Dick and Me

I raced in a ski race this past weekend.  Or perhaps I should say I skied a bunch or laps around the snowmaking loop at Kincaid Park and they timed me.

When I was a kid, my dad bought a boat.  It wasn't very big.  But it was old. My mom had doubts about this boat.  It was made of wood, and it had some leaks, but the leaks weren't too bad.  My dad figured if he (or we) painted it with good paint, it would probably keep most of the water out.  And we were only going to use it on the small ponds and lakes of New Hampshire's "north country" anyway, so if anything really bad happened and it sank, we would just swim to shore. The way dad figured, we'd go waterskiing all summer!  We did paint the boat - red white and blue like the American flag.  And it didn't leak very much.

This boat had a motor.  It was not a sailboat. But that motor didn't have much juice. It was an old Evinrude. It had 15 horsepower. But that was probably when it was new.  This old Evinrude motor was no longer new.  It was pretty old.  This Evinrude was built in around 1967.  But it was 1982!  I bet it had way less than 15 horsepower.

If you want to waterski behind a boat like our little old boat, you need to be in eighth grade or younger. And you'd better be the smallest kid in eighth grade, too. Luckily, I was. If you were the younger sister of an eighth grader, you could waterski, too. Young cousins could waterski. A squirrel could also waterski behind this boat. When I was in eighth grade I didn't know any squirrels who knew how to waterski, but I know there are some out there who do.

But that old boat also had better be up on step BEFORE it starts to try to pull the little waterskier.  Do you know what it means for a boat to be "on step"?  That means it's hydroplaning.  The only way a boat can hydroplane is if it produces enough power to get up out of the water and skim along the surface.  Once you're hydroplaning, you're golden.  It doesn't take much power to keep the boat skimming along on step, but if you let the speed come down, it starts plowing through the water again and you end up using a lot of power to push water around instead of using it to waterski.

Our old Evinrude 15hp motor had just enough power to get up on step IF all conditions were perfect:
-The motor had to work on that particular day. Sometimes it didn't.
-All extra passengers, gas cans, lunch, life jackets, etc needed to be out of the boat. The boat needed to be as light as possible.
-The boat needed a running start as long as a full length of waterski rope (or in our case, an old spongy rope that we also used for climbing the roof to clean the chimney).
-The eighth grader or his younger sister needed to start from a dock.  Water starts were not possible. The boat started next to the dock and the driver gunned it to get the speed as high as possible while the little waterskier waited for all the rope to play out, and then braced him/herself to get violently jerked off the dock (we learned to jump just a little at the moment of impact to keep from getting an assful of splinters).
-The wind needed to be coming from behind the boat and skier.
-The waterskier needed to be able to hold his/her breath for at least five or six seconds because after the initial jerk off the dock, the little waterskier would slow down the boat enough that the skier would sink (the boat would almost sink too) and even though the little skier was technically doing a dock start, it was essentially a water start.
-Mars and Saturn needed to be aligned with Venus.

This is the kind of stuff I was thinking about in the middle of lap 3 of the 5-lap 15km skate race this weekend. I came around the right-hander out of the stadium tunnel and was starting to slog and stumble my way up and over the tunnel hill when Toomas came by me "on step". He was out of sight and gone by the time I got a good look at him. Andrew was standing on this hill giving splits, and I can always count on him for some words of encouragement like "You're living and striding!" or something about the flavor of my hands... you know - inside joke stuff.  But this time Toomas was coming through at the same time as me so I knew Andrew had business to attend to and I'd have to wait another lap to hear those comforting words from the coach. After the race, I asked a bunch of UAA and APU skiers how their races went, and the answer from all of them was pretty similar: "It was super fast and fun and you just felt like you were flying around that course!" And it made me think they must have been having a very different experience than my own.

