We have now been in beautiful Bozeman, Montana for five days and have seen three days of significant snow fall, with the rest being your picturesque 50 degree sunny day in Big Sky Country. It's gorgeous. The skiing has been amazing with all the fresh snow so we at least have perfect conditions to look forward to on the challenging course. We stayed at the Mogk's house for the first few days, which was a great way to settle in and we especially enjoyed playing with their dog, Bridger. On Saturday we moved into the Holiday Inn where we will spend the rest of the week. Joining us here are UNH and Williams, as well as a few alpine teams. Saturday we also did some intensity to see how going hard feels at altitude—it was a lot different but every day we seem to adjust better and better. Sunday we went for a nice easy classic off of the race course and it was some of the nicest skiing some of us have ever experienced, especially (those of us from Vermont) because it was 45 degrees and we were skiing on zeros or hardwax! On Monday some of us went for an easy ski while others lounged, and we all reconvened in the afternoon for some shopping on Main Street. Jordan (unsuccessfully) searched Bozeman high and low for cowboy boots, while Beth scored big on an oldschool one-piece Bogner ski suit. We finished the day with some Bates team bonding at Johnny Carino's for dinner with the Alpine crew. We are looking forward to some sweet racing tomorrow. For all of us it will be our NCAA Championship debut so we look forward to setting the tone for the week with some solid results in the skate race.
For live coverage of the weeks races follow this link:
http://www.ncaa.com/liveschedule
P.S. We will be posting pictures this afternoon.
