Well, the 2 Bozeman SuperTour races are now done. It was quite a weekend.
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Sunday 15k Classic (interval start)
Today was the 15k classic, and boy was it a tough day. Super super cold, windy, snowing, SLOW snow that made even the flats feel like uphills, and a very challenging, HILLY, cranky course…all at elevation. After too many experiences in classic races having slick skis, including last weekend in Yellowstone, I told the Salomon wax guys to put on twice as much kick as they would normally, and then we ended up adding some more to that too. I knew there were lots of hills on the course and I just wanted to have ample kick even on the third lap after some of it would have theoretically worn off on all the downhill corners. I did have pretty good kick but I think we overdid it (my fault). There was no one around me in the race other than a few people that I passed quickly on uphills, so it was hard to get a guage on how fast or slow my skis were gliding, but by feel, and judging by the one guy that was with me for a brief period on some more gradual terrain, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t the fastest pair out there. It’s always a tradeoff between kick and glide so I can’t complain too much but hopefully 3rd time is a charm and we can try to do something in the middle (like Goldilocks.)
In any case, it seems I am still a long way from the top in a middle-distance classic race…times were WAY spread out today due to the slow snow and super hilly and technical course. 40 seconds separating 1st and 2nd place…and 45 seconds separating 20th and 21st….just some examples. I ended up pretty far back in terms of time…3min. 39sec. from first…not very happy about that. 24th place. I did come in ahead of a bunch of skiers that I was encouraged to finish ahead of, like Zach Violett, Tim Reynolds, Patrick O’brien, etc. But somehow I need to figure out how to hit a whole other gear in these kinds of races…even with perfect skis I’d still be a long way from the top so there is a lot of work to do.
Today was a great workout for sure though, and on the positive side, I did feel like I was skiing better technically (always room for improvement for sure, and there were still spots on the course I wasn’t skiing very well technically, but at least there were some spots that I was in the groove and overall things were working better than last week.) I also had some pretty cool moments of hitting some real “level 5” on some of the big hills, especially the biggest hill on the course where Bernie was cheering like only Bernie can! I got to a pretty special place up that hill on the 2nd and 3rd lap…a kind of feeling that I’d sort of forgotten or at least hadn’t tangibly experienced in awhile, a feeling that happens when you are going super hard for a long time and then you go a LOT harder. It’s pretty tough to get myself to do that very often, for obvious reasons but it is a pretty cool feeling when I do manage to go that hard…it was pretty fun to completely hammer it over the tops of those big hills. Good practice for sea level racing on hilly courses like Anchorage (US Nationals)!
I didn’t get passed by anyone the entire race and everyone that saw me that I talked to after the race seemed to think that I “looked really strong” or “strong compared to most people” etc. So maybe I was just losing a lot of glide on the gradual/flat sections and downhills, or else have developed that strange ability that some people have of always looking like they are going super fast even when they aren’t.
Overall it was a productive day, with some great hard training, great chances to work on race-pace technique, pacing, transitions, and just plain going insanely hard, even if all that didn’t result in a great points race or a great result in terms of places.
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Saturday 1.5k Sprint (skate)
Yesterday’s sprint was a whole other story. It was held at Lindley park on a relatively flat (by SuperTour standards) course. I didn’t use any V1 while racing, all tuck skate and V2. Conditions were somewhat warmer and despite a little bit of snow, the conditions were reasonably fast (or at least not the sandpaper grind of freshly fallen snow at 5 or 10 degrees F like today).
I woke up feeling horrendous, but managed to have a fairly decent qualifying round (for those unfamiliar, in sprint races you first do an individual-start time trial around the sprint loop by yourself, then if your time was fast enough, you move on to a series of head-to-head elimination heats, starting with quarterfinals, up through semis and finals if you make it that far. They usually take the top 30 times from the prelim / qualifying round and start with 5 heats of 6 skiers for the quarterfinals.)
I qualified with the 16th fastest time despite not feeling great and probably only managing to give it a 90% effort (with 100% being harder than the ultra level 5 I was talking about above in the classic race…I think I’ve only done what I would call 100% a few times in my life, although most days a 93% effort feels like absolutely maximal…I just have had enough ultra-rare race experiences to know that there is always more there…). I was pretty happy with 16th because there were a solid 30 if not 40 guys there out of the 60 or 80 starters or so (if I remember correctly) who I considered to be a threat as far as me being able to make it into the heats.
