On Porter Mountain

 I had big plans for lots of blog posts last week during US Nationals in New York. But then my computer died. I couldn't figure out why. For more than two days, I couldn't turn it on. No matter what I tried, it simply wouldn't start, and I assumed my four year old computer had simply done all the computing it was going to do, and it was dead. 

But then, near the end of the week, after giving it a couple days' rest on the dining room table, I pushed the power button, and it fired up!  It seemed real strange to me that my computer would act this way. But then, I realized, my computer was just looking out for me. My computer knew there was no way in hell I had any time to write any blog posts in the evenings, because Trond was working us (Chasé and me) so hard, all day long, and all night long, too. Day after day, night after night, never a rest. He kept ordering us to wax more skis, scrape more skis, glide-test more skis, brush more skis, and get out and do more glide tests. It never stopped. My fingers were worked down to the bone from all the waxing and scraping; even if I'd had time to get back to the team house to write a blog post, there's no way I could have typed anything with these nubs. 

But now we're back to Alaska. Back from a successful week in New York. And I'm recovering on Kodiak Island this evening, in a torrential rainstorm, and my computer works just fine. 

The Olympic 50km course went around the Porter Mountain Loop. I highly recommend it.

Modern ski racing at the elite level is rarely contested racing loops of more than five kilometers. A five kilometer loop is just big enough to contain two pretty big climbs and a couple of little climbs, and the downhills are designed to lose elevation quickly and efficiently so the racers can get back to climbing. This is quite different from race courses in the old days, when the generally accepted dictum was that a race course should be one-third uphill, one-third downhill, and one-third flat. 

Trond gave us coaches a little time off mid-week at US Nationals so we could go for a ski on the old 1980 Lake Placid Olympic trails. It was a real treat! You can call me sentimental all you want, but I miss the old racing formats, where a 10km race was typically held on a 10km loop. I remember races in which there wasn't much snow, necessitating multiple laps. And I didn't like the feeling of going over the hills on the first lap and knowing that I was going to have to do the same loop AGAIN!  What a drag it was when you had to do a loop multiple times! But now, almost all elite races (except sprints) require multiple laps around the same loop. Even a 5k race (when there's plenty of snow) might be two laps. I feel bad for the kids these days. They sure do a lot of laps!

One of the old split-timing buildings on the Hi Notch trail. Coming down from Hi Notch, the racing trail is steep, narrow, and has a sharp turn. In 1980, good downhillers could gain time on the competition by being able to snowplow less than the others, and crash less frequently than the others. Downhill speeds were much slower, so the crashes were more frequent and less severe than in the modern age.

The most famous, most historic World Cup ski race in the world, at Holmenkollen, used to be a one-lap 50km race. Then, for most of its history, it was twice around a 25km loop. But now it's six laps around an 8km loop. It's a very different undertaking. 

Trond and I were pretty excited to get out on the old Olympic trails. Every time we race here, we find some time to get out away from the new 5k race trail. Our old friend, Barney Hodges, took us out for a spin around the old trails, and University of Vermont coach Patrick Weaver joined us. I used to race against Barney and Patrick when we were all in elementary school. Barney from Middlebury, Vermont, Patrick from Lennox, Massachusetts, and me from Lancaster, New Hampshire. It was great to get out skiing together again after so many years!

Barney Hodges, Patrick Weaver, and Trond Flagstad