Laura Valaas photo credit: Ian Harvey, TOKO

I still exist. I have not been sucked into a hole of non-existence.

I've been sick. Which has made for uninspired posting. No one wants to read about healthy sick people. (Healthy sick people are people who think their cold/flu/whatever is the tragedy of the year when they'll be better in a week.) The only notable sick-event was that I pulled one of my rib muscles. Yes, my abs are THAT strong.

But we're racing again, so I'm back!

And it's once again time for the National Championships here in Anchorage. It was a balmy 5°F today, plenty warm enough to race and not nearly warm enough for all the snow to melt. Perfect for racing. The sun even came up for a couple of hours. I don't think it ever actually shone down in the stadium (too many trees in the way) but you could tell it was out glowing over some far horizon.

On the race front... I qualified second! Which is good because usually my qualifiers suck and this year one of my goals has been to improve that. What's the point of skiing better in the heats if you can't even qualify, right? So I have been meditating on skiing the qualifiers faster. I've also been doing some more concrete training.

10k skate on Monday, 20k Classic on Wednesday, and Classic Sprint on Friday. Every other day a race. Makes for a fun week.