Olympic chatter around the water cooler

So, to state the obvious, the US Nordic Combined team has been awesome, and the 1-2 finish yesterday was incredible!

This morning a co-worker of mine, who I've worked with for several years and might have an extremely vague understanding of the skiing that I do, came up to me and said verbatim - "Did you watch that race last night? That was awesome when Demong dropped that Austrian on the last climb! I guess he didn't want to get passed on the last downhill by the Austrians and their fast skis again (reference to the relay)." This guy is a great guy, but an astute endurance sports aficionado, he is not, and to throw out a nordic combined skier's name from memory and use a term like "dropped on the last climb" and remembering that the Austrians seemed to have better glide on the downhills in the relay was impressive, not bad for a Red Sox fan! I was absolutely speechless, I almost didn't know how to respond...I've also heard several people analyzing tactics in skier cross, short track speedskating and just about anything else you can think of that people won't talk about again for four more years.

I also had a conversation with one guy who said something along the lines of "yeah, I hadn't heard much about Bode Miller since he bombed in 2006." Unfortunately, I guess winning world cup overall titles doesn't count for much...

Regardless it's great to hear that people are watching the olympics and it will be a bummer to see the games end (although, my DVR might need a break).

State champs and tough kids...

Winning a high school state championship is a big deal in any circumstance. It's something I never accomplished, however, several of my friends have, and most of them still wax poetic about that moment like it was yesterday.

I don't think anyone would argue however, that winning a state championship under these circumstances is unbelievable and unthinkable. I remember being a high school senior and being stressed about everything (most of which I found out later in life, wasn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things). I couldn't imagine dealing with a situation as awful as this at that age. For these athletes to turn around and give it everything they had a few days later to honor their teammate in the only way they could is truly remarkable.

At the end of the day, whether it's as a fan, coach or competitor, sports are really just an awesome escape from reality. While the HF-L team winning these state titles certainly doesn't make anything right about this tragic situation, if it made everyone in that community think about something else, something positive, for even one split-second, then sports did their job this week.

Busy times ahead

It was nice to be in Rochester this weekend to get some things organized because the next few weeks will be pretty chaotic. Next weekend, I'll be in Saratoga for the NYS nordic championships. The following weekend, I'm driving to Barrie, ON Friday night for the Fischer Loppet on Saturday. Then driving back to Rochester Saturday night, then I'm turning around to fly to Poland for work on that Sunday, where I'll be for at least a week.

So, in summary, I'm going to enjoy the next few hours on the couch relaxing, because I won't have a normal weekend at home again for another month.

Nordic Olympic musings...

So, this post might not be relevant to people that don't read fasterskier.com as religiously as I do, but anyways, here goes...Within the US biathlon and US nordic ski team organizations, there was a lot of talk coming into these olympics about stuff like "we don't care about anything but the olympics and winning medals." While I've never competed in biathlon or xc skiing at an international level, I still have an opinion on this. This seems like an unrealistic expectation. It's great to work towards winning medals, but it's another thing to consider the Olympics a failure without winning medals, at least in these two sports. The bottom line is that the US has had 4 biathlon world cup podiums in the last 12 months (which were the first podiums in like 20 years), norway and germany have more than 4 world cup podiums in a typical world cup weekend. The US xc team hasn't had a world cup podium this year, and one last year.

In comparison, the US Nordic Combined team broke through with their first medal in the first race in Vancouver. The US NoCo team has 3 world champions on it, along with a slew of world cup podiums and a couple guys who were close to winning world cup overall championships. The consistency of excellent results are a large part of the reason that those guys had 3 in the top 6 and are now the heavy favorite for the team event on Tuesday. All of that international success happened before finally breaking through with a medal.

I am really routing for Tim Burke or Jeremy Teela to win a medal in the mass start biathlon tomorrow, and they both have a chance, but to EXPECT it, is unfair and unwarranted. The same goes for the US xc team. Already, there has been high-water marks in both sports with Teela finishing 9th in the sprint and Kikkan Randall finishing 8th in the womens classic sprint. Yet, if you believe what some folks are saying, it's been an epic failure so far.

Here's a major difference in - it is EVERYTHING in Europe to win at the Olympics in some of these sports. A biathlete in Germany has been named Sportsman/woman of the year several times. If a US biathlete won an an international race, even an Olympic race, they probably wouldn't even be mentioned on sportscenter. In fact, yesterday, with the Olympics in full swing, the joke that is the "worldwide leader in sports" dedicated 24 hours of almost exclusive coverage to a golfer who hasn't golfed in several months, covering a story that the us weekly and the national enquirer should have been covering. Conversely, when Norway didn't finish in the top 25 in the mens 15k skate, every news outlet in the country was writing articles about how wax techs and coaches needed to be fired over that catastrophe. It was a front-page story everywhere and there wasn't a Norweigan in the world that wasn't following that race. That's a significant difference. Another difference is depth. The #2 ranked sprinter in the world is watching these olympics from Norway as he wasn't selected to the team because the sprint event was classic as opposed freestyle. Let's reflect on that - the #2 ranked sprinter in the world did not even make his own national team. On the US team, they had one person in each event with even a remote chance of medalling, and if those folks had bad days or crashed or whatever, it was seen as a bad day for the entire team, even though there has been some great performances by some of these Olympic rookies for the US.

So, why are the national governing bodies of these sports actually expecting medals? It takes time, this isn't like snowboarding, where we invented the sport, the US is playing catch-up. If we're serious about competing internationally in these sports, we need to get more athletes competing at a young age. It can't be a sport for kids that couldn't make their high school basketball team, it needs to be the sport that good athletes want to do. Until then, there won't be a consistent flow of talent and we'll always be dependent on one athlete in each event having the day of their life...

Ok, my rant is over now....