But I've been on both sides of this one. There was a time a few years back when I was in the process of winning the Tour of Anchorage ski marathon and I passed one of my co-workers, Dick. I was going about twice the speed that Dick was (or maybe more). The elite skiers used to start later in that race, and the slower skiers started earlier. It was great - you got to see all your friends out there. The next day at work, Dick said "I don't know how you top guys skim over the snow like that. It's incredible!"  And it occurred to me that when we passed Dick, we were going so easy and relaxed. We weren't skiing very hard at all. It wasn't until a couple kilometers later that the hard charging began...

Me. Tour of Anchorage. A few years back

It seems that in a race like this past weekend, if you have the strength to apply just a little extra power, you can skim over little hills using the V2 skate without having to "downshift" into a slower stride like the V1 with its dramatic loss of velocity.  If you can just manage to keep the power high enough to stay above that threshold, you can stay up on step. If you don't quite have the power to stay above that threshold, you'll suddenly find yourself not "hydroplaning" anymore. And that's a sure recipe for ending up up 53rd on the result list at the end of the day.

But as I passed slower skiers wallowing in that sugary snow on the Coastal Trail a few years back, I didn't think too much about what it would feel like to stumble along with legs on fire, doing the granny-skate while guys like Toomas fly by "on step". But now I understand.

Dick

Hibernation

Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. It's only going to get lighter from here on out.  This is the time of the year that makes curious people like Hanna ask "If a polar bear and a brown bear were to get romantically involved and have a baby together, would the little cub hibernate during the winter or not?" 

This is the season of SAD.** 

It's the season of cabin fever.  

Is Andrew dreaming up the perfect combination of kick, glide, flourination and structure? Probably... yes.

I have the kind of job where I don't have to set an alarm and get up early for work. I can sleep until whenever, and stumble into the office when the mood strikes me. Nevertheless, I'm usually having breakfast by 7:30 or so. But the other day I woke up and looked at the clock and it said 9:30! How had I slept so long? I looked out the window and it was still dark outside.  I went back to sleep.  

It's the season of hibernation. 

Hey Andrew!  It's a lot more cozy in there if you close the lid!

On this winter solstice weekend, we had a couple ski races here in Anchorage. A lot of the UAAers were there. They seemed to be awake and had the energy to ski a bunch of laps around the snowmaking loop at Kincaid Park. 

They also had energy to dance between sprint heats.  I remember this dance from the mid-'90s. It's called the Macarena. Didn't know the kids are still doing it. (Notice the poor people desperately trying to get past this nonsense to/from the bathrooms.)

Meanwhile, the coaching staff...

IT'S NAP TIME!!!
(If you're not on the UAA ski team this year, you won't understand the "NAP TIME!" inside joke. Sorry.)

The coaches got their job done.  I heard nothing but glowing reviews about the glide or the grip. But I saw nothing but winter hibernation.

**Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The Queen of Speed

Today was Hanna's birthday!  To celebrate, Sara gave the team a day off from the 2.5km snowmaking loop at Kincaid Park and sent the group out on the thin snow at Hillside with their rock skis for a little variety.  The skiing was better than expected, spirits were high, and we celebrated Hanna's birthday in fine form.

David, Hanna, Pati

Toomas and Hanna

David and Pati

The Queen of Speed

Hanna getting bedazzled with her Birthday/Christmas bow

A group picture in the usual spot

City Life

Here's something that doesn't really have anything to do with the UAA Ski Team, but I thought it was a nice video and I think you'll enjoy watching it. Or maybe not. But you'll be hard pressed to see more kids fall down within one minute of film.

Dredging up Old News

The UAA Nordic Ski Team Blog interns are usually right on top of every story.  They come in every morning long before sunrise and stay until well after midnight, scanning the news outlets of the world, perusing periodicals large and small, and sometimes traveling the globe, pounding the pavement in search of the news and information that you, the faithful UAA Nordic Ski Team Blog readers demand and expect from us.  But sometimes even the most relevant and critical news stories slip through the cracks and we fail to bring them to you in a timely manner. For such blunders, I apologize sincerely.  Earlier today, it was brought to my attention that we'd missed this story in the Aspen Times.  It came out four days ago, yet we didn't find out about it until today.  Better late than never, here's the news that's been the talk of the ski world for the past week or so...

