We left the hotel for the mountain around 7:30 this morning. We made it home at 6:30 p.m. That's an IPC World Cup super-combined race for you. One run of super-G and one of slalom somehow adds up to a very, very long day on the hill. It was capped off with some delicious fish tacos from Dos Gringos in Carbondale.
I actually had a pretty good day today. My super-G run was lackluster and I finished 11th, but I had the day's third-fastest slalom run to move up to 6th place. The slalom was so choppy and rutted that it took out a lot of my competition, but I'm pleased that I made it down the run without any major errors.
I need to ski tomorrow's super-G a bit more dynamically than I did today.
Sorry for the brief post tonight. I'm already past my intended bedtime, but I needed to stick to the plan and write something.
Showing posts with label buttermilk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buttermilk. Show all posts
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
paralympic blog, day -4
Yesterday I ran the Buttermilk downhill course in a factored time of 1:16.06. Today my time was 1:18.02 — a full two seconds slower. Many other skiers skied faster today, or about the same. I didn't make any major mistakes in my run. The coaches had nothing but good things to say about my skiing.
And yet I was slow. Not just a little bit slow, but 11th-place slow. 5.7-seconds-out-of-first-place slow. Who knows how these things happen? Did we miss the wax? Is the structure of my downhill ski's base no good for this type of snow? Did I make some big mistakes that weren't immediately obvious?
The answer to all three of these questions is probably yes. (In fact, video analysis confirms the third answer.) Now it's a question of addressing each issue and trying to reclaim some of the speed I so rightfully (self-righteously?) deserve, in time for tomorrow's super-combined and Friday's super-G.
Speed is a weird, elusive thing. That's about as profound a statement as it's possible to make about ski racing sometimes.
p.s. Congratulations to teammate Alana Nichols on winning her first of many World Cup downhill overall globes today.
And yet I was slow. Not just a little bit slow, but 11th-place slow. 5.7-seconds-out-of-first-place slow. Who knows how these things happen? Did we miss the wax? Is the structure of my downhill ski's base no good for this type of snow? Did I make some big mistakes that weren't immediately obvious?
The answer to all three of these questions is probably yes. (In fact, video analysis confirms the third answer.) Now it's a question of addressing each issue and trying to reclaim some of the speed I so rightfully (self-righteously?) deserve, in time for tomorrow's super-combined and Friday's super-G.
Speed is a weird, elusive thing. That's about as profound a statement as it's possible to make about ski racing sometimes.
p.s. Congratulations to teammate Alana Nichols on winning her first of many World Cup downhill overall globes today.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
paralympic blog, day -5
First off today, a link. (I guess you need to be logged into a Facebook account in order to view this.) Susan Burgstiner, who as a steering committee member of SkiTAM is one of our team's biggest supporters, shot and posted this nice little glimpse into a U.S. Adaptive Team training session at Vail last week. Here it is.
We raced downhill today under the fierce Colorado sun, a very springlike day. The organizers decided not to groom the race hill last night after two days of training on the same track. This is how it's normally done — one doesn't want the snow softening up too much at night; it's better to let the track get firmer with each day of racing. In this case, it led to a pretty bumpy track that the standing skiers didn't have much trouble with but some of the sitting skiers found pretty difficult. There were lots of DNFs. I managed to power through the bumps and ripples and finish six or seven tenths faster than in yesterday's training run, good enough for sixth place. Joe absolutely killed it today, winning by almost two seconds over Germany's Thomas Nolte and Frenchman Yohann Taberlet. I was just two hundredths behind my teammate CDY. We'll do it all again tomorrow at 11 a.m., and who knows where the top skiers will end up with another roll of the dice?
We raced downhill today under the fierce Colorado sun, a very springlike day. The organizers decided not to groom the race hill last night after two days of training on the same track. This is how it's normally done — one doesn't want the snow softening up too much at night; it's better to let the track get firmer with each day of racing. In this case, it led to a pretty bumpy track that the standing skiers didn't have much trouble with but some of the sitting skiers found pretty difficult. There were lots of DNFs. I managed to power through the bumps and ripples and finish six or seven tenths faster than in yesterday's training run, good enough for sixth place. Joe absolutely killed it today, winning by almost two seconds over Germany's Thomas Nolte and Frenchman Yohann Taberlet. I was just two hundredths behind my teammate CDY. We'll do it all again tomorrow at 11 a.m., and who knows where the top skiers will end up with another roll of the dice?
Monday, March 01, 2010
paralympic blog, day -6
Some of you reading this have been checking my blog weekly or even daily, hoping I would finally get my act together and write something (hi, Grandma & Grandpa!). More likely, you're catching this on an RSS reader, Facebook, or Google Buzz.
