The view from the lake up to Glacier View after the epic December dump. Lake Wenatchee, Washington. For two days, I was trapped up here with no electricity or water with impassible roads. This little experience made me think of when Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard.
The Cascade Mountains trapped within the horizon of the passing clouds. One 48 hour storm brought 6 feet of snow to the base of Stevens Pass. This made for some epic alpine powder days, but wreaked havoc to the surrounding communities. Power has been out for 10 days and counting to Lake Wenatchee, Plain, and Chumstick Canyon. When outside, you can hear trees snapping under the weight of the snows. The sound is not unlike a muzzle-loader hunter hitting his target. A short, sharp explosion of tree fibers snapping, followed by the rush of timber falling down through the forest that reminds me of a deer dashing through the woods with it's last few breaths of life.
Being home means reconnecting with the old hometown ski club. These days, I race for the Bridger Ski Foundation out of Bozeman, Montana, but I got my start - and still talk to my Leavenworth coaches frequently - from the old neighborhood. Here I got to do a little stride, glide, and double pole with the high school age crew. At the end, Shane Wilder from IcicleTV came out and caught a little bit of the action. You can see Mr. Wilder's work from the little impromptu session here.
With so many trees falling, and 3,800 people directly affected, the County and the Public Utility District have been working overtime, bigtime. Here, a helicopter tries to "shake" out the snow from the overburdened pine tree. You know when public agencies are resorting to practices like these, they are doing all they can to alleviate the situation. A neighbor two houses away was not fortunate. Two giant Douglas Firs came crashing down onto their roof, crushing the structure.
In just a couple day's time, it's off to Salt Lake City Airport I go for the US National Cross-Country Championships. I imagine you can check back here for a personal update when the show comes to an end. Races are scheduled for the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th of January.
After the racing season got off to a slow start due to some upper respiratory infection, I made it back to Central Washington. It's must be something about sleeping back in familiar territory, but the health is coming back strong. After a couple days of running in the foothills of Wenatchee and rollerskis along the mighty Columbia, I headed up to the parent's cabin in the Cascades to get on the real stuff.
Fortunately, winter has recently arrived in the Northwest's mountains. Nearly two feet of the dense "Cascade Cement" fell from the heavens yesterday, with another foot or so on it's way tomorrow. It is so cool to see such big, monster-sized flakes falling from the sky, and feel a part of such a monster storm. With the nordic center up at Stevens Pass up and running right now, I have a great venue to get back on snow and seek the good tidings - and technique and timing of cross-country skiing.
The 5th Graders back in Mr. Peck's class were psyched on their early Christmas present - Toblerone chocolate straight from it's source from across the Atlantic. At twelve pounds of solid triangular Swiss chocolate, honey, and almond nougat, I knew this would be a winner with the young lads and ladies. It's definitely an added bonus to get to spend a little extra time in the classroom.
The man-made loop of snow in Davos last almost
exactly one mile in length. If yesterday is any
guide, this equates to three minutes and thirteen
seconds of full-gasping effort, or roughly five and
one-half minutes at today’s more moderate, consis-
tently repeatable pace.
It’s times like these I remember some characters.
Today is a professor from my University of Utah
days. He was a vertabrea morphologist, meaning
he had a treadmill in the basement of the biology
building where he could research both how effi-
ciently and effectively various animals moved.
Since probably my junior high school days, I’ve
been told the prevailing wisdom is that the bi-ped-
alism of man is a bad design – that it is slow and causes us pain in our knees and back and feet.
Bi-pedalism, I was told, came about due to the tool-use
theory. We finally decided to stand up on our hind legs
so we could free our hands and gaze across the savan-
nah.
Professor Carrier had two difficulties with this theory of
bi-pedalism. One, there seems to be two million missing
years of archaelogical record between when man first
stood on just two feet and when he started incoporating
spears and such into his quiver of survival.
The other question he posed to us – and this is the one
that drove his research and stuck firmly many a student’s
mind – was: If bi-pedalism is such a poor design, why
can we run farther than just about any other animal?
In addition to man’s ability to run on and on and on, Mr.
Carrier was intriqued by the antilocapra americana, or
the North American Pronghorn. He called it a “really cool
animal” which, for the last million years, has roamed the
plains and deserts of North America.
One unique characteristic of Pronghorns are their eyes.
