James Southam

It's been 4 years and I finally re-did my website. Head on over to a href="http://jamessoutham.com"www.jamessoutham.com/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5871152313769582978-1515...

It would be nice to say that it was a good start to the year with my two seventh place finishes this weekend. Actually it was a pretty mediocre beginning. I expect higher for myself and I cannot wait to start racing on some legit hilly courses over the next two weeks. Here is a sunny pic from our mellow long ski on Sunday. We all felt pretty blown out after the races. Fortunately the weather was good so it was pretty pleasant to be out for a long classic ski. We will be training in West until Thursday when we go to Bozeman for a skate sprint in town and 15k classic over the weekend. 

A good example of the financial situation for many post college athletes in Olympic sports.

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/09/08/sports/8-solomon.txt

Don't forget to support your local ski racer!

For the last 4 days I've been nursing a pulled intercostal muscle. Not quite sure how it happened but on Thursday as I was starting to ramp back into training after a few days off I found myself nauseous with pain. I went to get accupuncture that afternoon and some active release in the evening. The pain was down a whole lot the next day and I've been getting treatment daily since.

Summer is over. Crisp mornings and changing leaves. This week I am enjoying a few days off after the summer base period and before the intensity kicks up next week. A little time to look back.

Bird Ridge. 3 miles, 3400 ft uphill the whole way. Throw some wet, wind, and cold and that was nasty. Brent and I took off from the start and I felt super comfortable for about 15 minutes until last week caught up I couldn't match the pace. After about 25 minutes some of those classic skiing muscle that I abused last week started to cramp up in the cold and I was waddling up the mountain with my feet two feet apart. Trying to keep moving just hoping they would come around so I could hold on to second place. Luckily for me once Tor Kristopherson (3rd) got to within 5-10 seconds the course started to level out enough that I could run and the cramping let up and was able to pull away and save second. The best effort of the day had to be Rob Whitney who was 6th or so, that man can suffer!

Yesterday I dragged my body out of my bottom bunk. Shoved down some more food and coffee before heading out for the last ski of the first Eagle Glacier camp of the year. This morning I woke up to the chirps of baby Hazel and gave her a bath before I ate breakfast. A whole other world...

Since the last time you heard from me I spent two weeks on Kauai, 3 days driving my new (to me) car from Utah to AK, had some sweet spring skiing and now I am just finishing up my 5th week of training for the year.

Last night I got my first National Championship since 2006! I knew when I won my last one that any win could be your last so to get back on top after a rough couple years feels super good.

Today was a solid effort. I managed to stay out of trouble early and pick my way up thru the field once again and was sitting comfortably in 15th at 15k and was right in the lead pack at 25k. Then I hit a little rough patch. I was able to work thru it until about 30k when I started to run out of gas and had to let the lead group go. I really had no idea whether there was 10, 15, or 20k still to go I just knew I had to try and hang on to the other guys who were around me. That worked for a while but there was just nothing left in the tank...