ITA Showdown: Nordic v. Alpine

A couple of weeks ago when combing my fellow ITA athletes' blogs I realized that I was not alone in my new digs in the Vail Valley. I have never crossed paths with another ITA athlete unless you count going to middle school with Nicole De Yong back in the day. Meeting Sylvan Ellefson, Vail hometown boy and nordic shredder, was kind of like meeting a relative you know you're supposed to know but don't remember in person. I knew about him but I didn't know him. Not that it mattered, we struck up a conversation quickly and started trading stories about our respective plans for the winter. Pretty soon we were comparing our community service programs, and I learned a lot about how and where I could best serve my new community on behalf of ITA.

I frequently meet Sylvan at the gym, as we work out at generally the same time every day. During these sessions I have realized a few consistent themes in our workouts and our different physical, um, capabilities.

Sylvan and his nordic friends are better than I (and likely as an extension most alpine skiers) at:
- all things aerobic
- any ab workout
- arm/shoulder workouts
- turning a recovery workout into an extremely painful experience
- did I mention the ab workouts?

I have them in:
- jumping

I wasn't harboring any illusions that I would be able to hold a candle against a nordic skier in an aerobic exercise, but I was pretty surprised to see how many upper body sets they were putting into their routines. I would be doing an ab routine which I thought was pretty hard, only to look over and see Sylvan's group doing essentially the same exercise, only with a weight belt. I felt like I was in a gym full of skinny meat heads with the number of dumbbells that were flying around. Luckily there was a plyometric power output measuring machine in the room allowing me to salvage some dignity. Not that we were competing or anything.

Long story short: alpine skiers can jump high, and not much else.

Pulleys attach to the vest for added weight, we had it at 110lbs. Sylvan getting ready to jump.

Getting a foot of air never felt so difficult

Nothing says fun like double peace signs!

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

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!

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!

End of Summer = Fall = Ski Season is Near

The end of the summer is officially here. Earlier this week the temperature in DC dropped to the low 60s and has dropped off considerably.

The summer in recap has been very fulfilling. Skiing in Italy/Switzerland and Chile were both very productive camps, I learned a lot about my new coaches and we are now on the same page with what needs to be done in my skiing this fall. I recently came back from my second trip to AK this summer (a rarity) allowing my time back home to be less hectic and more enjoyable. The BGC has been a great venue to work with again, the staff and of course the kids are high energy and are game for pretty much anything I throw at them.

DC has been a good home to me this past 5 or so months but it's time to start looking forward to the ski season and what it holds. Early reports are that the first training may be as early as October 17th in Loveland, CO. This is about 2 weeks earlier than I started last year so it has come as a bit of surprise but I am ready to strap on the boards and start making the final preps for the upcoming season. I need to do a final run to the Bat Cave (my storage unit in NH) to swap work clothes for more ski equipment before I head West.

It's ski swap time so if you are thinking about skiing this year and you don't want to get totally hammered on prices make sure to hit one up. There is almost always something you need that can be found at a swap. Here is a link to some in VT, enjoy!

http://www.skimaven.com/post/its-ski-swap-time-heres-the-updated-list-of-2011-vermont-ski-swaps/

Chilean Pics

Setting up training

View from the top of the course, a bit soft that day

Our condo, from the spin bike

Supercoach Ian Lochhead moving the video onto the computer for analysis  later

Sun starting to go down....wait for it

Watching a jump sesh taking advantage of the sunset

Obligatory Chilean sunset pic

One more

Clips from Chile

Below is a short clip from two sets of training days over the past week.

As you will see the beginning of the trip started out quite sunny. Now the weather is significantly different. The snow is actually still pretty good for training, but the bad weather has made for some long days. Sunset pics to follow, once the clouds lift (if ever).




Congrats to ITA Alum Sarah Groff for qualifying for London in triathalon, BOOM!