THIS STUFF CAN KILL YA!!

After a hard workout I like to imbibe my favourite poison as a reward....Coke. Really, you’d think it’d be the perfect post race recovery drink. It’s got 6-8 teaspoons of sugar per can-perfect for replenishing depleted glycogen stores. But sometimes I wonder if it’s the best for me. My fears may have been confirmed last weekend. With the cold winter we’ve had, some of the Coke cans stored in our insulated garage froze pretty hard and burst. They formed a nice tar like looking pool that in my procrastination avoided cleaning up for several weeks. Upon arriving home from the Dogtooth Dash skimo nat’l champs on the weekend, I noticed a dead mouse in the middle of the Coke tar pit. Now, I’m always looking for a new method to trap the elusive mice that invade my home, but this gave some cause for concern. Did the poor fella suck up the Coke tar causing an overdose of sugar? Perhaps a hyper-glycemic reaction to the concentrated Coke gob. Did he die of a heart attack? Remotely possible, but unlikely, Coca-Cola has gone back to the original formula and put cocaine in it causing a drug overdose. Maybe the fury creature was simply enjoying himself so much that he didn’t notice that his feet were getting frozen/glued/stuck in the tar mess. Man- that would have been scary...not being able to extract your legs. It’s possible he died doing all three. Realizing he was stuck, just decided to enjoy his predicament and continue to slurp up the goo, until his poor little sugar ravaged heart gave out. Maybe it’s time for me to rethink my workout recovery nutrition

the Gear is Here

This year has been "gear-o-rama". With my expedition to Worlds I figure I needed to make sure I had what I needed and even some back ups. I've gotten Dynafit boots on a pro deal. A sponsor helped me get skis and bindings. I've purchased a few pairs of skins, looking for the elusive perfect mix of speed and kick. Through it all I've come to learn where to score the stuff.

I"ve tried getting ski companies to help out, but alas even my old Atomic connections couldn't come through. So I resorted to buying retail. But I learned some good lessons worthy of being passed on.

It's almost impossible to get the skimo stuff in North America, so I resorted to buying Euro. A strong Euro dollar didn't help, but there are 3 great online shops I"ll pass contact info on here. For my skis I called "Telemark-Pyrenees" (www.telemark-pyrenees.com). They said they had 1 pair of SkiTrab World cups left. I ordered them and they were at my door in just under a week. They were packed better than any online purchase I'd ever seen. In contrast, earlier in the year, utilizing a pro deal on some back-country skis ordered out of the usa, they came falling out of the box, with messed up paper work nessesitating me paying double duty on them and took over 3 weeks to arrive in the mail.

Next I ordered some Haero bindings from Vertical world (www.verticalworld.it). They also arrived in 1 week, with proper paper work. The vender even threw in a hat I hadn't ordered. It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, but the gesture makes me want to order more stuff (which I did!).

Euro pricing is either comparable or way better. The skins I got cost me about 50 Euro (65$CAD/US). In one case comparable skins from a shop in Whistler cost 200$+....plus the crazy BC 14% tax and shipping (way more duty than imported goods).

Another good shop out of Germany is: www.riapsport.de maybe a little more expensive than the others, but they've also got the skimo goods.

Good luck and happy shopping!

HIndsite

Well it's been a week since I've been back from Italy and the world skimo championships. Whenever you've geared a big part of your life towards an event/competition, I've found there's a certain amount of let down or even mild depression. You've been gunning in your mind and training for so long for the event....now it's done.

Soooo, you've got to re-focus and set yoursites on the next challenge. For me there's a little dissappointment because the race didn't go as well as I'd hoped (teams). The entire race was going right according to plan. My fitness was good, we were in the hunt, then I fell apart on the downhill. Maybe I shouldn't make such a big deal of it. We probably only lost a couple of places, but still, one of my reasons for going over was to show myself that I could ski at that level. For that last downhill 1300 meters worth I felt I failed.

But any failure, dissappointment and set back are only opportunities to re-evaluate. See where you went wrong and correct the errors. So now that I'm back and have had plenty of time to mull things over here are a couple conclusions. First, I need to train downhill with my race skis. Our tiny 160 cm narrow, insanely light skis handle totally differently than any other kind of alpine board. I found this out while training this past week at Norquay.

Norquay is a smaller hill (by Rocky mountain standards) that has one chair with only knarly runs. All double black or hard black. I took my K2's with similar dimensions to my race skis and with a friend hammered 8 runs as fast as we could w/ no stopping. No sweat. A few days later I did the same, but with my race skis. I felt like a beginner!! The light skis required a totally different balance point. After 7 runs on them though I felt waaaay better. Why didn't I do this years ago? or even a couple of months ago? Duh.

I've actually got a couple bigger races left. Our Canadian Nat'l champs included. The organizer promises a more technical course (it was alreay the most technical course in Canada). I'm going to keep hitting Norquay on my race boards. Fortunately this year has officially become an epic year and the normally rocky Norquay has great snow. And thankfully I bought one of those 100$ mid-week season passes. Thanks Norquay. Now if you'd only let us do some skinning uphill.

Teams race: Race day!

