I’m sitting in the airport, about to depart to do something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time. For a few years now I’ve been thinking about doing some skier-x. I started thinking about doing it when we had our king of the mountain races back when I ran the UofM SSC. At the end of every trip we’d line the best skiers and snowboards up at the top of the hill and race to the bottom, no rules. I did pretty well and I thought about trying skier-x, but it was always towards the end of january..well into the season. For various reasons none of the local events were convenient enough to do. I wasn’t really ready to go out of my way to do it. This November I started thinking about skier-x again and looked for events. There was the big, official, Jeep King of the Mountain event in Telluride Colorado in December and there were some small local events around the midwest later in the year. A friend of mine said why not just go big or go home? Forget the local events, do the JKOM in December so if it works out you have the whole rest of the season to go. I wasn’t 100% convinced, but that night I registered for it. A few days later I went down to talk to the great people at Pierce Skate & Ski in Bloomington. They didn’t have any SX specific experience, but they have a lot of ski racing experience. I ended up walking out with a new set of Rossignol world cup GS skis and bindings. I guess I was doing it. Over the course of the next few days I booked a flight and lodging. That was just over 1 week ago.

I was pretty blown away when I looked at the list of registrants. Basically some of the best skiers in the world are competing. What the hell, as long as I don’t get hurt I have nothing to lose. I’m not convinced I won’t come home in a wheel chair, but knock on wood.

I’ve been training quite a bit lately, but I really stepped it up over the past couple weeks. Even in Vegas I somehow made it to the gym every day.

About time to go.. I’ll post more after the first day of competition I guess.

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