Cross Country Skiing

I was looking at the cost of lift tickets this year, and they are so expensive! In particular I'm planning to go up to northern Vermont a day before the winter swim festival (they changed the festival to 2 days instead of 3 after I booked the airbnb, and we all decided to just keep the reservation as is and go skiing). The tickets for the mountain up there were $120, which is $35 more than I paid for a ticket, rental and lesson for cross country skiing today. If I buy skis, the trail passes are like $13, and I can stop at the ski area that's right on the way home from work and ski for an hour or two for next to nothing. I also like the idea of skiing being something I do for a couple hours instead of being an all day thing. And, it was fun and a good workout. Plus, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing :)

It was really cold out today, about 20 degrees without factoring in wind chill. I over compensated by layering up too much and was so hot during the start of the class, I had to take off things. I thought that might happen, but I guess it's better to have to delayer than be freezing. We started off the lesson learning how to do a basic stride in the groomed area. It was a little scary sliding at first, but then it was really fun. Once we added poles it felt a little like running - but in slow motion. After we were comfortable with that, the instructor took us to one of the "hills" (they were very very small hills, more like a little rise) and we practiced going downhill (super fun) and going up hill (good workout). Of course the hardest thing is stopping - it's always the hardest thing. It's weird because the skis don't have edges in the same way as downhill, so it's even more work to stop. So we practiced that for a while, and then learned some basic turn stuff. 

After the lesson we got to stay and play if we wanted to, which of course I did. I went around the track that they have there a couple times and learned that it's way harder to ski once the groomed part ends. I really enjoyed it, though. And, it's a really good workout - way better than erging (which is a good workout, but is kind of boring). A friend of mine told me that there's a place that sells skis in NH and has a good variety for regular folks who are not planning to race. I think I'll make a day trip of it, go up there, buy skis and ski for a few hours. Super excited!