They have 10x vision, which means on a clear night they
can count the rings around Saturn. My professor also
called the pronghorn “the best endurance athlete in the
world.” In biological terms, they have twice the blood, and
their heart and lungs are three times the size of other
mammals of comparative weight.
In performance terms, a North American Pronghorn
can run a marathon in forty minutes.
Instead of bi-pedalism, Dr. Carrier believed the evolu-
tion of a species moved toward greater stamina and
endurance. He believed that if man was fit enough,
and a group hunted together, and the day was hot
enough, that the pronghorn you’d sometimes see out
in the distance on the Salt Lake Salt Flats could be
one tribe’s dinner.
He’d heard of the Tarahumara, and a couple other
select indeginious people who had a tradition of run-
ning down animals, stalking them until they lied down
to die under extreme exhaustion. He and a couple
friends were after the same. They wanted to run the
Pronghorn down.
There was a little madness in his idea. There was
also something beyond the poetry of my prose to his proposal: that the evolution of a species moves
toward greater stamina and endurance and man has
a need to run down – not through speed or guile, but
just basic efficiency and endurance – the best endurance athlete in the world.
Skiing loop after loop on this pile of snow that was
saved from the summer’s sun for six months, just so
the Cologna’s and Tambornino’s of the world could
build more stamina before the real winter come, it at
least comforts the mind by making you think you’re
contributing something to society. I guess you could
say each of us are running down our own antelope.
Something happens when you get dialed in. The field of
vision funnels into the immediate. The repitition of deep inhales and exhale
drown out all other sound. Instead of heading down a path you now are in it. No, that’s not quite right. It’s more than that. You become part of
it, connected. Passersby, the scenery, that smell you loved that morning after
the night’s rain, it might as well not be there. Because now it’s nothing more
than cardboard cutouts tipping over as you roll by.
Motorcyclists tell me they reach this state on the the long
runs when the sun’s since set and the cops have all gone to bed. It’s here where they open up the
throttle north of ninety miles an hour and the engine’s headers drown out all
the sound. The engine’s vibration matches the heart’s rate. It’s here – this
rush of the calm that comes with the absorption of action that fuels the
journey.
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is why I’m still at it - why
we’re all still at it. Maybe what we’re all searching for is this feeling of the
long run, or of clicking into the skis at the startgate and just feeling so dialed in.
To hold onto these moments, maybe that is the day’s lesson.
To find those days when you’re not just traveling along a road, but in it. It’s
like those kodachrome conversations you share with your best friends, where
words reflect from one to another into shared expression. Seek moments like
these out; there’s not so many of them. So appreciate them. Run to them. And
don’t look back.
There’s a saying – that what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger. I don’t believe that. Anger or envy or anything else like this cannot sustain you. I think the
things that try to hold you back harden you with anger and sadness.
No, strength comes from the good things. It’s those perfect
moments with your family and with your friends, and those times where you find
the satisfaction of hard work and a job well done. These are the things to hold onto. It’s for these moments we
incur the tenderest of debts and deepen the well of our strength.
For the second year in a row, I'm spending the last weeks of October with Team Sjusjoen in the Austrian mountain town of Ramsau. It's a tiny town about a half-hour outside Salzburg, Austria (think Mozart's hometown), but awell-traveled location in the cross-country ski world. This is for several reasons. The rolling valley offers great trails for both relaxed skiing and tough efforts on their World Cup courses. Full-pension hotels are everywhere here, and the price is reasonable (40-50 euros a night), especially so for European. And perhaps the most important reason - there's plentiful snow come wintertime. And, thanks to the Dachstein Glacier that sits up among the clouds in this picture, there's skiing year round.
The boys of Team Sjusjoen take a quick break near the end of an afternoon skate session on the glacier. After a pretty epic snowstorm - for October standards, anyways - the sun's back out, and the track is in incredible shape. We share the trails with perhaps 400 other skiers on the busy days. Riding the gondola up the thousand meters to the glacier is to hear more languages in a confined space than I've ever heard. It's almost like a UN conference of cross-country skiers.
Yeah, it's worth the visit to Ramsau if you've ever thought of skiing Europe. The alpine skiing isn't too bad either. Schladming, which sits ten kilometers in the valley floor below, will be home to the 2013 World Championships in Alpine skiing. I'm sure the town will be absolutely off the hook. Much more than anything, Austrians love alpine skiing.
This picture comes from a small hiking trail near our hotel, the Turlwandhutte, that sits right next to the gondola base. This makes getting the first ride to the glacier that leaves promptly at 7:50 a little easier.
