Felt bonking's jaws
Not a fun way to ski
Still feel too tired for good rhymes
This race brought me to my knees
Won't be going foreign
Finished in a haze
Won't even think maybe
'Cause there is no way
To prevent scurvy eat limes
I'm off topic, though
But I remember I am blessed
To live this dream on snow

Well, maybe not snow, but I still remind myself that I'm living the dream.  That said, that's what I tell myself when I'm really disappointed about the way racing is panning out.

I'll start with yesterday's race.  Basically, I had great skis up until the race.  Then the track turned from a bombproof set of grooves that squirrels could hide from nuclear weapons in into chunks of ice and sugar more fit for baking a cake than skiing on.  And as we know, "If you use a messy recipe, your cake will turn out crazy."  It was messy, and I was on the type of stiff, unforgiving skis that wanted to kick in those conditions roughly as much as it's wanted to snow here.  I made them kick, but as a master interrogator would say, it took sufficient persuasion.

That said, the skis were fast.  And between the lack of kick, the fact that the course had fewer hills than Kansas, and my cold, it was a pretty good race.  After the way my kick felt, and the way that made my technique feel, I was surprised to not get passed.  So a tenth place was a good result all things considered.

About the best way to describe this race is with the Baby Ruth scene from Caddyshack.  I thought the race was a giant piece of fecal matter, but it turned out it was chocolate.  I couldn't find a good video to imbed, so find it on youtube.

We got back really late because of such a long day of racing yesterday.  I was just too tired and sick to write a new post.

On to today.  There wasn't enough snow for a mass start, so we did a 30 km interval start on a 2.7km course.  11 laps.  Always a good time.  And one of the most random numbers of laps I've ever heard of.

I wasn't feeling great this morning, but these races are too important to let a cold get in the way.  So I raced anyways.  The start was decent, but when I needed to start going faster and gaining on people, I blew up.  I don't really have much more to say.  I just didn't have the cards, bluffed hoping I could do something, and lost big.  I almost harringboned up the last uphill.  I was staggering, almost fell down, and could barely see.  It was terrible.  I finished, changed my shirt, and felt cold, so I went to drink my PowerBar Recovery in front of the fire.  I dropped my nalgene about 12 inches, and rather than not breaking like it's supposed to, it broke in half, sending Recovery all over the floor, my legs, and my shoes.  Before I could figure out what to do, a nice lady from Black Mountain had taken the broken bottle away, so I won't even get to send in the broken bottle for a replacement.  That was about on par for today.

So from the looks of it, no sprinting in a few days, and I'll just be trying to recover and get healthy.  Hopefully I'll be back at it later this season.

Yesterdays title was based on And We Danced by Macklemore.