Woohoo!  I want to say we finally got to jump on snow today, but really jumping before Thanksgiving is a first for me and pretty unusual.   I took 7 jumps on the K90 today, and couldn't have asked for much more.  The track was smooth and straight, the landing hill was hard and even, temperature was mild,  and the winds were calm.  I think I was as prepared for jumping today as I ever have been for my first jumps of the season.  It was a great way to start the winter; my better jumps were right up there with my best jumps from this summer in Europe and this fall in Slteamboat .  Hopefully the blizzard warning for tomorrow doesn't turn out to much, because we have XC skiing in the morning and jumping planned for the afternoon. 

We snowed in the inrun of the K90 yesterday and cut the track today.  The track looks real straight, and should set up to be rock hard.  With any luck it will last all year, although we'll have to continually shovel off excess snow if the winter continues on the path its on.   Cutting track was actually pretty easy; I helped two of the coaches do it in a couple of hours, but getting the snow on the jump and ready yesterday was quite a process.  We had people  sending man-made snow down chutes from the top of the jump, then others had to shovel the snow into place, boot and ski pack it down to compress the air out of it, and then the snow needs to be perfectly even and flush with the side boards.  In total, it took almost 20 people 5.5 hours on Saturday.  But don't worry, it's worth it!  Jumping Tuesday!

The snow gods have been kind to Steamboat lately. There is enough snow to ski at the Touring Center in town now.   Although we are really lucky to be able to ski up on Rabbit Ears early in the season, it is much better to be able to ski down at "low elevation" (just  below 7000 feet).  Now we are getting rid of the high altitude sludge that we developed while training at 9000 plus feet.  To do this, we skied short and fast intervals yesterday. We did a ladder workout, starting with an all out 1 minute interval, then one for 2 minutes, 3 minutes and 4 minutes, and then back down to 1 minute, for a total of 16 minutes of interval time.  This differed from our typical interval workout of 4 min by 6 or 4, at a controlled pace just over lactate threshold.  It felt good to open up the throttle!

Now it's time to get the jumps ready.  We are going to be working on the K90 tomorrow and Saturday, and should be jumping by Tuesday.  I hope I can wait until then...