Camp Fuwa

In recent years, many Seawolves have spent time training at the UAA Ski Team's satellite training facility and European Headquarters in the heart of the Germany's Black Forest.  Raphael Wunderle and Laura Rombach honed their skills there during the summers in preparation for the grueling winter college circuit. Toby Schwoerer developed his incredible climbing skills doing laps up and down Feldberg. There are reported Lutz Klausmann sightings from time to time in the deepest, darkest, remotest parts of the Black Forest. Davis Dunlap made a trip there last summer to test the Schwarzwälder training venues and found them to be satisfactory. This year, "Camp Fuwa" is in session once again, as Lasse and Viktor have made the trip south from Scandinavia to run, rollerski and bike with Lukas around Schwarzwald's hills and valleys.

Three men, three goals, same training. Viktor's trying to work his way up through Sweden's national team program, Lasse's hoping to ski in the 2014 Olympics, and Lukas would sure love to win NCAA's next year.

Meanwhile, here in Anchorage, life is good:

European Vacation

I can't be everywhere.  I can't know everything. 

That's why I rely on my minions to send me dribs and drabs of information; little gems of knowledge and insight that I can't get while kicking around southcentral Alaska in this glorious summery sunshine.  And from time to time, my minions send me something notable and relevant.  Something interesting and compelling.  Something blogworthy.

For example: 

I already knew that Vicki and Lucky traveled long distances earlier this week to reunite with each other, crossing several international borders to do so.  They wanted to do some ski training together, they wanted to witness the Tour de France's epic 2xAlpe d'Huez stage in person, and they wanted to visit Marine in her native habitat in the Haute Savoie.  I had seen this picture on the interweb - a picture that leaves nobody feeling shamed or inadequate.  Just two guys sitting on the couch in Marine's living room:

Question:  Why would anyone hesitate to put a picture like this on the interweb?
Answer: They wouldn't.  It's a very nice picture.

On the other hand, there are some pictures that don't make it on the interweb so easily.  Maybe the people in the picture don't want these kinds of pictures floating around in cyberspace for all to see. Maybe they don't even know that certain photos were taken in the first place. And this is where my minions come in handy.  They send me these pictures so that I can keep you, the loyal UAA Team Blog reader, updated with the information you need to keep current on all the latest UAA Ski Team news.  For example, the picture below - a picture which was taken just hours ago.  If you know anything about the UAA Ski Team, or even if you don't know much about the team but have been keeping up with the blog, you will immediately understand what's going on in this picture.  If you don't understand what's going on in this picture then maybe you need to start paying a little closer attention:

 

Summertime Rolls (Part 2)

For the past couple of weeks, I've wracked my brain for a UAA Ski Team blog topic, but there's just.... nothing.  When most of the team are out of town and the remaining athletes are training with their respective summer training groups here in town - Alaska Winter Stars and Alaska Nordic Racing - and even the head coach goes on vacation to Colorado, there's not much left but sunshine, sunshine, warm weather and more sunshine here in Alaska.

So I'll post a few pictures for now.  But between now and late August, the blog posts will likely be few and far between because there's not much UAA Ski Team news for me to report on when everybody's doing their own thing for the summer.

Here are some photos I found on Facebook:

Andrew spent the weekend at the Fireweed 400 bike race between Sheep Mountain and Valdez.

A typical scene from the road.  I think this is probably Richardson Glacier.



It's my understanding that Davis is the proud new owner of this airplane. And yes, he does keep it in his driveway at home.

Davis in his element.

The Black Knight.  "It's just a flesh wound!"

There's only been about one rainy day this summer and this was it, so here's a picture of it.  Hiking near Anchorage.

Scenes from the trail...

Chugach rock is notoriously rotten.

When it's sunny I just can't bring myself to go in the office for work, so I set up my office on my deck.  I've spent a lot of time this summer at my "deck office".

