Did you know that your armpit is one of the warmest areas of your body?

Well I headed up to the snow this morning thinking that it would be a GORGEOUS day! The weather down in Arnold was chilly, but clear blue skies. As I drove up the mountain there were definite patches of black...not grey, but BLACK. I pulled into the parking area and got all my equipment together. As the team and I were standing around listening to the announcements it started to snow on us. We were all caught up with how pretty it was....that is until the coldness set in! We were all frozen within minutes. As I looked around people were jumping up and down (pretty hard to do without slipping in skis); others were huddled up close together with the hands stuck in their armpits, trying to warm their hands; still others were slightly jumping in place and blowing what they had hoped would be warm air onto the hands. It was down right COLD.
After the announcements we broke off into our groups. My group is the group that is just starting to learn to skate ski (race style ski). We had drills throughout the whole morning...and when I say drills I mean we would ski for a short while (a very short while) and then stop and stand there to watch what we needed to do next. On any other day it would be have been fine, but we were all concentrating on not freezing that it was hard to do. Not long into doing this I started to not feel so good. I wondered if I had eaten something that wasn't agreeing with me...and as we would be skiing I would start to feel better, but the moment that we cooled off I started to not feel so good again. Meanwhile one of the guys asked a few times, "How do we know if we are hypothermic?" Or "How do we know if we have frostbite?" We all laughed....but it was so cold out there and the storm was intensifying that we were freezing...and it did feel that we were freezing to death.
About an hour and a half into the practice I started to feel so bad that I thought I would pass out. Someone told me that I was as white as the snow...so that is when I decided to get into the warming hut immediately. What is a typical 5 minute ski, took me almost 15 mintues to do. I was so out of it that I was worried that I would pass out in the snow. I finally made it there and the moment I walked in the woman that works there to sell the food ordered me into the bathroom to splash HOT water onto my face (my lips were now frozen) and to keep my hands under the hot water as well. I defrosted fast enough...but I didn't feel warm. I went to sit down and one of my coaches walked in. He noticed that I didn't look too good....so he told, or better put, he ordered me to drink hot fluids to warm up my core tempature. I hate tea, but when they stuck it in front of me I drank as much as I could in order to get the hot fluids in me as fast as possible. As I was concentrating on that, my teammates were coming in and several of them looked as bad as I did.....
We all were taken care of warmed up as best we could. I spent about 2 hours in the warm hut. I couldn't drag myself back out into the cold that soon after getting warmed up. I finally did motivate myself to get moving...The weather cleared up a bit and I was able to get some good skiing in for a good hour, then the storm rolled back in! That is when I called it quits! I was not about to freeze again!
Though to be honest...that was just the start of my troubles......it was snowing so hard at this point that I had to put chains on! And I am a CHAIN VIRGIN! I have never put chains on before and I have never driven a car with chains on....so this drive down the mountain was going to be an interesting one!
One of my teammates actually put my chains on for me and he followed me down the mountain! Wasn't that nice?
Today was a good learning experience for me. What did I learn you might ask yourself....well I learned the following:
1. When standing around in a blizzard wear more layers;
2. Try to not just stand around in a blizzard!;
3. Or maybe just turn around and go home if you see nasty black clouds in the sky;
4. Invest in a 4x4 vehicle!
In all honesty, it was a hard day to get through...but it was great experience b/c what happens if that is exactly what the weather is like in Alaska at the race? I won't be able to give up then.....so if another blizzard rolls while I am practicing I will suck it up and ski the set distance of the day!