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While I’ve been taking a break from my blog, I’ve only taken a little break from skiing & training. Life has actually been busier than I ever thought possible since arriving home the second week of April. Don’t worry, I’m not complaining. I actually like having appointments, phones ringing & emails stacking up…. When you love what you do, it’s easy to get up in the morning.
My time in Alaska has been split between work for APU, maintain some semblance of training, paperwork (taxes!) reuniting with friends that I haven’t seen all winter, planning for the upcoming summer & season, housework….. the list goes on and on as I’m sure you can imagine.
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Perhaps the largest chunk of my time is going into organizing our second annual APU end of season celebration/fundraising auction on Tuesday May 10th. All of the funds raised go directly towards offsetting training and travel expenses for the athletes. The event was a blast last year and super successful in helping to subsidize ever-climbing ski racing expenses. For example, this year it cost me $200 each way to fly my ski bags to Nationals in Rumford, Maine (yikes!)
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There is no admission charge, we’ll have free food and drinks and lots of AWESOME auction items. Businesses in town have been WONDERFUL to us and their generosity is going to help keep us skiing and skiing fast. The support of the community up here is just another reason why I love Alaska. (I will post a list of auction items and donors shortly!)
But back to the actual skiing….
We had a beautiful stretch of weather mid-April and I did my best to take advantage of the high pressure system. Alaska in the spring can be an AMAZING place and I have pictures to prove it:
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APU casualities after the hill climb up Dollar Mountain!
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Here I am with flowers and pottery at the rainy awards ceremony!
Sun Valley also represented the end of the season and I skied to and held onto some decent awards, all of which were firsts for me! Those include Super Tour Overall Champion, Super Tour Distance/Sprint Champion & Grand National Champion (when all five US Championship races are combined) … then I was able to secure second place in the overall mini-tour with a good hill climb on the last day.
