on this sprint hill!  Of course I did have my previous best finish here last season in the now obsolete  GS, but that was on a totally different hill!  It feels really good to have a good race on a hill that has always bested me in the past.

Today was nice, but tomorrow we run the FIRST EVER WORLD CUP PARALLEL SPRINT!  It will be historic, and I would be lying if I said that winning tomorrow, being the first ever world cup, would be much much more special than any other win this season...I am going to go get after it, you never know what I will come up with!

Gaustatoppen

Meant to add this, the view out my hotel window!

Back in Rjukan!

I am back in Rjukan for the third year in a row, and it is beautiful as ever!  The Gaustatoppen mountain in the background, on one of the biggest mountaintop plateaus in the world.  Its so big you don't really feel like its a mountaintop, but sure enough, it drops down into valleys all around.  This truly is a very special place.  The last two days we have been training here and getting a feel for the very soft snow.  Today the organizers started bringing in all of the big TV equipment and all the big trucks just started showing up!  Hopefully I can have a few good results here, it would be good to leave my first go round of europe with some more good finishes to make up for my crappy skiing in Slovenia.  We have a sprint tomorrow, followed by the first two parallel sprints of the year!  It can be seen on Eurosport 2 sunday morning, and NRK 1 saturday night!  Wish us luck!