XC Skiing Nationals

I'm in Anchorage with the NENSA group this week - Janice is leading it, and Jess, Heidi Henkel, and I are the athletes. We're staying in some place with a kitchen, so for a brand-new "eating PRO on the GO" series, check out the recipes page - I'll try to keep it updated. We're waxing in the bunker with a bunch of other teams (ventilation, what?), I hope to minimize my time in there when people start burning in the fluoros, but we're sharing a corner with Stratton and the Craftsbury Green Team. Gives us a sense of a little more camaraderie, I suppose, to have more than just three of us.

The courses are in good shape, today we figured out the sprint course (awesome and technical, but long, like 1.4km. ugh.) and the 5k, which is one lap of the two-lap 10k skate on Monday. The 5k has some amazing downhills, I'm super glad I saw them, but it also has some rather intimidating uphills. Why do those always go hand in hand? Anyway, hopefully there are enough transitions for me to make up for lugging my gdonkadonk up the hairpin hill.

Skis were fast today, which is always fun. I feel good, and it was super hard to not start racing around - as Dhont (my highschool coach) used to say - "don't leave your race on the trails!" If you want to follow the races (not sure how live they'll be), or get updates or whatever, here is the website for the championships: http://www.anchoragenordicski.com/nationals10/index.html. Now its time to go wax some skis!

9:00am and its still dark, with a "dense fog advisory", causes hoar frost on everything - pretty, if you can get over the cold dampness.

Our waxing area, Janice's test skis and some rocket-fast Peltonens lined up to go.

The bunker.