wasatch and beyond: First time on REAL SkiMo gear

January 19, 2015

First time on REAL SkiMo gear

On Saturday we went up to Alta for the Snow Leopard Dash - which was sponsored by The Sport Loft (an amazing store which we only recently realized was just down the street from where we live) and Dynafit. We arrived in just enough time to get setup on some demo Dynafit SkiMo race gear (PDG skis/boots and TLT Superlite Bindings). This was our first time on real rando/SkiMo race gear and the question about how much of a difference the lightweight setup makes was answered immediately - A HUGE DIFFERENCE!!!

Despite some technical difficulties (skins falling off, which caused me to DNF and Andrea to lose a ton of time) we had a blast on the demo race gear. Andrea managed to still come in second place for the ladies and win a little cash (symbolically a good thing in a sport that is otherwise a black hole for money!). The post-race raffle was where the magic happened. No lie, I woke up on Saturday morning and told Andrea I had a dream that I would win a pair of Dynafit PDG skis. Well, on Saturday afternoon The Sport Loft raffled off a pair of those exact skis (donated by the Dynafit reps) - and guess who won? Andrea!!!

We've been debating whether to take the plunge and invest racing setups. Winning the skis was the sign we needed to just go all in. We've been working on putting racing setups together and hopefully will be able to competing in some of the late-season local races... and maybe take this a bit more seriously next winter. The races are fun, challenging, and in awesome locations throughout the mountain west. We've met some really cool people are the events we've been to so far this winter.

From a pure running standpoint - getting into SkiMo is probably the best thing I can be doing in the winter. I've found that ~100 miles/week is plenty of running during the colder months (in terms of pounding on the legs), but I have the energy / capacity for more workload... the combo of backcountry and rando skiing will surely fill up the rest of the bucket for the next 4-5 months!