Parke's Back Yard

No matter where in the world I go, I always enjoy coming back to Anchorage. It's the place I chose to live when I graduated from college over thirty years ago, and I haven't gotten tired of it yet. I especially enjoy being on the Alaska Airlines jet on final approach to ANC when I know there's a lot of snow on the ground. And that was the case when we returned home from Utah last week.

Here's a graph I saw in the Anchorage Daily News last week. I liked this graph.

Nevertheless, if you're a member of this ski team, you're not going to be in Anchorage for long before you need to get on an airplane and go ski racing somewhere. And this week, the destination is Colorado - where rumor has it that there's never been a more snowless winter in the Rocky Mountains than they're having this year. Ski races are being cancelled, or relocated, and this weekend's race, which was supposed to be in Minturn, will now be in Frisco. I have to admit that I was not looking forward to leaving snowy Anchorage to come down here for a rollerski race around a parking lot or some such nonsense.

My house, in its best light - covered in deep snow.

But the situation in Colorado is a lot rosier than I had imagined. While it's true that we're scratching around on small loops, and every one of us has hit a few rocks with our skis the past couple days, it's hard not to enjoy the warm sunshine, and there's nothing wrong with the quality of the (admittedly meager) snowpack. 

Here's the forecast for this weekend. Not too shabby.

So today, we skied at Breckenridge Nordic Nordic Center. It was pretty good!  Yesterday, Hedda and I were skiing together at Frisco Nordic Center when we crossed paths with someone named Scott who used to ski for the Colorado Buffaloes in the 1980's. He told us the skiing was good at Breckenridge, and just like that, the Seawolves found ourselves at Breck this morning.

Erling

Erling again. Do you sense a theme here?

Hedda and Dashe

Naturally, Parke was our guide today, since he grew up in Breckenridge and knows all its nooks and crannies. He took us out for a little loop that topped out at about 10,878 feet above sea level. (That's 3,316 meters to you Euros and Canadians.) 

(Here's my GPS watch to prove it.)

Constance, Marit and me

Chase, Garrett and Corbin at 10,878 feet above the sea.

All things considered, I'd say we're surviving and thriving at almost 11,000 feet. This weekend we'll be racing way down low at 9,000 feet. The air down there is going to be so thick and packed chock full of oxygen!

Instructions

 Step 1: Get some new skis and flex test them on the living room floor at the girls' house.

Step 2:  Take them out the next morning and use them to get on the podium:

It's really as simple as that.

We are flying back to Alaska tonight.

Outlier

The UAA Seawolves love Soldier Hollow. And with good reason. This is where the 2002 Olympics were contested. The Olympics will be here again in 2034. The weather is almost always sunny, and it's usually warm, too. Driving to the venue from our lodging in Heber City or Midway is always easy. There's loads of parking. Huge, high-quality buildings and infrastructure. The snowmaking system covers the entire Olympic trail system, and it puts down a four-foot deep layer of perfect, firm snow in which to set rock-hard classic tracks. They have a well-organized race administration, a huge PA system, plenty of great race volunteers, expert grooming equipment operators... Nothing is lacking here at Soldier Hollow. It's perfect in every way. No wonder Johannes Klaebo comes here frequently for training.

And yet, I am not in love with Soldier Hollow. Am I missing something?  Am I a contrarian? I've been hearing exclamations of joy this week from all of us Seawolves - racers and coaches alike -  about the perfect tracks, the great weather, the comfortable apres-ski, the well-run race organization.  And there's no denying any of it. It's comfortable, well-organized, and we're going to have excellent competitions here this weekend.  But I find it a bit sterile here. A bit bland. I always have. There's not much mystery here. The race trails are laid out, back and forth, across a meadow of sagebrush that surrounds and overlooks the ski stadium. From the deck on top of the race building, you can see pretty much the entire trail system; you can watch the entire ski race from there.

Soldier Hollow is perfect. But I get bored easily. Soldier Hollow is not quirky. It's not mysterious. It's not flukey. It doesn't capture my imagination. There are no surprises at Soldier Hollow. I don't dream of skiing these trails. I've skied them plenty of times, and they're still the same trails, laid out across the same meadow. Make no mistake: it's a dream to be a coach or team leader for an event at Soldier Hollow. I'm always happy to see Soldier Hollow on our itinerary, because I know that we can expect a well-run, predictable event, and I know we'll enjoy ourselves here. But I've never fallen in love with Soldier Hollow.

We will be racing here tomorrow morning. We are ready.

Scenes From The Empire State

Here are some of the things that the UAA volunteer assistant coach witnessed while in New York last week:

Team meeting at the girls' house

Corbin skied fast. The US Ski Team was so impressed they invited him to race with them in Europe next month.

Discussing ski selection. Marit seems skeptical.

Hey guys!  I found Murphy Kimball's fan club! They said they only drove seven hours to see Murphy compete. 

Dashe. In the thick of it.

We spent a lot of time in this wax cabin.

Trond and Chase. Mixing drinks for the mass-start 20k.

Dashe. She never stops racing.

Murphy's fan club got what they came for. Murphy on the podium.

Erling is a good sprinter. So he got on the podium too.

When a significant number of your skiers qualify for international trips, you have to discuss logistics with the US Ski Team. Here's Greta Anderson.

Garrett

Vebjorn Flagstad - friend of the Seawolves.

Michaela Keller-Miller. Former Seawolf. Killer was fast in the classic sprint.

Hermod

Quincy Donley. She's never been a Seawolf. But she's a friend of mine, so she's in this blog.

Erling. At home in his element.

It was raining pretty hard on the classic sprint day. 

Our down parkas are really warm. But they're not waterproof.

Foul weather doesn't keep us from supporting our teammates.

Henry. Offering encouragement to Erling in the semifinal.

Shopping with Ian from Toko. Ian doesn't charge a delivery fee.

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

We're Going Racing!

 Finally!  We're going racing!

We've raced a few times this fall, but it's all been a warm-up for this.  Tomorrow's our first RMISA college race. It feels a little strange to me that our RMISA race is concurrent with the US National Championships. But nevertheless, here we are in Lake Placid, New York. We've done a lot of training to get ready for this. Let the RMISA racing season begin!

Changing planes in Seattle

When landing in New England, a Dunkin' Donuts highway stop for breakfast is mandatory.

We found a package waiting for us when we got to our team house in Lake Placid.

It was Christmas all over again!

Garrett and me.

My friend John Estle is in Italy, and was given a tour of the US Ski Team waxing truck, and he met Erling's dad, Per-Erik, who was slaving away over a thousand pairs of skis for the American team.

And here's Erling, opening Christmas presents from his family, delivered to our wax cabin by Alayna Sonnesyn, whose skis were being waxed in Europe by Erling's dad last week.

Pre-race planning at the women's team house in the evening.

Hey, look who showed up in Lake Placid!  It's friend-of-the-Seawolves Mark Paprocki!

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Bonus photo:  I didn't manage to get this blog posted before today's race. Corbin was third RMISA skier today (10th overall). Congratulations, Corbin!