Gone West

Yikes Wednesday already.  I was in West Yellowstone skiing last week and have been playing catch up since. The skiing was great, plenty of amazing snow and really nice weather.  There were a lot of familiar faces out there this year, and my brother and sister both came out, so I did a bit less skiing than years past on account of hanging out with them, which was really great.  I still ended up with about 200 miles total skiing for the week.  Not to shabby.  The drive out and back was slightly less exciting, but still pretty good.  It is nice to have a car full of people to talk to on that long of a trip.
Coming back to a lack of snow is a bit depressing.  The road tips go back on the ski poles today for a bit more rollerskiing, hopefully not for long though.
I did a lot of my skiing with Bjorn last week, and he gave me some pretty good technique pointers that I'm anxious to work on, but have a bit of trouble with that on rollerskis.  It is too easy to let technique slip when you don't have a real edge to ski on, or classic skis period.  Over the course of the week I could tell I was getting the snow feel back, so I'm sad to leave it behind and get back on the rollerskis.
Before I left I did buy some new running shoes, and have been putting them to decent use so far since returning.  Trying to get some hill bounding in and ingrain a bit of that technique work.  My endurance seemed alright during the trip, not great, but enough that I'm not all that worried about putting in big hours.
I updated my workout spreadsheet and am at nearly 340 hours so far this year, so I should easily clear 350 by the end of next month, although I won't make it to the nearly 400 I was at last year.  I think that is ok, I'm enjoying doing a lot of other stuff (and way too much minecraft).
The first world cup races went on as well, and it looks like Bjorgen is going to continue to be an unstoppable machine.  Several of the other Norwegian women also looked on very good form.  Northug, Roenning, and the Russians also have had a good start to the season so far.  The racing has been on low snow courses so far, so it will be interesting to see if things shift around a bit when they get into the meat of the season and start racing on natural snow.  Things have looked very promising for Kikkan so far, and Liz Stephen is showing the kind of form that got her on to the USST, which is a good sign.  Now they just need to get Jessie over to Europe and they will have a pretty solid relay team.  Not that Holly or Sadie are slouches by any means, but the way Jessie tore up the West Yellowstone races makes me excited to see how she does against much stronger competition in some head to head racing.
Sorry this post has been a bit disjointed, I'm still not settled back into any kind of routine, so my thoughts are a bit scattered right now.  By next week things should settle back down and I'll give a bit more comprehensive update, unless it snows and I'll just be thinking about skiing all the time.