And finally, the craziest of all:  When I finished "serious racing" a couple of decades ago, I was so happy that I'd NEVER have to go rollerskiing again.  And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm actually beginning to like it again.  I've gone rollerskiing three times already this summer, and it's only July 15! I might even go again next week!  Here's a scene from the rollerski trail along Turngain Arm.  What's not to like?

Dangerous Assumptions

We all know what they say about people who "assume": that they make an ass out of u and me.  Nevertheless, this blog likes to live dangerously, and in this week's blog post, we're going to make some assumptions.

First, a fact:  Lukas Ebner and carbonfiber go together like peanut butter and pickles.  Like great white sharks and kittens.  Like texting and driving. When carbonfiber sees lucky coming, it runs and hides. A few examples:

There are more photos like these.... I won't bore you with redundance.

So it's probably safe to assume that Lucky doesn't know that the Airbus 380 jumboliner is made of carbonfiber. If he had known that the Airbus 380 jumboliner is made of carbonfiber, he might not have been quite so eager to climb into one and fly to China in it.

Furthermore, we can assume that the other passengers aboard this particular Airbus 380 jumboliner were unaware of Lucky's rocky relationship with carbonfiber. If they had been, we can assume they would have imagined a fate such as this for themselves, just because of Lucky's involvement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n06WNSS4tFs  And you can read more here: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-09/airbus-a380-fleet-needs-full-inspection-of-wings-amid-cracks.html

In the end, though, it all worked out just fine.  Lucky made a last minute decision to travel to China and do a little racing, and reportedly had the time of his life there. He competed in a sprint ski race on trucked-in snow, and was in a running race too. In addition, he got to visit the Great Wall and a whole bunch of other cool stuff that he's going to tell us all about when he comes back to Alaska in August. He has put up a half-report on his blog at: http://lukasebner90.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-tall-german-in-country-full-of-short.html

Here's a picture I found on his Facebook page for which he didn't write an explanation, so I'm not really sure what's going on and I'll have to make a few assumptions in my caption:

Here's the awards ceremony for Lukas' road racing debut in China.  Lucky had a good race, finishing sixth out of seven runners. Sadly, money was only awarded to the top three finishers. It was a close race for sixth, though, with Lucky just edging out the seventh place finisher by inches. (Seventh place does not recieve an award.)

All in all, I'm very jealous.  I fly on airplanes three or four days every week, and I have never been on an A380. (Nor have I ever been to China.)
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In other news, Alaska continues to break all-time records for warm weather and sunshine this summer. It's hard to tell the difference between Alaska and Florida these days.  At the moment, I'm writing this from Kodiak Island where the previous record temperature for this day was 78 degrees F, fifty years ago.  But that record was broken this afternoon. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/25/19132767-alaska-sweating-through-brutal-blast-of-heat?lite
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And in other news, I'm sorry to say that all of you who were not in Anchorage over the weekend missed out on Primus' show Saturday night at the Moose's Tooth.
http://www.adn.com/2013/06/23/2950075/primus-concert-at-mooses-tooth.html

Recognize anybody you know here?

Summertime Rolls

The UAA Ski Team has scattered to the ends of the earth in June, leaving me with little to report.  But here's the latest: 

I heard a rumor that Lucky has seen nothing but rain since he left Alaska last month. I have two sets of friends who both went to Europe for bike trips in the last month and they both came back to tell me that Europe is "pretty much flooded out". Earlier this week, I guess Lucky had finally had enough so he got on a jet and flew to China to do a little ski racing.  No, I'm not kidding.  Lucky says he's going to update his blog daily, but that was a few days ago and we've heard nothing since.  I guess he didn't bother to read any newspapers any time in the past few years; everyone knows the Chinese government isn't too psyched about "bloggers".  In time, I'm sure we'll hear all about the trip from Lucky.  In the meantime, you can check for updates from him at http://lukasebner90.blogspot.com/

Lasse is staying staying busy searching out vertical relief for his training missions in Copenhagen.  His latest dream has come true: Marine's buddies in Villard de Lans are going to let Lasse hang out with them next fall, so Lasse moves to France on August 1.  I have a suggestion for Lasse's mom: Don't speak any more Danish with Lasse this summer.  Stick to French and make him deal with it. http://www.lassetilol.com/

I think I saw some photos recently hinting that Marine is, or was, somewhere in the Mediterranean, catching a few rays and splashing around in the ocean.