I stand corrected and apologies to NBC

So far, the NBC Olympic coverage has been awesome. It's legit endurance sport coverage when Al Trautwig is on the call, and he's doing all the nordic events for NBC. Plus, they are showing most events live (or mostly live) and in their entirety, in the afternoon coverage.

Funny story about Al Trautwig - he used to do play-by-play for the Yankees when I was a young (back when the Yanks were on MSG and Donnie Baseball was the king of NY). My first memory of watching nordic skiing on TV was the 4 x 10km relay race in at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehaimer, which was an epic battle between Norway and Italy. I distinctly remember thinking, this is a really cool sport and it must be legit because the Yankee's announcer is the commentator!

NorAm Cup races in LP

Last weekend was pretty epic. Jason and I drove up to Lake Placid on Thursday afternoon for two NorAm Cup races in Lake Placid. With the Olympics starting up in Vancouver, there was a lot of buzz going on in LP. In addition to LP being the site of two Olympics and the defining "thing" about the whole area, there are also 12 athletes from that area who are competing in Vancouver, including three biathletes.

We raced a Sprint Friday and a pursuit on Saturday. It was a good benchmark for me, as most of the guys I raced against out in Minnesota were also in these races, so it was an opportunity to go toe-to-toe with some of the top US biathletes again. In general, I finished where I expected too, but it was encouraging to see the time gaps back from the winner were significantly lower than the races out in Minnesota back in December.

Following Saturday's race, I was also randomly selected for a USADA doping control. Which involved me going directly from the finish line into a room to be drug tested and fill out some paperwork. It turned out to be a much longer process than I expected (about 45 minutes), but it was a pretty smooth process, and seemed to have some checks and balances to make sure that the athletes are being protected.

Sunday morning, we went on an awesome classic ski at Mt Van Hovenberg with the JackedUp Old Man showing us the "real Porter mtn loop" and not that sissy one they use in the Loppet.

Make sure to check out the nordic sports during the Olympics! Despite what NBC and ESPN would like you to believe, there's more to the Olympics than Lindsay Vonn and figure skating!

Olympic blog

So, a good friend from my hometown (my next-door-neighbor growing up), works for the USOC and has been to the last few Olympic games, supporting various sports. To provide some insight into her Olympic experience and what goes on behind the scenes, she'll be writing a blog about her experiences in Vancouver. She's an awesome athlete in her own right, and I think that adds to her appreciation and passion for the Olympic Movement.
Check it out - www.RMasoninWhistler.blogspot.com

Lake Placid Loppet

This past Saturday, I competed in the Lake Placid Loppet 50km skate. Chad and Jason also did the race, which would be the first 50km skate race for all three of us. The LP Loppet has quite a reputation for it's course, which mirrors the one used at the 1980 Olympics and includes a lot of hills (and some big ones). Essentially, the 50km course is two 25km laps with the bulk of the climbing happening on the first 15 km of each lap.

With a race of that length, there are a variety of other things that we needed to worry about, including nutrition. Luckily, we had a great support crew. Nancy, Jane and Chad's parents were all on course feeding us fresh bottles and gels. This was very important, because it enabled us to blow through all the feed zones and carry our own bottles. So, a huge thanks to them for helping out (and ringing cowbells)!!

Not being bashful, the three of us all hopped onto the front line in the mass start area. The beginning of the race was really fast. About 15 minutes into the race 12 or so skiers were pretty much together, then three guys went off the front of that group at the beginning of the main portion of the Porter Mountain climb. Once we got into the main climb, things broke up further and by the time we we came back through the stadium at the 15k mark, almost everyone in that initial group of 12 or so was skiing alone. I didn't see anyone the rest of the race, although it turns out there were two guys less than a minute behind me. Personally, I felt that I skied the flats and V2 sections of the course pretty fluidly and just tried to survive the steep sections. In the end, Jason just missed the podium finishing 4th, and all three of us ended up in the top 10. So next year, I guess we'll have to stop messing around and go 1-2-3! Another highlight was that Rochester-area skier Carl Johnston made the trip up and had a great race, and provided some guidance to us. He's a wealth of knowledge on these types of races as he's done almost every loppet in the country and several in Europe.

For nutrition, I had a larger than usual breakfast (although not huge) - 1 bagel with PB, two packets of instant oatmeal. During the race, I ended up going through three bottles of different sports drinks and three GU gels (two with Caffeine). I think this was a good strategy as I never felt close to a bonk (although, I was really fried at the end, I think this had more to do with skiing up big hills as opposed to not eating enough or being dehydrated).

Here are some pics that Nancy took from the weekend:

Action shot of Jane ringing her industrial strength cowbell. The PA announcer made several comments thanking Nancy and Jane for rocking the cowbells!

Jason post race talking with Chad's dad and brother (who skied in a college race the following day in LP).
That's me after just passing the 100 meters to go sign. I'm pretty sure I was skiing in slow motion (and potentially not in a straight line) at this point. So, good thing no one had a video camera!

Me at the finish. Going in to the race, I was hoping that I would be close to someone at the end, so we could sprint it out. However, when I came through the tunnel the last time and saw the finish line, I was relieved when I took one last glance over my shoulder and saw no one there. I could coast across the finish line and didn't have to worry about any sprint, I can't imagine that would have ended well, I was totally spent!

Chad hammering it to the finish.

Post race. These three look ready for a beer (which was of course was drank later that night at zig zags and the brew pub)!

I honestly didn't completely know what to expect as I'd never done that distance and I'd never raced a course as demanding as the one up there. Overall, it was a really fun race. In general, I think doing these ski marathons will be something I get in to more and more. Next up, I'm heading back to Lake Placid on Thursday for two NorAm Cup biathlon races this weekend. Time for me to reacquaint myself with my rifle!