Alaskan Pack Fodder

This last couple weeks with my cousin skiing at Alyeska has been a lot of fun. We've gotten in 10 solid ski days, which is more time than I've spent there in years. I did the Alyeska Masters slalom (SL) on Saturday, and wasn't completely horrible. I was certainly out of practice, but for some reason I can fake SL. The next day I wasn't planning on racing, but my cousin wanted to try, so we entered the Masters giant slalom. That wasn't as pleasant for me, but I finished and my cousin had a good time in his first time in gates. Yesterday we hit the groomers pretty hard, taking advantage of low crowds and great visibility. Today's intervals on the bike suffered because of it, but it was totally worth it. The plan is to burn ourselves completely out today. I hope we succeed.

I started riding to stay in shape for alpine ski racing. Then I found I was skiing to stay in shape for road racing. Then I found I wasn't skiing as much as I would like, and when I was on snow I wasn't doing as much free skiing as I wanted. When I don't free-ski, I ski slower in races. When I ski slower in races, my motivation to ski drops. It's a vicious, downward spiral.   A cousin has come up to Alaska with the sole goal of skiing as much as possible, and I've tried to make it happen. I've actually had fun again, letting my skis run and not worrying about technique. Sometimes you need to step away from something to get better at it, and I think this is the case here. I might even enter a race next week to see if I still can turn them, even though I haven't run slalom gates in a couple years. No pressure- if I finish without hurting myself I'll be happy.   The grind on the trainer continues, and I haven't lost any excess weight so far. I faile...