Bates Carnival

Hey y'all-
Here is some footage of the women's race from our home carnival this weekend. We had some personal bests from some. All of the freshman PR'ed (haha...ok not that funny). The men's team was 3rd on Saturday right behind UNH and Dartmouth. Women also had some solid results. Check out the results page on www.eisaskiing.org for full results. See you in New Hampshire.

Bates Carnival

The Bates Carnival was this weekend, and the Nordic team got off to a good start. We posted a lot of personal bests, and put in some very solid racing. The men are showing up as a threat much earlier on in the season this year, posting a 4th and a 3rd place for the team results, which is an improvement from last year's 5th and 6th place finishes. The women's results appear at first glance to be about the same as last years' (two 6th places, compared to a 5th and a 6th last year), but a closer look shows that the girls had generally much more impressive results than last year. The top girls, Natalis Ruppertsberger and Kirsten Gill for each respective day, placed higher than last year's top finishers. Our scorers were 9, 17, 22 and 13, 19, 20 for the two respective races (up from 17, 18, 20 and 20, 21, 23 last year), and the average place for the carnival team was 25th (up from 26th). So why are they only in sixth? The reason was that this year's field was much tighter, without as much dominance by a few schools: on Friday, there were six schools represented by the top ten women, and four in the top five on Saturday. The weekend's results make it pretty clear that both our men's and women's teams are stepping it up.

Saturday's mass start was absolute madness. The seeding by school, and the fact that it was a skate race made it a certainty that there would be some crashes. These factors were compounded by a very short, uphill double-pole section, that didn't cause the field to spread out even slightly. There was a ton of broken equipment, the most notable being Glen Randall's broken ski, that left him in dead last place by a lot after only the first hundred meters. Here are some photos from the weekend (sorry girls, I only have guys pictures). Everyone is getting fired up for next weekend at Jackson!

Jackson Criterium

The whole team did not come to the Jackson Criterium, but it was a fun event. The women and men in both races did a 1.6K loop for 20 minutes and then 3 laps after the 20 minute bell was rung. Here is some footage of those who raced. Beautiful eastern day and a bomber day for the Bobcats!!!

I'm Ready for Spring Break???

No...temperature wise, YES, but Jamaica is in the back of my head. I have come to realize that not being able to race because of weather is frustrating. You have to go through all the pre-race stuff day after day not knowing when there is going to be an actual race. Eating good meals, your superstitious pre-race habits, packing like you are going out for a 20 day ice trek, and then traveling to the venue so your adrenaline can build while the butterflies in your stomache continue fluttering. However, I have come to terms with the weather, its a good test of character.

"Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once and awhile, nine out of tem people couldn't start a conversation."

I'm excited to come back and be with my friends, my team. And RACE!!! Camp has started for the rest of the team and can't wait to get back and join them. It sounds like tomorrow will not get above -10 F, but I am 89% sure they will send it and run a qualifyer and that is it. Then they will base all of the teams off of a 3.5 minute sprint and a cold freestyle race.

See you soon. And thanks for all the support.

-Sylv G.E.

The Alaska Vacation

I feel like I'm in a glass case of emotion. We are racing, wait no we aren't, oh wait we are just going to delay it two hours, ok we'll be back then, ok we're back, your delaying it another 30 minutes, so we are or aren't doing heats today, we're not, so a two day sprint then, wait no just move it to tomorrow so 310 skiers can go through the same thing 2 days in a row.

Yeah, skiers are trying to put their game faces on but immediately having to take them off because of the cold temperatures. I feel bad for many of the TD's and volunteers who are getting jerked around more then the skiers.

Turns out there is a huge change of plans: 10k skate tomorrow (differrent from the 15k planned) on the classic course, sprint on Tuesday (weather permitting), and 10k classic on Wednesday (same as before). If it is too cold races will be cancelled completely and I think this year's Scando, Junior World, U23, and World Champs teams will be based off of points and US Ski Team Coaches discretion. Fun Fun...

-S

AK pictures

I'll remind that all these pictures were taken at 12:30 right after lunch...not 7:30 in the A.M.

The Alaska Remix to "New England Winters"

At the time of this blog post, it is -12 degrees where I am staying in Anchorage. Today I skied at my new stomping grounds at Kincaid Park in what were easily some of the worst, coldest conditions that I have ever skied in: frozen fingers and toes, CH6 acting as a kickwax, a sprint course that is a 1.6k course, and huge gobs of frozen tears. To think that just over a week ago in Vail I was skiing on mulitgrade/violet, and had bomber kick and glide. I remember thinking as I was driving home through the SEVEN FEET OF SNOW VAIL GOT after Mother Earth cried champagne powder, "well, we should be set for a little while and AK will be a doozy."

What a difference a week can make. So what happened? Conditions were still spectacular at Vail on Tuesday! But then came the frigid temperatures on Wednesday, and cold again for Thursday and Friday, and then more cold temperatures, and negative teens over the weekend. Any Nordic skier reading this blog will commiserate with me here. The temperatures we had today are the kind that make you feel sick to your stomach when you walk outside on a December day. It was -32 degrees in norhern Siberia, which ties the previous record low for this date, and believe me when I say that it wasn't much warmer in my sleeping bag last night. The temperatures that I had last week evaporated faster than you could say "snafus."

I suppose I should be pulling my hair out right now... but I'm not. Why? It's December in Alaska, and one doesn't have to look far into the past to realize this is just a cold place. Chance of a slower snow for New Year's Eve? I hope not. Chance of a BIG snowstorm on Friday? Better than this damn cold. Give it another week, and I bet we'll be skiing on VR40 again in perfect tracks. All we have to do is train hard, keep the fire burning, and all will be well.

Keep on keepin' on, and pray for snow and warm(er) tempertaures than here!