For better and for worse is one way to define love. My love for skiing is no different. There are days when you question why you even do the sport, and there are days when you can’t imagine your life without it and there would be nothing you rather be doing in that moment. I guess I could say that I have experienced both of these extremes this past week.Getting back into the race season can be pretty tough. Even after many months of hard interval sessions, nothing comes close to how hard races are. One of my teammates and I were talking and she said, “wow, ski racing is hard”, and she is right, it is! Not only are you physically pushing yourself to the limit, you are pushing yourself mentally to the limit as well. I had my first two races of the season this year! On Saturday I had a classic sprint and my qualifier went pretty well. It felt really good to put a race bib on and ski as fast as I could. Sunday followed with a 10km classic mass start on a really hard course. Although I was not psyched about my race, Annie Pokorny, my teammate pointed out, “I started the race and finished it”. Compared to not racing last weekend, it was an exciting accomplishment. It was really impressive how good the racing conditions were for the amount of snow there was. A huge thanks to the volunteers and coaches who shoveled for hours to get the course race ready!Before the racing began, I adventured around Sun Valley a little bit since it was my first time there. I went on many walks because it was so scenic…also I am a huge mountain lover. There is something about mountains that inspire me, fire me up, while simultaneously calming me down. I took some photos and video on my mini adventures. Keep your eye out for a short edit of the past few weeks on the road on my next blog!-JKern