Out West
"The West is... the best." - The Doors
Jim Morrison had quite a myriad options to choose from: the West is the driest, the West is the hilliest, the West - America's rest, one big fest, the West, the West is such a pest, a true test: the West, I quest for the West, the West... I wish it was my nest, the West is our country's puss-filled abscess, lest the West be shaved in my chest under my vest with zest, or a simple C'est l'ouest. I'll neither affirm or deny Morrison's lyrical claim. What I will say is that, for cross-country skiers and biathletes alike, the West is the door to our ultimate playground (at least when "the West is... 'snowiest' - or snowywest?"). And for that, I'll gladly spend my Thanksgiving skiing and giving thanks for the best West we have!
So here we go: blasting out of fall, out of rollerskiing and out of T-shirts, into winter, snow, fresh skis and onezies!
From Lake Placid my westward journey first meandered east through Dartmouth College and Boston, then out to my parents' home in Minnesota. It was my first time home since May, and it felt refreshing to live in a house and do real chores! I trained easy for a week on the good ole Mississippi River Road and joined in on a technique session with my former high school team, the Minnehaha Redhawks. Go 'Hawks!
Thanksgiving week provided a flashback to the Minnesota high school scene. No longer a scrappy jump-skating underweight state-meet-yearning high-school skier, I entered the MN high school ski arena this time as a coach with the Duluth-area Yellowstone thanksgiving trip. I love the West Yellowstone XC ski festival: its such a neat display of the excitement, youthfulness, depth and talent possessed by the US cross-country ski community. Skiers within an endless range of age, ability, goals, and experience bond over a collective appreciation of snow, trails, community, beautiful vistas, conversation and the latest advancement in waxless skintech-nology. This year I was especially grateful for our athletes from Duluth, Bemidji, Mesabi East, Ely, Brainerd, Two Harbors, St. Cloud, and more. It was inspirational to hear talk of these athletes' individual and team goals for the upcoming season, whether it was a certain finishing place at "sections", improvement of technique, or fun-maximization (or even winning the best-decorated hotel door contest). I know now that the active-lifestyle promoted by cross-country skiing (and the Birkebeiner!) is alive and growing among the youth in northern Minnesota. Yeah!
Up in Duluth Paul Schommer and I happened upon a snow-storm; socked in for a day, we opted to take the Tesch family dogs for a run. In exchange (or possibly despite), the Tesch's (who are both coaches of St. Scholastica's prodigious ski program) gave us shelter and food for the night!
Team Brainerd came away as champions of the bus trivia epic! And what an epic it was. Go Team!
Our daily routine, although busy, was still quite conducive to quality training. Each morning we coaches were free to train on our own. For me this meant easy distance skiing or combination training ("combos" = skiing + shooting) with my teammate and fellow coach Paul Schommer. After a quick lunch and a half-hour of relaxation and conversation we were back on the trails coaching for a couple hours in the early afternoon. Following a video-technique session (shoutout to fellow coach Carolyn Lucca: a V2-technique expert) at our home base, the Clubhouse Inn, it was back into the dark for a shorter second training session. During the week I also jumped into my first on-snow biathlon race. This one was a "sprint," which for all you non-shootin' skiers out there is NOT a sprint: we ski three 3.3km loops and shoot 5 shots prone after loop 1 and 5 shots standing after loop 2; for each miss a 150m penalty loop must be skied. In this race I shot (3,0): three misses prone and none standing. Paul won the race, shooting one less miss than I.
Salomon, my ski and boot sponsor, had a contagiously fun and innovative presence at the West Yellowstone ski festival. I was super pumped to jump on the carbon skate boots and new carbon skis for the first time! The skis are incredible light; between them and the boots it was as if I had nothing at-all attached to my feet- just skiing on air-skis (Like an air-guitar but better because air-guitars don't make noise and air-light skis, while they don't make much noise, perform well on snow and that, my friends, is music to my ears). Due to thin conditions on race-day I raced on my rock skis instead- need to be careful when you test out the new boards. Don't put new wine in old wineskins #Luke 5:37!
This early-season racing provided a necessary tune-up before the real tests of the season begin. To a greater extent than I had thought. Biathlon on snow is just a little bit different than that on rollerskis, and when it comes to shooting, little bits can make a big difference. On pavement, for example, the shooting mat is quite flat. On snow the mats may have a random lump which shifts a shooter's prone position, in turn shifting sight alignment. Ice on the mat can cause an elbow to slip. For me, using longer skis has require a slightly different pole-placement than rollerskis to prevent getting all tangled up as I rocket off the mat post-shooting. Fine-tuning a system to keep my trigger finger warm has posed an additional challenge. These are all challenges that I wouldn't have fully anticipated without race experience. Now's my time to put in extra effort to get the little things right before IBU trials and beyond.
This doesn't get old, especially when its always new: The first ski of the year out on Windy Ridge, West Yellowstone, MT, USA.
I write from Canmore, AB, where I've now successfully finished two more biathlon races and continue to train on Western mountain snow. The snow is always nice to us because its Canadian, eh! I'll get a Canmore-focused blog up on the site as soon as we wrap up our two-week training camp here, but for now I'll leave it at this: When I returned home from my first trip to Canmore four years ago I declared it was my favorite place in the world. I stand by that declaration.
