Kuusamo Awaits - No Quarter Given

The instrumental to Hey Jude plays in the background. Lightly at first, barely audible, then crescendoing to an unmistakable, all-encompassing audio experience al la Royal Tenenbaums.

Week out, my coach tells me to run through a whole practice in my mind, more or less in real time. The number one requirement he tells me is we don’t train physically if that gunk is still in your lungs. It reminds me of what all the best coaches I’ve ever worked with have said in their own way – that the body is trying to tell you something. It needs time to repair itself. It will. The body just uses its own timecard and rushing it usually just prolongs the healing process. Everything else, though, stays the same.

“Go ahead and challenge yourself. Do a workout in it’s entirety in your mind. See yourself at the venue. Talk to the service techs. Pick out your skis in the wax cabin. Run through a whole six-by-three-minute, double-pole-only intensity session. Don’t just see pictures in your head. Get the feelings of skiing. Get the feelings of motion. Feel what it feels like in your arms when reach high with the elbows. When you do this, your striding opens up. This gives you a higher starting position to start your kick from. This gives you a little more time glide. See yourself skiing big, strong and relaxed. Feel yourself becoming that purple wave of motion flowing and bouncing and gliding all the way around the course. When you ski like this, it hardly matters what’s going on around you (with the other competitors). You’re skiing so big, you’re going so fast, you’ll really be in control. Take forty five minutes, set aside an hour, and see if you can totally focus in on this and not lose that focus.”

Last year, I also came into Kuusamo sick. Only this year I’ve had a couple more days to recover, to get back all my health. Last year I knew I had, maybe, a C- body, for race day. Last year I knew if I wanted to be one of the thirty quarterfinal qualifiers I had to perform pretty much flawlessly. On that day, I did not leave myself a window of opportunity more than that if I wanted to score World Cup points.

In the prelim, I did it. The racing was super tight. I finished 2.3 seconds off the fastest time of the day on the two and three-quarter minute course, qualifying in 19th place. Another second faster and I would have been perhaps a top-five qualifier. Then again, another second slower and I would have been outside the top-30, an outsider looking in.

Making it into the next round I had the exact same chance to race for the podium’s top step as any of the other 29 other quarterfinalists. In that race, I blasted off the start, settling in behind Emil Johnsson of Sweden, the quickest prelim qualifier earlier that morning. Perfect.

Through the middle section of the course, I spent too much energy fighting with the other racers, jockeying for position. If I could change anything about how I skied in Kuusamo last year, this would be it. I burned up a few matches unnecessary. On a day when I was a ways away from having a full matchbox, that just doesn’t cut it. A Czech, a two time World Team Sprint medalist, cut ahead, though it hardly mattered. In Kuusamo, the final climb separates the winners from the pretenders.

On this climb I swung wide left and start getting into my specialty – skiing uphill fast. I catch Emil. Then I pass the Dusan the Czech. I’m in the lead. Over the top of the climb, as it transitions from climbing to long striding to double poling, Emil accelerates away. The Czech powers by. Luckily, I still have enough energy to hop in behind him, my tips right on the tails of skis. With 100 meters to go, I’m okay. With 90 meters to go, I’m still right there. In the final 80 meters, though, I am no longer challenging for a top two position and a chance to fight it out in the semifinals and the finals. Somewhere before the finish a Finn and an Italian go by. I died up the home straight, coming in 5th of 6th in my heat, 1.9 seconds behind the Swede, or 21st place for the day.

As a result, it was not great. Nor was it bad. But on that day I left the race venue and headed back to our team’s cabin in the woods satisfied with my performance, fade up the homestretch included.

“If I don’t have my A-plus fastball, I have to use my A-plus mental approach.”
-Jonathan Papelbon, Rex Sox closer

In Kuusamo last year I hardly had skiing’s equilivant to my A-plus fastball. In the past year, I’ve had a year to ski bigger, to get stronger, to build more fitness, and I have some concrete data points that say I’ve done exactly this over the past 52 weeks.

Every week presents unique challenges. Every week presents its own opportunities. Coming into Kuusamo this year, I’m at least as healthy as last year. Fitter; and a more complete skier too. Last year I brought an A-game approach to the race venue. This year it’s time to add a + to that.

Grit ~ Equal Parts Passion + Perseverance

Last three years I’ve traveled to Europe for the early World Cup season. Every year I pack up on Zicam, Cold-Eeze zinc lozenges and the like. A certain type of insurance; a precautionary measure to combat any unforeseen, unplanned, strength-sapping ailments picked up on the road. The nasal mist is like the glass on the front of the fire alarm that reads, “Break only in case of emergency.” The zinc lozenges are tucked away in the back of the toiletry kit, just in case something bad happens. Every year, for the last three years, I’ve ripped into the plastic pouch of zinc-laden lozenges, unfurled the safety seal on the gelatinous nasal spray. Not because I want to. Because I have to.

