On to Rubinsk, Russia

The Tallinn night scene after the races in Estonia.

The days in Estonia have come to an end. Now I await a charter aboard Red Wings Air, headed to the Yaroslav, Russia military airbase for next week's World Cup in Rybinsk. I'm flying aboard a Tupolev Tu-154. N.A.T.O. calls this particular model of aircraft "Careless." I hope that isn't in correlation to the safety rating.

Honestly, though, I'm looking forward to heading to Russia. The course is good one. The Russians are into nordic skiing and make racing in front of them like you're putting on a performance that they share in. And I'm in getting in good racing shape these days with the World Championships around the corner in just under a month.

among mountains and clouds

My attention drifts with the sights of Vancouver's skyline as I wind through the city streets. It's turning dark. Humidity drizzles from the sky. A caravan of three minivans carries a group of skiers that have converged from various outposts - Anchorage, Alaska, Wenatchee,Washington, Park City, Utah - to the capitol and most populous environ of British Columbia. The caravan snakes its way through Friday night's stop-and-go traffic. Modern towers and high-rise condominiums along the waterfront. The occasional Burberry store and clean-swept sidewalks with hedges groomed to the nines speak of the city's affluence. And its influence. In just over a year, the best sliders, skaters, skiers, hockey players and curlers will descend into Vancouver for the 2010 Olympic Games.

After passing by and taking in the eye-candy roaming around the University of British Columbia we roll through the forested grove of Stanley Park. The canopy of Western Red Cedar, Doug Fir and Western Hemlock reach heavenward, at times upwards of 250 feet.

The green, narrow-leafed Western giants remind me of my latest book, Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean. The book unravels a story about the universe's four forces at work - sky, fire, earth and young men during a fire in the Gates of the Mountains in Montana, a wilderness area just east of the Missouri River. Partway down a ridge between the Mann and Meriwether gulleys sixteen Smokejumpers descended upon the burning forest just before the it turns into a blow-up, the most deadly - and least understood - fire. Of the sixteen, thirteen would never return.

"Smokejumpers were the fastest the nation had in getting to where there was danger," wrote Maclean. "They got there by moving in the magic realm between heaven and earth. When they got to a fire, they almost made a game of it. None were surer they could not lose than the Seventh Cavalry and the Smokejumpers."

Young Men and Fire is the story of how America's best and bravest got into more than a game with fire. The crown fire helped start bundles of spot fires. These turned into firewhirls, which in turn became the worst kind of blow-up known as a Halocaust that enveloped four square miles in ten minutes. A forty-foot wall of flame raced up the 76 degree Mann Gulch slope at seven and one-half miles an hour. All but three young woodsmen would suffocate, then burn to death within sight of the ridgeline. Young Men and Fire is a terrible tale. I highly recommend it.

In time, the evergreens give way to the Lion's Gate Suspension Bridge, named after the pair of peaks that definitively end the city's northern expansion.

Inside the Dodge, Gang of Four's on heavy rotation. The Leeds, England outfit cranks out a harsh, funk/punk sound with distraught lyrics layed atop.

Ought to control what I do with my mind
Nothing in there but sunshades for the blind

Love'll get you like a case of anthrax
And that's something I don't want to catch

Listening to Gang of Four comes as a sort of baptism by fire. The guitars, the beat, the lyrics hit immediately. I can imagine Dave Allen's slap and speed bass playing influence on Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist's own style when he says, "The Gang of Four is the first rock band I could truly relate to. These limies rocked my world."

Go4 guitarist Andy Gill even left U2's Bono with a sort of superior-inferiority complex. "Hard. Angular. Bold. Andy Gill's chin is the black hole of '90s music we should have all disappeared into if we had any sense; a dimple atop the body politic, a pimple on the arse of pop. A Gang of Four metal guru, a corporation of common sense, a smart bomb of text that had me at home feeling like a typist."

After a sushi stop in Squamish, the road winds higher along the Sea2Ski Corridor to Whistler. For the next ten days - and the fourth time this year - this valley has become my home; to breathe in its maritime air, get lost and found in its fog, to slide on its various configurations of snow crystals. And dream out loud. My first chance to do this is Friday, January 16th when the World Cup makes its debut on the Whistler Olympic courses.

In Düsseldorf, Christmas Comes Early

The late afternoon Dusseldorf calm along the Rhein the day before the World Cup city sprint.



As I wrestle about in my coach cabin seat in seat seven hours into an eleven hour flight from Frankfurt to Seattle, the realization dawns on me - after six weeks and five World Cup starts in Europe - I am headed home. The day is Monday, December 23rd. Home just in time for the holidays.

I think everyone appreciates heading home. It's why we can relate to when Dorothy of Wizard of Oz clicked the heels of her glittery red shoes and said, "There is no place like home," for exactly this reason; there is no place like home. After spending a week in exile, in a Swedish cabin quarantined from the rest of my team, followed by five more weeks bouncing around Europe from ski race venue to venue, from hotel to hotel, I crave a little normalcy, the comforts of home. I look forward to the looks of city drivers as I ski through the snowy streets of Wenatchee on my rock skis with a yellow labrador as companion. I look forward to catching up with friends from the elementary schoolyard days; to striding it out along the first ski trails I ever knew; to sitting around the Christmas dinner table with my brother and sister, mom and dad, digging into a monstrosity of slow roasted prime rib with all the accoutrements.

