Winter arrives

Over a week without a new post, people were probably starting to wonder where I'd gotten off to.  Ok, since there is an accumulation of snow here in Minnesota probably nobody wondered that.  I've already managed to ski in 5 different places since getting back from Silverstar, and two of them were actually on groomed trails.
Last year started out rough for skiing in Northfield.  There were several January races in the Metro and further North where I would leave the race in dumping snow, only to arrive home to freezing rain on still brown terrain.  Before City of Lakes in February the arb still had not been groomed and resembled a skating rink more than a ski area.  Things eventually turned around, and March had some of the best crust skiing I've ever experienced.  This year is starting a bit more promising, but while many places in the Metro have been grooming and people are already scraping wax off their best skis it is still rock ski conditions on wherever you feel confident that there will be grass and not rocks under your skis when you break through the thin crust.  To add to that Temperatures have been struggling to get above 0 F so it isn't all that pleasant to be outside either.  Despite all that I've been skiing most days since getting back from Canada.
Last weekend Nate and I made a couple trips up to the cities to find groomed trails.  Saturday temperatures had just creeped above 0 F when we started striding at Lake Elmo, where there was not yet a track set.  Trail conditions were pretty decent though, and I was able to explore the whole trail system, including the red and blue loops that were not open on my trips there last year.  On Sunday we ventured up to Clifton E. French Regional Park for some skate skiing.  The weather was much nicer to be out in, but the fresh snow made for slow going.  The fact that I forgot to scrape the skate skis I brought with also contributed to the slow going, and made the ski much tougher than it would have been otherwise.  Turns out more wax is not better.  We still put in over 4.5 hours over the two days though, so that's a pretty good way to jump into training.
There are no new pictures to go in the post today, but I will point any interested readers to my photo album from Silver Star where there are many pictures of gorgeous ski trails against the backdrop of even more gorgeous mountains.
One more skiing note relating to skiers who are far better than me.  It has been an exciting start to the nordic racing calendar so far.  Caitlin Gregg has kicked off the season in fine form winning all the supertour races in West Yellowstone and grabbing the final podium spot at the Bozeman supertour yesterday.  Her husband Brian took 2nd in the West Yellowstone supertour then headed up to the Nor-Am races at Soverign Lakes to pick up a win there and head back to Bozeman to take 5th in the supertour race there.  Matt Liebsch was 4th in West, 2nd at the Nor-Am race, and 4th in Bozeman.  Great early season results from some great local skiers.  On the world stage Noah Hoffman posted the fastest time of the day on the final stage of the Ruka triple to finish 9th overall in the mini-tour, a huge step up for him.  Sadie Bjornsen has posted several top 10 finishes, and the US women's relay team grabbed another 3rd place in the Relay.  Things are looking exciting for the season and the Olympics if everyone stays fit and healthy.