Viktor's in heaven in Sweden, training 5x/day with his training buddies. Hard intervals for breakfast every day. http://viktorbrannmark.com/

I went for a little run and some strength training a couple weeks ago with Coach K, Davis and new UAA skiers Alex Loan and Andrew Arnold.  Those guys are getting together from time to time around Anchorage for some workouts.

Patricia is in Switzerland for the summer.  The Swiss are very secretive, so of course I have no idea what Pati is up to.

Former UAA skier Kjetil Hagtvedt Dammen has joined Thomas Alsgaard's Team Leaseplan Go for another year of professional racing and will again be trying to win Worldloppet marathons this coming winter.  http://www.langrenn.com/-jeg-maa-holde-igjen.5221733-1743.html

Cara is jumping out of helicopters again this summer and battling raging infernos in the Canadian wilderness.

Brandon has been splashing around in a boat in the Carribean recently, but I assume he's back to Anchorage by now.

And the biggest news of all:  Assistant coach Tor found himself a new job as a counselor at Service High School in Anchorage.  He has been looking for a job like this for a while, and is happy to finally land his dream job.  And even bigger news: he and Rhianne are going to have a baby next winter.  Needless to say, Tor will be glad to have a job that keeps him closer to home instead of flying all around the country chasing the ski scene.  Congratulations to Tor and Rhianne!

As for me, despite the record-breaking heat and sunshine that we've been having in Alaska lately, I took a little trip to south Florida for work last week. I managed to rent a bike while I was there and did some of the hottest bike riding I've ever done.  Here are a few pictures:

Two weeks ago, there was good skiing at Turnagain. But a lot of snow has melted since then.

No better place to be.

Biking to Key West, Florida. Want to ride across a lot of bridges?  The Florida Keys is your place. This bridge is seven miles long. There were a few islands along the way, too.  On one of them, I accidentally ran over an iguana. Sorry!

109 degrees F and crazy-humid.  You Euros want to know how hot that is?  Google it. This was a 100 mile+ day for me.  I'm proud of that.

The Everglades is one cool-ass swamp!  I recommend checking it out for yourself if you get a chance.

 

Another 100+ degree day on the bike in the Everglades.

 

Caution: Jaguars crossing. They must have been hiding out because I didn't see any.

 

Wherever I go biking, I like to ride over passes.  Stelvio, Galibier... Give me a pass and I'll ride over it. In the Everglades, it's Rock Reef Pass.  The first foot was tough, but I started finding my groove in the second foot, and I totally rocked foot number three!

No matter how much fun I have traveling, I always love flying back to Alaska. Here's Blackstone Bay in Prince William Sound, and that's Burns Glacier at center right.

Lasse's Last Day in Alaska

I remember a few summers ago when former UAA head coach Trond Flagstad told me, "I just signed a guy from COPENHAGEN(!), where it's flat and it usually rains during the winter. But he seems like he's really organized, really serious, and he'll be UAA's first ever Danish skier! This should be interesting."

And it was interesting.  During his first fall training season in Alaska, it quickly became clear that Lasse's training venues back home had been very flat.  He was a super strong roller ski double poler, but he wasn't so much in his element when it came to going up long steep hills. During his first racing season here, he won a tough head-to-head battle for second place at the Western Region championships behind Lukas (who was region champion that year), but otherwise was far enough off the pace of the best RMISA skiers that he didn't qualify for NCAA's. 

The following year, Lasse spent much of the summer in Anchorage, occasionally joining Davis or me or the APU Ski Team for workouts, trying to spend as much time as he could climbing, climbing, climbing. And he made a significant improvement from the previous year, qualifying for NCAA's, for example. 

