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I finally got home last weekend after 6 weeks. I figured it out and over those 6 weeks I flew 21 hours and drove 50 hour to get all the places I needed... too much. The furthest I have gone since I got back was 15 minutes to ski on at the Hillside trails when I wasn't driving the 5 minutes to Kincaid.

Yesterday was the Sven Johansen 30k skate out at Kincaid. Not the biggest race in town but definately the best. After an easy 5k to start it covers almost all the hard trails in the park. Combine that with the snowstorm we started in made for a tough day. This past week I had planned on putting in some quality training but I have just been exhausted. My plan if I was feeling 100% was to try and drop everyone at around 10k and ski the last 20 on my own, if that didnt' work I was going to try to drop everyone again at 20k. I knew I could outsprint everyone but I wanted to win by a lot and take away any chance of getting tangled up. I put a 15 second gap on the field at 10k but that got closed up when we came thru the stadium into a pretty good headwind and the guys behind me closed the gap. I went again at 20k and put a pretty good gap on the remaining 4 guys (Frode Lillefjell, Brent Knight, and Lex Treinen) and thought that might have done it. Unfortunately Frode was there and it took a few k but he finally caught back up and we both relaxed and the other two caught back up not too long after. So I figured Frode and I had done our work and had the other two come to the front and set the pace for a bit. They both took their turns admirably and then with 3k to go Frode took the lead and picked up the pace getting rid of Lex. Then it was the 3 of us and with 1k to go I took off on a gradual climb and got enough of a lead to eliminate a true sprint finish.

Considering how the body felt (steep climbing felt awful) it was a pretty good day. It would have been nice to win by more but looking at two 50k's the next two weekends it was a good warm up. I didn't have any cramping issues and it was a solid 30k workout with some pretty hard efforts but I didn't have to dig too deep. I travel again on Wednesday to Wisconsin for the Birkie which should be a pretty good field with most all of the top Americans and a few foreigners that Rossi is bringing over. Should be fun...