Sound like fun?  It all depends on your perspective, literally.

From it’s top, it’s a fast, steep descent towards Snowmass, and on nordic skis it can almost be scary.  When tackling this stretch of the Owl Creek Trail from the opposite direction(pictured), the only thing ‘flying’ is your heartrate, into the red that is.

Participants in next Saturday’s 22nd Annual Owl Creek Chase , the 21 km skate race from Snowmass to Aspen, will find themselves at the bottom of  the Flying Kilometer somewhere near the middle of the course.  If you somehow haven’t hit any low points in the race up until now, this climb all but ensures you will.

In a last ditch effort to make up for a complete lack of training, Christy and I hit the trail Sunday to try to log at least as much time as the race usually takes. Before today, and if we round up, we calculated we may have skated close to 21 km in total this season. While discouraging that may sound, at least today’s effort consoled us enough to know we could likely finish.

So if you’re sitting on the fence as to signing up because you don’t think you’re ready, we’ll be there, likely way off the back and just having fun.  Sign up. Just being on the same course as the pros is cool. Besides, I strongly believe a good ass kicking is good for everyone once in a while.