The World Cup opens this weekend. Unfortunately, my goals have changed. This weekend the odds are stacked against me sliding into a race bib. This week’s personal competition does not include competing against the Germans or Estonians or Russians. It’s all about regaining the ability to breathe in oxygen deeply without restriction. It’s about getting my strength and snap back. It’s about lying low in my classic little red Swedish cabin in the woods and resting and reading and relaxing. And not going stir crazy.

Next week is another chance. Next week I head to Kuusamo, Finland. I’ve been in the game long enough to know the pursuit to the top will be fraught with a little turbulence. Now I’ve got to show a little perseverance, a little resilience. Now is hardly the time to become brittle in the face of adversity. Until the next time.

Deep, Dark Woods

To steal a few lines from Frost,

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep

Takeoffs and Landings

At 6:17 I wiggle into a seat aboard a 757 headed to Newark. In New Jersey I am to meet up with three teammates, a coach, and a serviceman, hop the pond to Stockhol, take a commuter to Kiruna, Sweden, then drive to Munio, Finland.

If only travel were to happen perfectly to script. Lost luggage, plane delays, and their near requisite doppelganger, missed connections, give opportunity to remind myself that life is ten percent wha happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it. Still, the sexiness of travel once presented to the public, is gone. Long since gone.

For the next three weeks I will live at a time of terminating daylight above the Arctic Circle. The memory of seeing the lemon yellow sun must suffice. The time to embrace living among domesticated reindeer, eating dense, dark bread topped with lingonberries and listening to Finnish love metal has arrived. It has been a slow train coming. Now the train is at the station. Now, the ski racing days are here.

For some reason it is somewhat awkward to admit, but just knowing I would be in Munio or Gällivare, Sweden or racing through the old-town streets of Dusseldorf, Germany later this December kept the engines of aspiration and resolve burning hot. Knowing that, on a none-too-distant Saturday the opportuity to race Jens Arne and Emil up the big hill of Kuusamo with a World Cup title on the line fills me with the most ebulliant of hopes.

But, alas, hope is not the same as experience. The time to just peek through the cracks or around the corner to glimpse boyhood ambitions is through. The time to tear back the veneer between thinking and doing, to bask in the afterglow of high achievement nears.

477: 'becoming an apostle of the now'

“477” read the title of the letter my coach sent me. “You are as talented as anyone in the world. You are as well trained as anyone in the world. Against quite a few obstacles we have done great work this summer and in all the years previous.

“But we are not the only ones training hard. We are not the only talented ones. And we never cheat. We never dope or use any illegal methods or means to win. And we never, ever will.

“So what will separate us and put us in front of all the rest? The way is in daily psychological and physical preparation. This must be very specific. You must be able to answer this question specifically:

“What did you do today that will put you on the podium in 2010?”

This question gets me out training twice a day, most every day. In a year it’s questionable what accrues more miles, my rollerskis and skis, or my truck. As the title of my coach’s letter suggests I have 477 more days to improve my physiology - to build the pumping capacity of my heart, improve the economy of my ski stride, and boost my top-end speed. I have 477 days to go beyond believing that I am someone that can handle whatever the future throws my way. It doesn’t get more specific than this: I have 477 days to become the toughest athlete - both in the mental and physical arenas in the world - then showcase this in Whistler in 2010.

To get myself into a place where I’m in the start gate of the Olympic A-Final and know with every fiber of my body I am ready to fulfill my dream, my destiny, my potential – that is my goal.

I can see the crowd. I can hear the cowbells clanging. I can feel my classic skis underfoot, gripping, then gliding over the snow. It’s snowing. It’s snowing hard. I love it. And the energy’s rising. I can feel it. The crowd feels it, too. The starter makes his final commands.
“Racers to the line.
“Set.”
Fade to the now.

Beyond the Shallows

The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye.
The story of love is hello and goodbye.
Until we meet again.
-Jimi Hendrix

Out my Grandmother’s second story window the sun intermittently sparkled on the open water of Lake Superior. I had eaten my pickle, finished my sandwich. Time to leave neared. My grandmother and I talked one last time. At times directly, most others indirectly. Before leaving, I visit my Grandfather’s studio one last time. Pictures line the wall facing the greatest of the Great Lakes. Bookshelves full of books line the westward wall. I try to take it all in, capture an accurate postcard in my mind that resists the fading of time. I pick up a work by Robert Frost. My fingers run over the book’s binding. Inside, I see the poems from North of Boston. The words on these pages have been read, over and over. I wonder what my grandfather thought about the line “I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.” Did meaning of these words change to him over time, in the twilight of his days?

