Cookies in Bed

Today we raced a classic race at Bohart Ranch, about 30 minutes north of Bozeman. We skied on new snow in heavy wind, far above 0 degrees celcius in some kind of Chinook. Most everyone in the race used no-wax "zero" bases. Results are here: Follow this link to the race results!

That's Bridger Bowl in the background

Pati (This is the exact moment she realized she'd forgotten to put her skis on.)

Brandon

Étienne

Lucky

Étienne

Coaches Andrew and Nicole late at night, hard at work.

Nicole moves fast, not only while skiing, but while ski-teching, too.

The view from my blogging station (foreground) of the team stretching station (background).

Which one is Ernie and which is Bert?  For a hint, check out the video below, paying careful attention to the pronunciation of the word "again", and I think you'll have your answer.

 

Étienne and Davis.... Ernie and Bert... Truthfully, I see very little difference.

Dolomiti

Hear ye!  Hear ye!  I bring news from the UAA Ski Team!  Based on her strong performances this week at the US National Championships in Soldier Hollow, Utah, Mackenzie Kanady has been named to America's 2014 Under-23 World Championship Team!

When UAA ski racers go to Europe, they usually go to Italy.  And when they go to Italy, their destination is always a valley in Italy's Dolomite Mountains called Val di Fiemme. This is the valley where Nevio Zeni (UAA Ski Team 2012) comes from.  It's the valley where Lasse Moelgaard-Nielsen competed in the World Championships last winter. It's where Patricia, Marine and Lukas spent the middle part of this December at the World University Games. It's where Davis goes on vacation any time he travels to Europe. And now Mackenzie will travel to Val di Fiemme for the U23 World Championships at the end of January. So if Mackenzie needs any information about the competition venue and surroundings, she can ask just about anybody associated with the UAA Ski Team to get her answers.

Congratulations, Mackenzie!

Mackenzie edges out the kid on the left to make the U23 team. It could have gone either way.

Hot Air

Are you like me? Do you love to listen to nerds talking about ski racing for an entire hour at a time? If so, here's a fantastic opportunity to get those sweet sounds you crave! I was invited as a guest on Alaska Public Radio yesterday to discus the local citizen ski racing scene in Alaska. If you truly have nothing better to do for an hour, you can listen to the broadcast here (the audio is the little box right above the downhill video from Hatcher Pass near the bottom of the page):

KSKA Radio Show

Go ahead, give it a listen.  You deserve a little treat today.

The American West

I'm on my first RMISA road trip in 22 years, and I have to say it feels damn good to be back.

We finished up our week of racing in Utah with the 20k and 30k races on Wednesday. UAA had solid results and was the second best Nordic team in the RMISA.  You can find out all the details at: Utah Invitational Results Here!

We hit the road yesterday, leaving Utah behind us and pulling into Bozeman, Montana about seven hours later. Today was a day of ski testing and waxing; tomorrow we race 5km and 10km individual-start classic events.

We rented our 2014 road fleet last week.  We won't return the rigs until mid-March.

Headed north

Here's UAA Ski Team Headquarters - Bozeman Division.

And here's the plaque in front of our team house.

Preparing for a training session at Bohart Ranch.

It was a bit breezy in the Start/Finish area...

...breezy enough that our ski bag blew away from us several times and the coach had to chase it down....

...but we came up with a solution; test skis as anchoring stakes.

A Simple Plan

Tomorrow's a big day.  It's Day 2 of the University of Utah Invitational RMISA college race, and it's also the second of the two distance races here at the National Championships. The men will ski 30km at 10am, and the women will ski 20km at high noon.

Last year in this very same race, Viktor had a start position at the back of a large field. But his disadvantageous start position didn't deter him; he was leading the race by the 1km mark.

After our team dinner this evening, I noticed Étienne scribbling something on a piece of scrap paper.  When I looked over his shoulder, this is what I saw:

Étienne is bib #85.  He explained that this is his plan of attack from the start grid.

I like the looks of this. Viktor's spirit is still in full effect here on the UAA Ski Team.

A day off, not an off day

We don't race again until Wednesday.  Tomorrow's schedule will entail a lot of ski testing for the coaches and race preparation for the athletes, but for today we were able to relax a bit with some easy training at Soldier Hollow in the morning and an easy team jogging/strength workout in the afternoon.

While UAA's coaches, Nicole and Andrew, have an enormous waxing ballroom at their disposal...

...volunteer coach Adam is left to prepare skis in his own style back at the hotel room.

A light afternoon team workout.

We found this volcanic caldera along the roadside (with nearby deer, being stalked by a housecat)

In the evening, a few of us dropped by the Homestead Caldera for a little swim in the warm mineral water.

Sprint

Sprint racing is not what NCAA college skiing is all about.  Our college racing calendar doesn’t include any sprint races.  But here at US Nationals, there was a skate sprint race today, and most of our skiers competed.  For us, a sprint is an opportunity to work on racing skills in a competitive environment, and a good opportunity to learn race tactics that can be used in the last kilometer of mass-start distance races. 