I am going to try something here. I'm going to attempt to write something in this space every single day from now through the end of the Vancouver Paralympic Games, on March 21. It will be good for my head, and some of you might even be interested to hear about my experiences, opinions, &c.
So. The Paralympic Opening Ceremony isn't until March 12, but we will arrive at the Village in Whistler on March 6 to begin settling in and do a little last-minute training. So that makes today six days out from the beginning of the Paralympic experience, and a good day to start the daily blogging for two other reasons, as well.
To wit: (1), Last night was the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics. People have put that warmup competition behind them and are ready to start thinking about the main event. (Ha ha.) And (2), this is the eve of the final World Cup race series of our season.
We're staying in Carbondale, Colorado this week, racing downhill, super-G and super-combi half an hour away at Aspen's little sister mountain, Buttermilk. (No working people in the Aspen area can afford to live in Aspen itself anymore, so they all live in these peripheral towns that are named after minerals, like Basalt, Carbondale, Marble or Redstone.)
Yesterday and today at Buttermilk we have had what's called "downhill training." But don't let the name fool you: this is really more like a race than anything else. We get to inspect the race course — the same one we will be racing tomorrow and Wednesday, when it counts — and then run it, with everything exactly the same as it will be on race day: timing, race bibs, blue dye, the whole shebang. Only one run per athlete per day, just like race day.
At least, that's the idea. But of course, how can one day really be exactly like another day? That's not how the world works. The weather changes. The track changes, gets bumpier or icier or softer. People get sick, or well. People wake up on different sides of the bed.
For those reasons, training run results can be a pretty poor predictor of the actual race results. Who knows whether someone is holding back in training, or whether someone who crashed in both training runs will keep it together on race day and be the fastest one down the hill?
All this said, my training runs have gone well. Yesterday I was sixth, a little over two seconds slower than the leader, my teammate Joe Tompkins. And today I was second, just 0.11 seconds behind today's leader, Germany's Martin Braxenthaler. Downhill is a game of hundredths of a second, and that's particularly true on this course, which is so easy that there's no room for error. Lose half a second, and you might find yourself five places back.
The plan for tomorrow's race, then, is this: try to do exactly what I did today, and try not to make any mistakes. (And maybe try to beat some of those people with Wikipedia articles about them.) Easy, right?
I am going to try something here. I'm going to attempt to write something in this space every single day from now through the end of the Vancouver Paralympic Games, on March 21. It will be good for my head, and some of you might even be interested to hear about my experiences, opinions, &c.
So. The Paralympic Opening Ceremony isn't until March 12, but we will arrive at the Village in Whistler on March 6 to begin settling in and do a little last-minute training. So that makes today six days out from the beginning of the Paralympic experience, and a good day to start the daily blogging for two other reasons, as well.
To wit: (1), Last night was the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics. People have put that warmup competition behind them and are ready to start thinking about the main event. (Ha ha.) And (2), this is the eve of the final World Cup race series of our season.
We're staying in Carbondale, Colorado this week, racing downhill, super-G and super-combi half an hour away at Aspen's little sister mountain, Buttermilk. (No working people in the Aspen area can afford to live in Aspen itself anymore, so they all live in these peripheral towns that are named after minerals, like Basalt, Carbondale, Marble or Redstone.)
Yesterday and today at Buttermilk we have had what's called "downhill training." But don't let the name fool you: this is really more like a race than anything else. We get to inspect the race course — the same one we will be racing tomorrow and Wednesday, when it counts — and then run it, with everything exactly the same as it will be on race day: timing, race bibs, blue dye, the whole shebang. Only one run per athlete per day, just like race day.
At least, that's the idea. But of course, how can one day really be exactly like another day? That's not how the world works. The weather changes. The track changes, gets bumpier or icier or softer. People get sick, or well. People wake up on different sides of the bed.
For those reasons, training run results can be a pretty poor predictor of the actual race results. Who knows whether someone is holding back in training, or whether someone who crashed in both training runs will keep it together on race day and be the fastest one down the hill?
All this said, my training runs have gone well. Yesterday I was sixth, a little over two seconds slower than the leader, my teammate Joe Tompkins. And today I was second, just 0.11 seconds behind today's leader, Germany's Martin Braxenthaler. Downhill is a game of hundredths of a second, and that's particularly true on this course, which is so easy that there's no room for error. Lose half a second, and you might find yourself five places back.
The plan for tomorrow's race, then, is this: try to do exactly what I did today, and try not to make any mistakes. (And maybe try to beat some of those people with Wikipedia articles about them.) Easy, right?
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