After a warmdown I went back to my room across town to try and get 45 or 60 minutes of horizontal rest - still not knowing the results. Jeff Wright called to let me know I was 16th, and was placed in a heat that happened to consist entirely of skiers who had WON SuperTour sprint races in the past:
David Chamberlain, many-time US World Championship team member and many-time SuperTour race winner including winning the overall title more than once I think;
Leif Zimmerman, hometown favorite, former skate SuperTour sprint winner - beat out US National Sprint Team members Torin Koos and Andy Newell to win that race a few seasons ago…and clearly in excellent shape this year, winning last week’s 15k skate race in Yellowstone with most of the country’s best skiers there, as well as some of the Canadian National team;
James Southam, US National Champion and the guy that won this very race on this very course the last time I was here, I guess 3 years ago…but he hasn’t gotten any slower as he proved today winning the classic race by 39 seconds;
Colin Rodgers, a regular contender for the win in any SuperTour sprint race, who won the last SuperTour sprint race I was in, last Feb. in Maine. The guy has a strength to weight ratio that’s probably about triple that of Arnold Schwarz.’s in his prime…
and finally;
Mike Sinnott, another former SuperTour skate sprint winner on a similar course, with springs for legs and seemingly unlimited energy as if the air he breathed were made of liquified coffee beans mixed with adrenaline, who also made the A-final at US Nationals last Jan.
So, I found myself having a terribly hard time relaxing/resting/recovering in between the prelim and the quarterfinals, thinking of who I’d be up against. My wonderful girlfriend was out visiting though and helped me get on track mentally. I realized what I was really afraid of, and have been afraid of in pretty much every race I’ve done since high school, is the possibility of not getting myself to give it my best effort; the responsibility of going 100%, knowing just how incredibly DEEP I have to dig to really be able to say I gave it everything and didn’t wimp out, afraid of the pain, even to a small degree. It really had nothing to do with who I was up against. And I also realized that that’s what mattered more than any particular result - just the WAY I skied/raced when I got out there. That’s what I really wanted and what really seemed important and right.
I’m not exactly sure why or how but somehow that made things click for me in some way. We drove back to the venue, I got out there, did a short warmup, got my awesome skis from the Salomon guys who had re-touched them for the heats, and lined up (turned out James Southam and Colin Rodgers chose not to race in the heats, so it was just me, Chamberlain, Zimmerman, and Mike Sinnott.)
And I absolutely laid it down right from the first 100 meters, got in the lead, and proceeded to race with a total all-out fearlessness that I haven’t had for an entire race since I was in high school (back then there wasn’t much competition for me in the HS races in Far West, so I pretty much went out every race knowing I would win, with the only question being by how much, so I would just do absolutely everything I could to win by as many seconds or minutes as I possibly could, figuring if I could win by 10seconds per kilometer that might be about the level it would take to get a top 10 at JO’s. It’s a little different racing SuperTours, needless to say…)
I held the lead for almost the entire way around the course, through headwinds, crosswinds, tailwinds and no-wind. Once I took a quick glance back on a downhill and was surprised to see Leif and Chamberlain barely hanging on, a little off the back. It felt incredible to be actually stringing out a group of some of the best sprinters in the country, and not just for the first 400m, but almost the entire course. Most of all I was just having a blast going as fast as I could with absolutely no fear or feelings of intimidation or deference or submission. I ripped it as hard as I could the entire way and finally got passed towards the end of the loop; was still sitting in third right on Chamberlain and Sinnott and with a solid chance of making semis for the first time ever, with Leif closing down behind me, with about 200 meters to go.
That’s where everyone truly let loose and floored it and I just didn’t quite have the technique, snap, pop, power, tempo, or coordination (at least at that lactate level) to compete with their finishing kick over the last 150 meters…but I still finished really close to all 3, and by far it was the closest I’d ever been at the finish line to the winner of the heat. The last time I raced that course I had one of my best skate sprint races ever, and was totally off the back of the group (in my heat) after the first 300 meters.