Well, I guess that's all I have for you this time. I'm sure with a place like this, though, you'll hear (and see) a little bit more from me in the near future. Until then, Viel Spaß!
Every fall, Swiss Ski holds The Nordic Weekend in the mountain town of Andermatt. It's a three day, three race event that brings together 150+ skiers putting on the race bib, a coaches symposium, along with all the industry players to show off the latest equipment. Comparing it to America, I guess its like West Yellowstone on rollerskis.
The day before the races, Bettina fell ill. Fortunately Guri Hetland, the head coach of the Swiss Team, was heading over to the races the morning of the first race. I hopped a ride. We came over the Oberalp, a twisting, narrow uber-Euro style road you might have seen in the Giro d'Italia or Tour de Suisse and thought, "Roads like that really exist?"
We were not making good time to Andermatt in the region (Kanton) Uri. A tour bus was puttering up ahead. Guri gunned the VW Transporter, passed two Porsches, then went for the lumbering bus. Unfortunately, the road wasn't wide enough for us both. Fortunately, the bus and the Transporter lost little more than paint.
Way back in the 13th Century, the Uri Kanton was the first to break away and form the republic now known as Switzerland.
I was satisfied with the three days of racing. Perhaps more importantly, I really enjoyed competing. It was interesting to find yourself battling it out with similar faces day after day, and feeling a little comradery amongst your competitors. The stoke is pretty high to burn up the steep hills of Davos with Cologna, Kindschi, Livers and Company.
Afterwards, Bettina was feeling a little better and we met up in the Ticino region of Switzerland. It's an amazing place, to be on the south side of the Alps beside lakes that trade in names like Lago Maggiore and Lago di Como.
Early morning we hiked in the seriously steep mountains, then headed down to the waterfront for lunch. While checking out the boats, we got invited out for a day sailing on the Celeste. Kind of the perfect ending to a long weekend I won't soon forget.
Just as my summer schooling and Canada training camp came to an end, the first days of hopping in Mr. Peck's classroom and a little running with the Kodiaks of Cascade commenced.
Probably few things are better for a high schooler than overnighting with your teammates. I joined the Kodiaks for their first annual team training camp along the shores of Lake Wenatchee. A family opened up their turn-of-the-century homestead for the team to call home. It was a sweet location, with fireroads and dirt trails around to run on, the lake nearby to cool off and relax besides. The team even had its own guest yogi, Tonja Renee Hall, who works with both the MLS Seattle Sounders and Seahawks of the National Football League.
Inside the classroom, my ITA mentor (and former 5th grade teacher, and running coach) Greg Peck is in his final year of teaching in the Cascade School District. I've bounced around a bit with where I've done all my In The Arena work - from Bend to the Methow Valley to running with Park City High last fall - but I've always put in several weeks a year with Mr. Peck, both in his 5th grade classroom, along with the teams he's coaching as the seasons change.
Already this year, the class has started on a couple sweet side projects. Every year I bring in a big duffel bag full of ski team and Olympic jackets for the kids to put on for an afternoon, and pose with their friends in class. Pictures are taken and developed, and the kids get a small momento. Every year, the class is totally into it.
Last year, a Seattle Seahawk gave the class a signed game jersey. Every Friday, a kid from class earns the right to wear the jersey. I can't believe I never thought of this myself. For this year, I gave the class my opening ceremonies wear from the Vancouver Olympics. Every Friday, the "Inspired Performance of the Week" puts the Ralph Lauren clothing that was gathering dust in the attic to use.
Mr. Peck's class this year has already wanted to know quite a bit about goal setting. From many years ago Mr. Peck remembers how I would write in my training log every day, logging how many laps around ski hill I'd put on the cross-country skis, or times I ran around the neighborhood on a Tuesday. Today, the notebook has been replaced by an Excel spreadsheet, but the process is the same.
The kids are doing their own outcome and goal setting, then hanging them from a young pear tree in class. I look forward to getting back there and seeing how this - and the year - are progressing.
For now, though, I just hopped a plane for Switzerland. This weekend, I headed up the Sertig Valley in Davos, then traded in the rollerskis for running shoes and ran to the top of Jakobshorn. It was a sweet little tour of the terrain outside the little city in the Alps. And if you were wondering, scenes like the one below exist beyond the marketing literature on Switzerland. If I could only get some of the orchard fruits in harvest I left behind...
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