Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Wiking Inwasion

This weekend a couple of Norse skiers descended upon Loveland to train with Team Leever and myself. The training surface in Loveland has continued to impress and has remained rock hard, allowing for a serious spike in intensity when college boy turned World Cup master Leif Kristian Haugen showed up, fresh off his race in Sölden last week. Another Team Leever staple, Andreas Haug, was in attendance as was Norwegian wunderkind and DU freshman Espen Lysdahl.

English is the language of choice when it's just Haug and I, even if I make fun of him for not pronouncing his "V's" correctly (he's nice enough not to mention that I can't speak any Norwegian). However when I'm sitting on a chairlift with 3 wikings and they choose to speak in their native tongue I'm better off just putting my head down or laughing when I think one of them has made a joke. After a while they would usually take pity on me and go back to English. Nice guys.

Back to skiing, it's always good to train with better skiers as they act as a marker against how awesome you think you are. Nothing makes a skier focus in training like the fear of getting blown out by a training partner. Leif set the tone for the weekend on the first run by shedding all of his training clothing and ripping in his race suit. The intensity changed immediately as I realized that if I wanted to stay with him I'd have to go "full strip" to have any accurate comparison of my skiing. Everyone else in the group got into it and by the 2nd run we were all down to just our race suits.

The weekend ended up being a success, I skied well and even posted some top times. It was great to validate what I have been working on the summer and this fall training block. It was also helpful to hear from some top level skiers what they were working on and what they though was going to make them faster this season. Leif's answer: intensity.


Peter, Espen, Andreas, me, Leif, Dan

Sunday, October 16, 2011

A Good Road Trip: Touchdown Jesus and Blizzaks

Wow. I'm exhausted.

I arrived today in Vail, CO, fresh off a 3000 road trip that originated in DC and took me through New England before bringing me out West. I haven't done a cross country trip since I headed out to college in the fall of 2004. That time I was accompanied by my best friend and former supercoach Lionel Yarmon, and we had a great time passing through the Lower 48 en route to Massachussetts. We made a rule to play golf at least once every day, and then changed it to playing golf in every state. This time it was a little different. I was by myself and in full hammer mode, at least most of the time. The trip was a success, I arrived safe and sound, but I still made time to have a couple of fun experiences along the way.

About halfway into the State of Ohio I realized that I would need snow tires once I got to Colorado. My Passat has really nice performance summer tires (from the previous owner) but they are horrible in the snow. I was able to make it through last spring without too many slide outs but even then it was pretty sketchy, and trying to make it through a whole winter without proper tires isn't a possibility. So with lots and lots (and lots) of time on my hands I began trying to figure out the best way (read: cheapest) way to get the best snow tires with the least amount of hassle. Fast forward an hour later and I'm calling my older brother Nicholas to ask him to look up Craigslist in every major town I was passing through. About this time I started passing some of those massive distribution buildings for companies that only exist in the Midwest, and a light bulb went off in my head. I had him bag the ridiculous task of meta searching Craigslist (only a brother would do this) and instead asked him to look up headquarters of online tire stores. Bingo. Tirerack.com's WHQ is located in South Bend, Indiana. As it turned out I was able to pick up tires at the factory store, thereby getting internet prices on tires without the cost of shipping! Let your imagination run wild with how many high fives I was giving myself at this point. At 2am I pulled into the Super 8 located a half mile away from Tirerack.com's warehouse, ready to score some sweet Blizzak's at rock bottom prices.

The next morning at I showed up at the super warehouse ready to get my tire buying on. The only problem was that I wasn't the only person who had this ingenious idea, enough so that I had about an hour and a half wait. Time spent not driving is neither productive nor fun on a road trip, but I was able to turn this into a positive as Notre Dame was about 10 minutes away and having never been there I now had a chance to check out the place and even get in a workout. I took in the sites with a run around the unreal athletic complex, saw the golden dome, and said hi to Touchdown Jesus. I got a real kick out of the fact that the convocation and athletic center are in the same building next to the stadium. Church and football at Notre Dame are literally one. Anyway, after my Rudy reenactment I was back at Tirerack, picked up my tires and was on my way.

You just never know what is going to happen on a road trip and what is going to qualify as a successful day. I was also able to catch up with some of the crew of the DC BGC which was great, I miss those guys.Tomorrow morning I'm skiing at Loveland, a couple days of directed free skiing before hitting the gates. I'm super pumped on starting my final fall training block and almost as pumped to know that I'll be sporting some sweet shoes on my car along the way. Good to be out West!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Cold Days in the Wrong Ways

On Friday the summer heat in DC not only turned down but it turned off. The city was down right cold, in the 40s and 50s. I'm a lot happier when it is 20 degrees and I have a winter jacket on than when it is 45 and I am in a t-shirt. This morning I spoke with someone in Fairbanks, Alaska who told me it is 54 degrees there. At the time in DC is was 53. I can't think of a time I've ever heard of DC being colder than Alaska.

Colder temperatures usually bring good news (as I mentioned in my last post) because it means even colder temperatures in the mountains. Unfortunately Loveland, CO, the first training site of the year in the US, has a high today of 82 degrees. I am supposed to be strapping on boards and training at Loveland in exactly 2 weeks and I am a little skeptical about this actually happening. Nonetheless, I got an email from my coaches last night say full steam ahead, that Oct. 17 is still happening....we'll see.

In other news, this week of football was particularly exciting as my Cincinnati Bengals and Detroit Lions (hey, when you're from Alaska you can choose anybody) both won in thrilling fashion. The Bengals knocked off the previously undefeated Buffalo Bills while the Detroit Lions snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by mounting the largest comeback against Dallas in the history of the Cowboys. And, as a little schadenfreude icing on the cake the Boston Red Sox completed the largest September collapse ever September in what had to be my favorite channel changing baseball watching moment ever. What a week!

Here is a link to the alpine buyer's guide from Ski Racing. Happy October everyone!