Mackenzie Kanady and Marine Dusser were 22^nd and 25^th respectively in the qualifying round, allowing them to compete in the afternoon’s heats.  For both of them, it was quite an improvement over previous sprint race performances to have made it through to the quarterfinals at a national championship.  Both Mackenzie and Marine skied very patient, tactically smart races in their quarterfinals, holding back in the first half of the race and then accelerating through the field 500 meters from the finish to put themselves in good position with the leaders in the final 200 meters, and separated from the remainder of their fields.  But both Mackenzie and Marine were simply outgunned in the final 200 meter gradual uphill sprint to the finish, and both finished third in their quarterfinals.  The writer of this blog, though, was very impressed with their races.

Andrew Arnold

Lukas Ebner

UAA cheering squad for the quarterfinals

Now we have two days off before Wednesday’s 20km women’s race and 30km men’s race, and the alpine team has a short break in their racing, too.  So we drove to the alpine team's house for dinner this evening.  It's nice to get together with them when we get the chance because we're sometimes on different schedules and it's not always so easy to hang out with the other half of the team.

Hanging with the alpiners at the Alpine House

Utopia

The team had been away from Alaska for the past week, and I couldn't stand to be apart from them any longer so I boarded a jet and flew a few thousand miles to join them here in Utah.

Above the western desert.

Utopia?  No, just Utah.  Salt Lake City.

The coaches agreed to let me stay at the team hotel if I would agree to carry their bags and wax some skis.  Apparently the first choice for ski tech, Andrew's daughter Sylvie, was left home so there was an opening for me.

I hear Sylvie's been working on some innovative new methods for preparing skis.

It was immediately obvious to me when I arrived that we weren't in Alaska any more.  Davis pointed out a strange yellow object in the sky, the likes of which I did not recognize (though vaguely familiar), and reassured me with the words, "Don't be afraid, it's just the sun."

• Étienne and Lucky

Hypothermia was not a concern.

Today, we had our first RMISA (Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association) race of the year, which also happened to be the US National Championships and Olympic Team qualifying races.

Marine won her first NCAA college race ever this morning, a 10km individual start classic race!  She was ninth overall in the national championship event, and when the RMISA results were segregated out, she won the RMISA race and was the second-best American college woman, behind Anja Gruber from University of Vermont (EISA).  Congratulations, Marine!  Full results are available here:  Link to US Nationals Results

Synnøve wanted to cheer for her teammate Marine (on the right in the frame) before going to the start.  This photo captures the exact moment when Synnove realized she had only about 90 seconds to get to the starting gate. I appreciated the team spirit!

Mackenzie at the base of Hermod's Hill.  That's Synnøve ahead in the distance.

Marine debriefing Nicole after winning her first college race.

Post-race; Mackenzie, Pati, Synnøve, Nicole

Davis

Andrew Arnold at the base of Hermod's Hill.

• Étienne

Anna

It's New Year's Day, and let's face it, it's an Olympic year.  We'll spend most of the winter discussing NCAA racing (as we should) on this UAA Ski Team blog.  But this is a bit of a slow week, as the team is in Utah preparing for US Nationals. So let's talk about the Olympics a little bit.

Of course we are following Lasse's attempt to make the Olympic team, which is only natural since he was skiing for us as recently as last winter.  But UAA has plenty of other former skiers who may be competing in this year's Olympics:

Sadie Bjornsen (2009 Seawolf) seems to be a strong candidate. She's had some of the strongest early-season results of anybody on the strong US women's team, with a bunch of top-ten finishes on the World Cup in the last month. It's going to be a tough year to make the American women's Olympic Team, as they're one of the strongest teams in the world.  But Sadie is in a good position right now.

Sadie's little brother Erik (2010 Seawolf) is also hoping to make the team this year.  Coming off a breakthrough year last season in which he won the 15k national championship and competed at the World Championships, he's been racing the domestic circuit so far this winter, and won a sprint race just last week in Canada. The US National Championships in Utah will be an important week of racing for Erik if he is going to make the team.

And how about Martin Kapšo (2011 Seawolf)?  He competed for Slovakia in last year's World Championships and had a chance to visit with his old UAA teammate Lukas Ebner at the World University Games earlier this month in Italy.  I have no idea how the Slovakian qualification criteria are set up or where Gofi fits in to any of it. But if I hear later this winter that he is on the Slovakian Olympic Team, I won't be surprised.

But there is one current Seawolf who will definitely be competing in this year's Olympic Games, and that's Anna Berecz (Seawolf 2011-present). This won't be Anna's first Olympics; she finished 27th in the Super Combined and 35th in the downhill at the Vancouver games in 2010, and has also competed in several World Championships. When I ran into Anna in the ski room a couple months ago, she mentioned (when I inquired) that she had nailed down her spot on the Hungarian Olympic team over the summer at a series of FIS races in South America.  Anna is quite modest. She's not one to toot her own horn, so I sort of had to drag the details out of her. She told me she plans to travel to Sochi as late as possible so she'll be able to race as many college races as possible to try to qualify for NCAA Nationals in March. Congratulations to Anna!  We're looking forward to watching her race in the Olympics!

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And to follow up on another topic:  I know readers of this blog have been wracking their brains trying to figure out the answer to December 18th's trivia question, and probably losing a lot of sleep over it.  It must have been a really tough question because nobody even made an attempt at the answer.  But here it is:  It's Laura Rombach's old Volkswagen Golf under that pile of snow.  (*another correct answer would have been Andreas Adde.)