And skiing. After starting the season with the most ebullient of hopes - I love that word, ebullient, meaning a bubbling up of high-spirited fervor and enthusiasm - I started the season slightly below my expectations and continued this progression through my next two sprint World Cups. Yesterday I awoke and I told myself, "Today is another chance. Let's make the most of it." Then I went out and did that in perhaps the most diabolical of ski race formats, the two-man sprint relay.

In bricks-and-mortar terms, the sprint relay begins with perhaps forty teams, broken up in two semi-final heats. The race starts with me racing one mile. I then tag off to my teammate Andy Newell. As he navigates his one mile segment of the race I try to recover before starting my next one mile race-within-the-race. This goes on for six miles.

The top three teams from each semifinal move onto the final. The next four fastest non-qualifying teams, regardless of which semi they raced, fill out the World Cup Sprint final. My teammate and I made it in as the 7th seed, the fastest of the "lucky losers." The eleventh fastest team, Switzerland I, was just .9 seconds behind us. Five teams, four spots in the finals, all separated by less than a second. Welcome to the razor thin edge separating success and close-but-no-cigar of World Cup competition.

Racing an hour later in the finals, under the floodlights of the otherwise dark of the Düsseldorf sky, is what it's all about. As I spin on an exercise bike trying to clear the leg-burning lactate acid out of my system between races, our Swedish wax tech Petter Johansson says, "You know, we could be on our way back to Sweden if you and Andy didn't ski so well." Johansson's smiling. Maybe even beaming, which is saying a lot of the most-practical of all people, the Swedish blue-collar worker. It's his way of saying, "Good job. Now forget this and focus on the task at hand. Let's do something special in the final."

It's chasing after moments like these that made me want to be a professional ski racer more than anything in the world - president, professional ball player, derivative analyst at Goldman Sachs - from the second grade on. Moments like these are confirmation that I made a pretty good decision.

For the coaches of the US Ski Team, I'm pretty sure helping athletes put themselves into opportunities like this is what keeps them in the sport, and away from their significant others for significant chunks of the year. For Johansson, I'm pretty sure watching his team rip around the track on race skis he prepared beats the 3400 kilometer road trip he made to get out fully-loaded Fiat Ducato cargo van from Northern Finland to Central Europe.

In the end, a Russian took out five other skiers in a horribly skied 180 degree turn on the fourth of six laps. Newell was one of them. Norway I, Sweden I, Russia I and France I all get away clean. We fight our way back, almost all the way. In the end, we finish fourth, four seconds behind the winning Norwegians.

Personally, only my third place in the 2007 Estonian World Cup classic sprint is a better result. For the United States, no relay team has done better, ever.

I am close. I am fit. After a couple weeks of mediocrity, the training, the talent, the desire and the racing opportunity are all coming together - an ideal way to end the first block of my racing season. Now I have a handful of days at home to enjoy, to get out for a couple hours on the tele boards, then sip afternoon cappuccinos, before my next hard period of training start.

The heart of the season beckons ahead. Bring it on.

Descending into the Heart of the Alps

"Abandon All Hope All Who Enter Here." -Dante
Man, could any old-time philosopher get it any more wrong?

When the big, white, fluffy flakes of powder stop confetting the sky, the sun of Central Europe rises from behind the Alps to coat the wintery valleys in sunny ecstacy. In the heart of the Alps, in a place like Davos, Switzerland, it is not hard to be a cross-country skier.

After three weeks of Arctic darkness, I soak up every ray of sun I can. For the first week in Central Europe I've been pulling the daily double on the ski tracks, then combining this with a few minutes, at least, in the cafe or the solarium, leaving my epic wanting mind hightingled with a kind of satisfaction that goes deeper, lasts longer, than the kind that comes from soft aluminum pop-top cans. Like I said, its not hard to be a cross-country skier here.

The night before last I hit the walking streets of Davos for a nighttime stroll. It's a quarter to eight; early for the subterreans that come out at night, late for the apres-ski crowd. But there they are, wearing their hardshell Lange and Rossignol boots, huddled around the horseshoe bar, some standing,the others sitting, all watching the World Cup Super G live from Beaver Creek, Colorado.

It's times like these where I am baffled by Americana. Coming upon a situation such as this I can't help but think, "We have three hundred million Americans, more television channels than most people have patience to flip through, and not one broadcaster buying the rights to show off the jewels of the world's winter sports scene?" Pure madhouse like craziness.

If it's out there, if Americans are given the opportunity to follow sports outside the dominant American three (of baseball, basketball and football) - and see it week-in, week-out - to get to know the athletes, to appreciate the demands of inherent in each respective sport, I think Americans, too, would find the intrigue, the entertainment value, inherent in track and triathlon, or alpine and nordic skiing. And maybe, just maybe, some kid in Seattle or Cincinnati would be inspired. Least that's what I think.

Sun Sets On Northern Scandinavian

After the World Cup races in Kuusamo, Finland on the way to the airport in Rouvaniemi, en route to Zurich, the sun poked through the trees. I'd just finished the weekend .3 second from racing the quarterfinals, my first, immediate goal in any World Cup sprint. I also got in my first World Cup individual distance start ever earlier that morning. A start - a decent one - to the year. I took the sighting of the sun as a good one. An omen of sorts.

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.