(Click on the photo of Hailey Swirbul (above) for the news article)

Pow Slashers!

There are miles and miles of really great cross-country skiing available at Kincaid Park right now. But all of those miles are located on the 2.4 kilometer man-made snow loop.  And this morning that little loop was packed with 500+ high school kids who were thrashing around on it, vying for the title of "Lynxloppet Champion". We didn't need to get embroiled in that mess, so we made the 45-minute drive south with our classic skis to slash a little Chugach pow-pow on the Girdwood nordic loop. Some of us (I'm speaking for myself here) only brought our rock skis but this proved to be a poor decision as there was not a rock to be found out there. When I use my rock skis, I want to hit some rocks, dammit!

We followed the groomer around. Literally. That's Jim and Peter on the snowmachine in front of Andrew and Toomas.

Here are the women getting Andrew's instructions about today's intervals.

Snowmaking in Full Effect

We don't have much natural snow in town at the moment.  Fortunately, we've got good training conditions on the homemade stuff at Kincaid Park.

Meanwhile, Alyeska Resort's got the real thing:

Ice, Ice Baby!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the skiing isn't so great around here at the moment. It was pretty good for a while but our snow melted last week. Fortunately, the ice on the lakes didn't melt. In the absence of good skiing and in the interest of variety, we went ice skating today downtown at Westchester Lagoon.  According to Toomas' special wristwatch, we traveled 24 kilometers in an hour and a half of skating - not too shabby.

Training Camp!

Immediately upon my return from UAA's alpine training camp in Colorado, the nordic team headed 40 miles north of Anchorage to Palmer for their annual Thanksgiving 5-day training camp. I had to miss most of it, but did manage to get myself to the final workout of the camp, a three-hour classic ski at Sheep Mountain.

UAA training camp team headquarters in Palmer.  It was NOT looking very wintry last week!

Sheep Mountain Lodge

We took a quick lap on Sheep Mountain's groomed trails....

...but it quickly became apparent that the local dog mushing trails offered better snow conditions. Here's Sadie and Sara.

Mackenzie, skiing over the shoulder of Gunsight Mountain.

Mario.  A little no-pole skiing action.

Hanna.  Not bushwhacking.

Hanna, Marcus, Mario, Andrew, Mackenzie

Mackenzie, Hanna, Andrew

Refueling during the drive home.

Kincaid Skiing

I like alpine skiing.  I really like it a lot.  But I like cross-country skiing, too.  I especially like it when I return to Anchorage from an out of state trip to find the kind of conditions we found at Kincaid Park:

We Blame Huey

We were planning to ski slalom at Vail.  But it was kind of a madhouse over there the previous day and training space opened up at Loveland, so over the pass we went.  The snow came in behind us and buried our Loveland slalom hill in deep snow, but at least we had the place to ourselves. Contrary to what most skiers would do, we pushed as much powder snow OFF the hill as we could and got down to slalom training on the ice underneath.

Setting up for our annual race against Colorado Mountain College

Executing the Flying V to push snow off away from the slalom gates

Bella

Miranda

Annamal; grooming the course in a brief moment of sun

Sean.

Huey had been charging hard all day, taking the "big boy line" and making it stick, and wanted to get as many runs in the plastic as he could.  But toward the end of the session the snow came in real heavy again and we raced to get on the highway, through the tunnel and back down to Silverthorne before getting snowed in... but too late - we missed it by about 20 cars.  The tunnel closed just as we got there.

Sparky - exploring his options.

Moby and Huey

Moby

More of the same...

Things weren't looking promising...

Eventually, DOT sent us back down toward Denver, but we managed to snag a room at the Columbine in Idaho Springs.

This morning.  The roads were good, but the drivers not so good.  The traffic jammed due to an accident.

But we did make it back to the house this morning in time for a little breakfast and ski tuning, and we're off to Vail for our final day of slalom in about a half-hour.