Tossed on my snow skis for the first time in North America this season.  Temps in Hayward have been getting well below freezing during the cold, starry nights.  That’s made conditions perfect for early morning frost skiing.  Just 15 minutes of kicking around on classic boards this morning make the real season feel even closer and my training that much more focused.

The OO Trail Head

Eric and Brian cooling off after their workout

The cold temps also make the lake perfect for icing after a hard workout.

Don’t forget:

1. Vote

2. Check out the Middlebury Ski Team auction: ends tonight!

Interested in picking up some cool winter gear and supporting a rad cause?  Check out the Middlebury Ski Team online auction, going on now.  It ends Tuesday night, so check it out!

While you’re there, you can bid on, among other things, two Olympic UnderArmour pull-overs:

You can also pick up alpine skis, lift tickets, bike jerseys, bike trips, Midd team apparel, and more.  If I were to bid on one thing, I think I’d go for a Snow Bowl lift chair.  I don’t have anywhere to hang it, but one of these would be sweet!

In other Middlebury sports news (and this really should be on top). . .CONGRATS to the Midd Men’s & Women’s Cross Country teams and Terry & Nichole for winning the NESCAC Conference championship.  That’s the first time the men’s team has ever won NESCAC’s–particularly impressive considering it’s one of the toughest running conferences in the country.  Good luck to the teams as they move toward the end of the season!

The first flakes of the fall are falling outside and it’s cold and wet.  Occasionally, when nothing gets posted for a while, it’s because not much exciting is going on.  Other times, it’s because there’s so much going on that I simply can’t sit around on the computer.

Here’s a quick recap of recent events:

First of all, winter must almost be here (not that the snow outside is any indication), because we just received our team shipment of new Salomon’s.  Chuck and Kuan came up to Hayward to help us pick boards and provide comedic moral support (respectively).

Chuck testing my new boards

Using feeler gages to mark kick zones

Kuan, with weight vest, measuring skis to the nearest 12 oz.

Most of my time these days is spent up in the woods of Northern Wisconsin, but occasionally I need to get south and get some city life in my blood.  This was a good weekend for that, as Dan Skold was in town from North Carolina and Randy and Pete were hosting a ski clinic and fundraiser for Jenny’s Light.  Although the beautiful fall weather was pushed out by a cloudy cold front, the rain held off for a fun weekend of mountain biking the Wirth Trails and helping with the ski clinic at Hyland.

The turnout was smaller than usual, but everyone got some World Class coaching with an excellent athlete-to-coach ratio. If you missed that clinic, but still want to tune up your skills before the coming winter, come up to Hayward this weekend for the 4th Annual Birkie/ActivEdge Clinic this Saturday at 9am in Seeley.  Sign-up online or morning of (just email me to let me know you’re coming, so we can bring enough food for lunch).  We’ve already got about 15 skiers signed up.  Get on board!

How do you end a successful rest week?  Go grouse hunting.  It’s harder for me to keep my training down on an easy week than it is to hit big hours on a big week.  The past week was nice and relaxed.  I took advantage of my time “off” to spend more time working at New Moon, roofing with Donovan, night riding with the local crew, and capped it off with a morning of grouse hunting on the Little Siberia trails with Mark and Pam.

Got out for a night ride tonight. . .for the first time in about 10 years.  I forgot how much fun riding single-track is with a light.  It’s like discovering a totally new sport, chasing the crescent moon rising in the south, with the sun setting behind the hills to the west.  Every Thursday night, a group of about 20 riders attacks the CAMBA single-track for a night ride.  Jeff Schmid twisted my arm and convinced me to join the group this week and lent me a light.  Awesome.

Judge Jerry - Lighting Up

Taco'd wheel = long hike out of the woods.

Can’t wait for next week. . .

Wow, October 14 is the one year anniversary of www.garrottkuzzy.com.  It was built in one long afternoon waiting for a flight in the Albany Airport.  CXC’s design specialist, Irina Komarova, is responsible for the banner graphics and technical advice for getting the site going.

It’s been a great way for me to keep friends, family, and fans up-to-date on the latest news.  One of my goals with the site was to keep it updated regularly with interesting, insightful, and funny stories and photos from the life of a professional ski racer.  Chris Rodgers put in his two cents early, saying a good website is updated regularly so there is always something to check out.  Over the past year, there have been over 165 posts, for an average of one post every 2.2 days.

There have also been over 55,000 visits–that’s an average of over 150 visits per day.  If each visitor spent just one minute on the site (a conservative estimate), that’s a total of 38 straight days that people have spent (wasted?) reading this site.  Well, I’m glad you’re following ’cause all those visits inspire me to keep the posts coming.

I turned off the “comments” section a while back, because I spent more time deleting spam comments (like: “Click here to get your official South Africa 2010 vuvuzela!” when I included the words “World Cup” into a post) than writing actual posts.  Of course, I always enjoy feedback, so don’t hesitate to email me: <garrottkuzzy@yahoo.com> if you’ve got any questions or ideas for the site.

Recently, the CXC Team has gotten me into regular status updates on Facebook.  To follow along, go to Facebook.com, search CXC Skiing, and click “like” to get brief, daily updates from CXC skiers.  That’s also a great place to post comments and questions.

Thanks for following along and keeping me motivated.  You can look forward to another exciting year on garrottkuzzy.com!

Santi, Kuz, and the Rodgers Bros. - high atop Whiteface Mountain - October 8, 2010

. . .to Placid Lake, Wisconsin.

Great to be back home after a solid 3 week training camp.  After 22 hours in the van, it felt good to wake up at home this morning to a spectacular sunrise.

Clear and windy day for the Whiteface time trial.  5 miles, all uphill.  Oh, yeah.

The women’s field was much smaller than the men’s, but still included the fastest women in the country.

Things were a pretty tight in the men’s pack, especially off the start.

Tad Elliott (two l’s, two t’s — gotta love the double letters), took top honors for the CXC crew.  Men’s results here. Women’s results here.  Ski speed plays the biggest role in a time trial like this and the results don’t necessarily correlate to speed on snow.  In any case, it’s one heck of a workout!

Newell leads Gregg and Liebsch up one of the flatter (seriously!) parts of the climb.

Yee-ha.

Beautiful view from the finish of the Whiteface TT 2009.

Maybe it’ll be a little nicer tomorrow!

One of my favorite workouts is bounding.  One of my favorite places to bound is Whiteface.  One of my favorite seasons is Fall in the Adirondacks.  Needless to say, it was cool to get out and hammer up the mountain this morning with the crew.  Crisp, dialed, fast, and fun.  Great day to be a skier.

Working hard with Chuck, Brooke, and Tad.  Coach Gus Kaeding has been the new “go-to” photographer during workouts and took all these photos.  He also wrote some entertaining facts about the CXC crew here.

Brooke Gosling from Canada is new to the CXC Team this year and dominates our bounding workouts–showing both the men’s and women’s teams how it’s done.

This team is awesome.