Aspen, February 13-16, 2009
What a great four days! I left Grand Junction Friday morning in a snow storm from hell. A trip that normally would take about 2 hours took over four hours. Snow, sleet, ice, sun, ice, snow… I arrived at Tiehack race course (Buttermilk) in Aspen an hour late, rushed to do my course inspection for Super G and immediately went for my first run. This was a fun course! This was one of the rare occasions this season when I had fun on the course. It was turny, technical and just the right speed for Super G. A lot of guys whined about the turny part but that’s where I excelled. I finished third in my classification but the ranking was easy because we lost quite few competitors to DNFs. and the initial showing was thin.
On Saturday we had two training runs for the Downhill portion of the race weekend. As previously, my downhill performance sucked. The next day my DH runs sucked just as bad as during the training runs. There will be another race and perhaps one day I will be satisfied with my downhill run. I made the same technical error over and over again. As if repeating the error only reinforced my erroneous movement the next time around.
Trish, Cynthia and Paul joined me in Aspen on Saturday evening. Thanks to Rocky Mountain Masters we’ve got a sweet deal from the Limelight Lodge in Aspen. It was a lot of fun to stay in center of Aspen, close to great restaurants and cozy downtown. Only if I had any energy after racing to explore Aspen! I was pretty wiped out after racing each day so we spent every evening in the hotel chatting and playing games.
Monday was our group free-ski day at Aspen Highlands. Paul was excited to ski all bumps all day. I was just happy to ski bumps but I felt physically tired from the race days. It was fun but I felt static and not wanting to even retract my legs on the long bump runs. I really wanted to ski Highlands with Trish but looking back I probably should’ve stayed back at the hotel with Cynthia and have a nice, lazy day in the outdoor hot tub.
The view of the last portion of the downhill course at Tiehack. (click to enlarge)
Getting ready for my run. (click to enlarge)
Guys in my group getting their skis ready for downhill. (click to enlarge)
Cynthia complained that there were not enough pillows on the beds. (click to enlarge)
With Paul and Trish on the deck of the Ski Patrol building at Aspen Highlands. (click to enlarge)
Paul, Trish and I at Aspen Highlands on Monday. (click to enlarge)
Filed under: Winter | Tagged: Aspen, ski racing