But what was also new for me was that despite not achieving a great result on paper (not a bad one, but not awesome…I’ve been top 15 several times before) I felt SO AWESOME about it because I had finally, after years and years and years, raced the way I’d been trying to race, the ONLY legitimate way to race, which is absolutely all-out, with no trace of fear, and nothing on your mind but absolutely tearing it up as best you possibly can (or way more than you thought you could), mentally only in the present moment (or nano-second), loving what you are doing, loving being out there with everyone, loving giving it absolutely everything you can possibly throw at the race and just hammering the course like you would if you had never heard of pain, nerves, physiological limitations, laws of gravity and inertia, etc.
I finished last in my heat (by a little bit) and I think ended up 16th or 18th for the day overall, but it was by far the best skate sprint race I’ve ever had in my life, and by far the best race effort I’ve had in 8 or 9 years. And it didn’t feel like so much of a personal battle with myself, trying to extract this super-effort from deep within through layers and layers of doubt, fear, pain-intolerance, or fighting through physical issues…it was simply a perfect race…no consciousness of anything but absolutely flying out there and giving it everything.
I was so happy when I finished. I knew I’d had a priceless personal victory. Jeff Wright came up to me with his usual poker face and monotone and said “Well, that was dissapointing.” Haha. Not for me. But I understand what he meant. I’m excited to see how much I can improve my final 150m kick. And excited to see if I can do that kind of race again, in terms of what was going on mentally - especially in a longer race (didn’t quite do it in today’s 15k, although like I said, there were definitely some really good moments of that kind of thing in there on some of the hills today!)
Sinnott ended up finishing 2nd in the A-final. I’m not positive if I’m remembering correctly but I think Leif was in there competing for the win until he went down mid-way through the course.
I looked on the BSF site later and saw this photo of me leading my heat. Sinnott was pretty much right on me, but Chamberlain was struggling to hold on, sitting a second or so off the back not fully in the draft, and Leif wasn’t even in the picture (further back.) Even if I was technically “stupid” for going out so hard and fighting the headwind, for me it is EXACTLY what I wanted to do, needed to do, after all these years of being too fearful, too doubting, too ready to let the big dogs have the lead and just see how long I could hang on etc.
I have to say, on a different note, that I think this new pair of Salomon’s is quite an awesome pair…and/or the Salomon/Swix wax guys are kicking butt with the waxing! Even Bryan Fish, regarded as possibly the best glide waxer / ski technician on the national circuit, told the Salomon wax guys that he thought (by watching) that my skis were super fast. I think some part of it might have been that I’m just stronger on the power sections of the course (tuck skate, pushing over tops of hills into downhills, flats, etc.) than I am at the uphills, so sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between that and fast skis just by watching, BUT hard to really know, and I’m not ashamed to have really fast skis after years of struggling on my own with usually zero wax support.
Steph and I went out to McKenzie River Pizza Co. that evening and it was the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life….HIGHLY recommended if you’re ever in Montanna (there’s one in all the major cities / large towns in MT). Or maybe it just tasted better because of knowing that I’d just had a breakthrough after 8+ years of struggle and feeling like I just didn’t have something I used to have in high school. (By the way, before you think “pizza” and think that I’ve let myself go after just 1 decent race: it was a very nutritious pizza with tons of veggies and no cheese…don’t worry, I’m still in this ski racing thing for real! I only eat super duper “Hunter’s seriously sharp” CABOT CHEDDAR from Vermont. Now that’s some xc skier cheese. My mom sent me about a 5-pound block of it right before Yellowstone. Still workin’ on it.)
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All in all it was a very very worthwhile weekend to say the least. I wouldn’t trade anything for the experience of that quarterfinal on Saturday. And although it was less spectacular and singular, today’s classic race was certainly a solid step forward from Yellowstone even if the results don’t show it…I know for sure. There will soon be another chance to show it…
The ROYAL GORGE FREESTYLE, DECEMBER 13th!!! BE THERE!! (And if skiing really fast on the flats is something you feel you could use some help on, come to the clinic the day before at Royal Gorge! I’ll do my best to show you everything I’ve found to be really helpful in that kind of terrain. See the FW website for details.)
Thanks for tunin’ in….I’ll try to have some more specifically, directly helpful tips/ideas/videos in the next post rather than just a bunch of personal rambling stories…