Man! Do I feel nervous! Gotta make sure I enjoy this! As the starting gun goes off my heart rate zooms. I know I've gotta give 'er only enough that I can sustain for at least 3 hours. Even still my Polar hr monitor says I'm working hard and it FEELS like it too.

Quickly into the race is a very long bootpack. On go the skis to the backpack and we trudge away. From bootpack to more skinning the pace continues at a high level and though we're in the back third of the field, several teams begin falling off. Even some USA and Canada teams.

When we finally get to the top of the 2nd big climb, you can see how much snow fell up here in the alpine. It's over 70cm's. On our tiny race boards it's quite a challenge to get down. As a team we do alright. Not losing any places as I fall several times and StanO almost wrenches his knee. We promise we'll go a bit more carefully on the big descent.

For the final big climb I start to cramp a bit so we decide to do some towing. It's amazing that even though there wasn't a lot of drag on the line, my hr drops 15-20 beats as Stan mules me up the hill.

Now came the disaster. My legs were so cooked they really couldn't negotiate the deep pow and steep hill. I must have fell a dozen times. The vert would be similar to more than Whistler top to bottom and then some. We probably lost 15 minutes and dropped a few places (including the other Canada team).

When we finally made It to the valley floor it was one of the toughest slogs ever. I had several cramps going in my legs. It was such a relief to finally be over. Not the greatest result, but a victory for sure in perseverance!!

Teams race: pre-race

Team Canada 3 is StanO and SteveO. In the day leading up to our race StanO keeps bringing up important race strategy info. We really feel like a team within a team especially as we forego the usual free lunch up in Claut opting instead to avoid the drive up and various rigimoral associated with it and pay to eat in our hotel. The meal allows us to go over more race strategy.

Earlier that day we'd practiced towing. A strategy that many teams use especially if one person starts to fade or is a weaker skier. Using climbing harnesses and a mostly static line we give 'er a go with each taking turns as the mule.
The teams race is usually the most epic of the championships and this one looks like a doozy!! Three MAJOR climbs followed with a 1350m descent to the valley floor and a tour over shoveled snow into the finish line right in the village square.

I've been taking melatonin to aid my changed sleep pattern. ..hopefully it kicks in. I'm going to need it!!

Lets Get Vertical...Vertical...I wanna get Vertical

Ok, maybe the old Olivia Newton John song is before your time, but in any case getting vertical is one of my favorite things. its unusual then that I ve never done a vertical race before. In one of these pain fests you only go up. Usually from the bottom of a valley, village or ski area to the very top. This was the case yesterday. The venue was the ski area, Piacavella. The vert was "only" 540 meters. All up, no down, no flats, no rest, just hammer, hammer hammer.

I was still a bit tired from the epic teams race from 2 days earlier, but deb reminded me via blackberry text message that I love vertical. I kept telling myself that.

Just before the race began my heart rate monitor decided to go on the fritz. Too bad, cuz I would like to know how hi my old ticker can get...and maybe prevent going out too hard and blowing. Oh well, just take it as it comes.

As the race began I conceeded probably more than I should have, but in the end I truly felt like I had paced myself almost perfectly and gave all I could (always a good feeling). My only regret was that during the boot pack section (where you take your skis off and quickly lash them to your pack) I took an insanely long time to get them onto the pack before ascending. In doing so i lost a place to a Japanees fellow and someone else. I passed them back, but had to work for it. It is especially distressing because I had practiced this art. But being here I see how important fast transitions are and most accomplish the ski to pack art leaving the pole straps on. I thought i could do so without practice.....wrong. I got so tangled up the course marshalls took such pity on me that they helped me out and untangle myself. In this sport, outside help is strictly verboten so if a course marshall helps you, the ones suppossedly enforcing these rules, then you must be pretty hapless. in any case I probably lost a good half minute.

At least I did not get -"chicked" by our super stud female, Melanie. Who, by the way recorded North Americas best ever 6th place today in the sprint.

Back to the vert race. It was so foggy at the top that even though i was totally in the alpine and only a few hundred feet from the finish, I could not see anything more than 20 feet in front of me. Having not pre skied this portion of the course I had no idea where I was. At one point I asked someone, "how far?"...their response, "not far". Boy that really helped.

I could hear the announcers and crowd, and they were loud, so I knew I was close, but could see absolutely nothing. Finally the blow up arch came into view. Good thing too cuz the Japan dude was coming hard.

As painful as this sounds, it was kinda cool. Would like to do some more of these races, but I dont think we have any true vert races in N. America. Oh well there are always time trials!

ARRIVO ITALIA!!

Well, here I am, finally at the skimo world competition, arriving early enough to quell the demons of jet lag and a confused digestive system. However it was a little strange as there was not snow to be seen anywhere, not even in the higher altitudes. On Wednesday it rained hard all day then turned to snow late in the afternoon. By morning there was plenty of the white stuff to allay any fears.

The next few days were spent skiing on some of the wettest snow I've ever seen. This must be like Vancouver snow.

At this point I've got a couple of days to ready my system. In the meantime I'm going to enjoy soaking up some post storm rays and catch up on my vitamin D deficiency!