Cross Country Falling

There's a reason I didn't sleep very well last night. I couldn't get comfortable because everything hurt. And by everything, I mean my legs, my back and most of all, my butt.

Because of the large amount of snow we got on Thursday night and Friday, trail conditions weren't very good and instead of riding, Chris wanted to try cross country skiing again. So, we headed out to the county park and rented skis, boots and poles.


The beginner loop that took us an hour to finish last time took only half an hour this time, so we felt compelled to try the "harder" loop, especially since we had planned to be out for two hours.

I spent the next hour and a half admist drastic mood swings, back and forth between misery and euphoria. (Okay, euphoria might be a little strong.) On one hand, I felt like I actually was skiing for parts of it. I was going a lot faster and letting myself get some momentum and glide along in the tracks instead of trying to do whatever I could to slow myself down. Last time, to quote Chris I was just "walking with skis."



I even tried going down hills that I would have slid down on my butt or tried to go around last time. The hills were a lot bigger on the regular ski trail than they were in the beginner trail. I actually relaxed and glided down several of them with no problem. But every time I started to feel a little confident, I would end up on the ground again. I actually fell nine times during a two-hour period. The last time, I fell hard on my butt and now it even hurts to sit down.

The funny/interesting/ironic thing is that the "hard" ski trail is the "easy" mountain bike trail in the summer. It's a big, wide trail, with relatively small hills and nothing gnarly whatsoever that connects the "real" mountain bike trails, but for some reason it's really intimidating on skis.

Chris had a blast. He fell once or twice but is beginning to get really comfortable on skis. He's even started talking about buying some when he gets his REI dividend. For me, the jury's still out. We'll see how it goes next time.