Another morning of freeskiing on the downhill piste today, followed by live alpine World Cup-watching on TV. It was mostly sunny again this morning, but windy and colder, and by the afternoon a front had rolled in. Now it's snowing pretty hard and the winds outside are high enough to force closure of many lifts.
There's a saying in ski racing: "If you want snow, hold a downhill." Almost without fail the maxim seems to hold: we roll into town for some speed races, maybe get a few days of training in, and then like clockwork the storm clouds roll in and dump meters of snow on top of the course, forcing delays and cancellations as the course crew and coaches frantically try to clear the race line of excess snow so that we can hold a safe, fair race. We're all really hoping the snow doesn't continue as long as it's been forecast to, that we can get in a training run or two over the next two days and then run our races as scheduled, Wednesday through Saturday.
Showing posts with label training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label training. Show all posts
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
rough day
I'm writing this from Park City, Utah, where we're getting ready for the annual Huntsman Cup races, which run this Friday through Sunday. The rest of the team skied at Deer Valley this morning while I stayed behind tinkering with my monoski. At noon I joined the others at Park City Resort to run some slalom.
We were training on CB's, a long, steep hill that used to host men's World Cup races every year. (I usually like the trail, and I like to say that they named it after me.) The course today was on the steepest part of the run, and the snow was mostly man-made, a contrast from the stuff we've been skiing on in Winter Park. What's more, I was skiing on a new shock absorber and my monoski just didn't feel right. These factors came together to foreground some of the weaknesses in my skiing, and the result was that I had an absolutely awful day of training. I didn't make it through the course once, blowing out or falling several times each run. The coaches kept offering advice, but all I wanted was to be left alone and try and work my way out of the hole I was digging for myself. On days like today it's really hard to make yourself keep skiing when you know it's not going to get any better. All I can do is put today behind me, be glad it was only a training day, and redouble my efforts tomorrow.
(The linguist in me wonders: why redouble? It's not like I've already doubled them...)
We were training on CB's, a long, steep hill that used to host men's World Cup races every year. (I usually like the trail, and I like to say that they named it after me.) The course today was on the steepest part of the run, and the snow was mostly man-made, a contrast from the stuff we've been skiing on in Winter Park. What's more, I was skiing on a new shock absorber and my monoski just didn't feel right. These factors came together to foreground some of the weaknesses in my skiing, and the result was that I had an absolutely awful day of training. I didn't make it through the course once, blowing out or falling several times each run. The coaches kept offering advice, but all I wanted was to be left alone and try and work my way out of the hole I was digging for myself. On days like today it's really hard to make yourself keep skiing when you know it's not going to get any better. All I can do is put today behind me, be glad it was only a training day, and redouble my efforts tomorrow.
(The linguist in me wonders: why redouble? It's not like I've already doubled them...)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)