I say these lines over and over, as if repetition itself will lead to revelation. Some thoughts we wish to hear will never be said. A clearer meaning to this question will have to come another way on another day. Maybe true meaning eludes us with those we live with and with whom we love and remembering them and the little time we shared together is enough.

During the Renaissance the idea of virtu – a kind of excellence that went beyond competence – took hold. My Grandfather was loving and caring. But he also believed in this holding those around him to the highest and hardest of ideals.

I do know my Grandfather was a surgeon. I am told a good one at that. He worked in a specialized field of urology, though I knew my Grandpa as a fisherman and an artist. No clear line of division separated his passions. Attributes of one merged into the other.

“The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it.” -Joseph Campbell

In each, you use your hands. The skills are kinetic-based. Surgery is one of the few areas of expertise the practitioner gets better at the farther one gets away from their formal training. It’s not that the rigors of surgery or learning the art of a four-count rhythm get in the way of perfection. It’s just that reaching an epiphany in fly fishing – or medicine, or sculpture, or sport – requires the artist to work beyond the rigid definitions of what is known to what is possible. “Let rules melt into pure action,” is how my Grandpa put this.

In medicine, each patient, each operation, is unique to the here and now, causing an inquiry into questions. “I had no choice now but to cast into the willows if I wanted to know why fish were jumping in the water all around me except in this hole, and I still wanted to know, because if is not fly fishing if you are not looking for answers to questions,” wrote Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It. While fishing or melding clay into form, my Grandpa was participating in a search for harmony - a quest I believe worthy of consideration of Joyce’s proper art title.

In dry-fly fishing, surgery and sculpture, the learning curve is steep. So steep in fact that mastery is fleeting. A writer once told me, “When I was young, a teacher also forbid me to say “more perfect” because she said if a thing is perfect it can’t be more so. But by now I have seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.” My Grandfather was one who chased the “more perfect” moments.

For this, among much more, thank you. When I left your house Grandma told me to “keep following my bliss.” I promise to take Grandma’s advice. I will be a seeker of the more perfect of the everyday. Until we meet again.

Extending the Narrative

“It is futile to see the road’s end. One cannot get down on not achieving some ‘details’ of their careers for maybe greatness is achieving – if only once – a superlative performance performed with all our potential,” Percy Cerutty once said. At times I find optimism in these words I did while running 4x8minutes intervals in the arid Wenatchee foothills here.

Sonic Youth’s on the radio. The song “Stones” plays. The melody, the pace, the ache and especially the line “we come together to gather stars” fills the void with toxic auditory bliss. In that moment, that line is transcending, unending. Over and over and over again it plays – “we come together to gather stars” – on a revolving loop in my mind and won’t let go.

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Whistler was a chance to chase stars. January, the time I next return, is another. To have an August training session and know I’ll be racing Jens Arne and Lind and Emil up these very same hills at the Pre-Olympics helps my synapses fire faster. Even better, I can almost see the snow, can almost touch it. I see the A-Final unfold. My coach, too, is locked into the same groove. He’s on the side of the trail, quietly telling me, “This is the place” one lap. On the next, “It’s snowing, and snowing hard. We’ve got the skis dialed and you’re just flying.” I’m taking it all in. I’m, you know, locked in. This is the place. This is the place. This is the place. I’m gathering that star. For sure.

Since the Whistler days I’ve had two weeks back at my parent’s house in Washington. Last month they moved from the place of my youth, the alpine town of Leavenworth, thirty miles eastward. The city rests along the mighty, mellow Columbia River. Coming into town, a candy-apple red sign, backlit with granny apple green neon, takes the form of a certain orchard fruit. The sign proudly proclaims:

Welcome to Wenatchee
The Apple Capitol of the World

Every so often talent merges with desire and you, the observer, are given the opportunity to see the explosing of interest unfold before your eyes. At Cascade and Cashmere, rival schools separated by twelve miles of pear and apple orchards, two eighth graders are simultaneously fanning the flame of their ambition. Sometime, perhaps as soon as next year, people in Forks, Washington or Goldendale will usher their names beside the word combinations “devastating speed,” or “inexhaustible stamina.” Even state champion. As a fan of sport, I look forward as to how this rivalry develops. Will the young athletes have the consistency of purpose and the desire to transcend the schoolyard definition of success to, as Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore might say, “Come together to gather stars?”