After five days off, I finally got to ski again today. We timed our arrival perfectly; with the recent rain and the warm weather the track was concrete when we got there, but a groomer came along in five minutes and I had perfect corduroy; it was even powdery enough that I was able to classic ski on hard wax (with just two stops to rewax). I skied an hour and a half, pulling Iris in the Chariot, and felt great and strong and happy to be alive and healthy and in the great outdoors.

So my prediction came true. I was too sick to ski for a couple days (and yesterday New Hampton School called classes so that those of us who were sick could get better instead of infecting more students and faculty; had I been healthy I could have skied for hours…) and then today it rained. Hard, heavy, warm rain on top of eight inches of snow. No skiing, even if it were safe to drive somewhere, which is wasn’t. Oh well, tomorrow should be better!

If I was smart, I wouldn’t have raced in Lake Placid. But I’m not. My wife and daughter are both sick, and it has seemed only a matter of time till I got a cold as well. It came on Friday night, before the Lake Placid Loppet. I got a good night’s sleep before the race though, and felt okay in the morning, so I figured I would go for it and race anyway.

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