As Lasse's college results improved, his FIS points were naturally going down, too, and although I don't know how he ranked among Danes when he came to Alaska, it became clear that his FIS points had now become better than any other Danish skiers.

Lasse spent last summer in Alaska again, continuing to work on improving his ability to climb hills and it paid off last winter when he was usually in the top ten in the RMISA college races.  At NCAA's, Lasse was 8th in the individual start race (along with his teammates - all the UAA men were in the top ten that day). But he also qualified to represent Denmark at the World Championships in Italy last winter, and it became clear that he is now the top-ranked Danish skier and has a good chance of representing Denmark at next year's Olympics in Sochi.

When Lasse came to UAA, he already had an undergraduate law degree from the University of Copenhagen.  At UAA, he completed a Master's of Business Administration.  His original plan was to go back to Copenhagen after this year, call it quits with the ski racing, get a law degree, and presumably make a career out of suing the pants off all the Denmarkians.  But he got a little too fast at skiing over the past three years, and now he can't pass up the opportunity to train for one more year, try to lock down a spot on the Danish Olympic Team, and compete in Sochi before moving on to new challenges.

As far as I can tell, Lasse has accomplished the things he's accomplished through simple hard work, persistence, and refusal to compromise.  He got As in school, and he showed up for every workout and race prepared, focused, on time, with his gear in order, and ready to put everything he had into the workout or the race. And Lasse makes few mistakes. He knows how to use his brain before and during races, and thus is able to get as much as possible out of his efforts. Because of these attributes and his self-confidence, he was a very strong leader for our team.

Lasse has spent the past few weeks in Fairbanks visiting friends, going on adventures, and training 20-30 hours per week. There was a plane waiting to take him home to Copenhagen on Thursday, and he had stored all his stuff in my Tobydome (so named after Toby Schwoerer, former UAA star skier who spent the occasional night camped out there in the storage building behind my house ten years ago).  Lasse had one last morning to kill in Anchorage before fetching his gear out of the Tobydome and heading to the airport for his flight at mid-day; he offered to take me out for one last morning of backcountry skiing adventure at one of his favorite Alaska powder stashes.  I was happy to be invited along.

One of several launch launching-off points that morning.

Lasse recommended we ski the back wall of this bowl.

There was nothing wrong with the weather.

About 20 minutes after this photo was taken, Lasse received a marriage proposal from an enamored tourist who'd been watching his snowy exploits from afar. But Lasse had to decline - he has other things he has to focus on right now...

Next year, Lasse is trying to secure a base of operations somewhere in Europe for his fall Olympic training. As he spends a few final months preparing for one more winter racing season, you can follow his adventures at http://www.lassetilol.com/  Good luck, Lasse!

Two summers' worth of sun

For this last two summers, it seems Anchorage has had nothing but cold rain. This past weekend made up for it.

A friend spotted me in traffic the other day and sent this photo.

If the snow turns out to be too soft for skating, at least you get a motorcycle ride out of it.

There are a lot of options here.

Groomed skiing has ended for the year at Hatcher Pass.

I think this fox wanted to come home with us.

231 days...

...of winter.

According to the local television station, winter ended yesterday, after 231 days.

 

It has snowed here in Anchorage for the past couple of days but it hasn't amounted to much, so we drove an hour north to Hatcher Pass this morning, where we knew we could find some good skiing.  We spent a couple hours on our classic skis, skiing on hard wax.  It was definitely one of the nicest days of the "winter".

  

Nothing wrong with the grooming this morning.

Powder snow / hard wax conditions.

When we started skiing there were only a few cars in the parking lot, but by the time we were done the parking lot was completely full of skiers, and more were arriving and parking down the road.

Powerline again

I went skiing at Powerline Pass again yesterday.  Brandon Brewster was headed out skiing the same time as me. We had a nice little workout.