Overdistance

Here's an update from one of our incoming skiers, Wilson Dippo from Salt Lake City, UT - always good to hear from the Westerners:

Every summer seems to have its own theme. Three years ago it was just learning to train for an entire summer. Two years ago it was V2 Alternate (the majority of the park that I usually ski at is flat with slight down (which makes you feel like superman!). Last year it was running - by the end of the summer I was consistently running 50-60 mile weeks... with very little rollerskiing. This year I was trying to strike up a better balance, especially considering that on the training plan most of the different workouts have the side note - should be done on rollerskis. The summer was turning out to be just that balance, I was hitting almost all of the training goals and I was spending a good portion of that time on my rollerskis.

Two weeks ago, I went to visit family in Wisconsin, where I thought my training would really suffer; on the contrary, I ended up with even more hours than the plan called for and I found some great rollerskiing trails. Almost immediately after I returned, however, I headed off to the Manti-LaSal National forest for a four-night backpacking trip with four of my friends. On that trip we would hike for 3-6 hours each day, and on one day we did a rough 6.5 hour out and back to our high point of over 11,000 feet on a peak called Block Mountain. Two days after getting back my ski team met to ski one of the local mountains called Big Cottonwood Canyon to a teammate's cabin for brunch. About and hour and forty-five into the ski my ankle was hurting terribly so I stopped, took off my boot and sock and found out that I had the biggest blister of my life. At the cabin a friend asked if it was nickel or quarter sized. I answered... silver dollar.

I was out of Salt Lake City almost before I had settled back in, heading to Grand Teton National Park with my brother and the headmaster of my former elementary school (who also happens to be a mountain guide) the day of my ski up Big Cottonwood. We woke up the next morning at 2:45 AM to try to do the Grand in one day. I put a four layer "shield" around my blister, turned on my headlamp and headed out. By 7:30 however, we had hit the lower saddle and found it to still be totally snowed in; without crampons and heavy boots (we did have ice axes) there was no way to summit. So we headed back down and went to a more technical climb called Baxter's Pinnacle, a 5.9+. I have done almost no real rock climbing in my life, so it was a great experience for me. We got back to the car at about 4:30, which was six Clif bars, one and a half PB&J sandwiches (a squirrel got the last half), four liters of water, 6000ish feet of elevation gain, 19 miles, and twelve hours after we had started up the Grand Teton. My brother and I will get another shot at the Grand next year, but for now I think that my summer has slowed down quite a bit.

When I showed up to ski training today and recounted my three weeks to teammates, most of whom I hadn't seen in that whole time, and the rest that I had only seen on the day I skied Big Cottonwood, I realized that like all of my summers this one has a theme as well, only this time the theme is clearly overdistance. I am ready and excited to surrender to this theme for this summer. With my team we have already planned two really awful 4+ hour ODs that both include rollerskiing and running up mountains.

Let me tell you, getting up at 2:45 is way worse then any jet lag that I have ever experienced so I apologize if any of this is incoherent or if my writing sounds like I should be a high school freshman rather an incoming Bowdoin first year. I can't really make any excuses for my comma usage... I am terrible with those. Either way I am off to bed to try to catch up on the sleep that the Tetons cost me.

I hope everything is going well back East!