Stemilt Ski Trails!

WVNSEF Team at practice on Saturday.

Saturday marked the first day of grooming at the Stemilt Ski Trails! My dad & co. have been working this summer and fall on creating a ski trail up in the hills near Wenatchee for the Wenatchee Valley Nordic Ski Education Foundation to use. It's been a long process of scouting out trails, coordinating with the property owners and the Wenatchee snowmobiling club, cutting out brush, marking the trail, getting a groomer set up, and waiting for snow! I think it's pretty impressive that my dad decided we needed some trails closer to Wenatchee and then made it happen.

Laura Valaas walking the trail this summer.

The same huge ponderosa, cut up and cleared, with TJ Owen walking through with a 12' pole to make sure the trail was wide enough.

It was negative 8 (-9 at the coldest, actually) when we pulled into the parking lot Saturday morning. Which wouldn't be so unusual if it was Celsius, but it was FAHRENHEIT.

The first pass of the groomer around the trail!



Cal Anderson grooming with Peter Valaas riding passenger and providing insight into Nordic grooming techniques. The Apple Country Snowmobiling Club is going to groom and set up their cat with all the Nordic grooming accoutrements. Which I also think is pretty impressive that they're interested and willing to do that.



Some of the WVNSEF athletes enjoying the fresh grooming.

Kristina Owen coming back home to help her mom coach the WVNSEF Team.

Here's to having a vision and making it happen, in whatever endeavor!

p.s. since the trails are on private land I don't think they're officially open to the public so if you want to ski 'em you should check in with someone first.

Sovereign Lake NorAm Skate Sprints

We come to race. It's simple like that-- show up, ski fast. During our stay in Silver Star, BC, with two sprint races and three distance race, I stepped up to the start line eleven times. At each of those starts I knew the cold air was about to burn in my lungs, my muscles were going to scream in pain, and that I was about to lay my best effort out there and find out how my best compared to the competition. After most of the starts my best effort was good but not the best in the field. After one start, however, I had the satisfaction of being the fastest to race that day.

In the prelims for the skate sprint I felt leaden and frustrated that I couldn't accelerate my limbs through the motions like I wanted to ski. Our race course at Sovereign was fun, with tight turns, rests, and uphills and I came up to the quarterfinal excited to have another chance to play on it. The six girls started out fast and my body objected to the sudden load off the line but managed to get me into third before the first turn. I took advantage of the wide trail on the gradual uphill to move into second. I tucked into the draft on the next downhill and had the pleasant realization that my skis were wicked fast that day as I sling-shotted around Daitch on the short, steep uphill without even particularly desiring to. Since I only needed to be top two to advance I had planned on hanging out in second. Once I was in front, however, I had no desire to give anyone else a draft so I accelerated over the top of the hill and down, around, and back into the finish. The semifinal played out almost identically.

When the A-Final started my body knew what it was about to go through and, more importantly, wanted to do it. I started off the line maybe too eagerly and pulled into the front. Not particularly wanting to be in the front from the start, I eased up around the corner and relaxed into a tuck on the first gradual downhill instead of skating through it thinking someone would come around me. My skis really were the fastest out on the course that day because when I looked back to see where the other girls were, even in my draft, they were strung out in a line. When we hit the gradual uphill my tactic changed to racing off the front and I took advantage of my rest on the downhill and put in a quick acceleration to try to get a gap on the field early in the race. It must have worked because I skied the rest of the course and sprinted into the finish with the unusual peacefulness of not having someone kicking my pole baskets and breathing half a second behind me.

It feels good to win a race. Really though, I'm happy as long as I get the opportunity to start. I know that most of the races I start I'm not going to win, but every race I start I get the satisfaction of putting 100% of my focus and effort toward a goal. Standing on the start line is akin to announcing that I am going to show you the best I have, without excuses or explanations. Regardless of how good my best may be on any given day, there's purity in facing the challenge.

A musical line

We sprinted on Saturday. I spent my entire training session on Friday doing laps around the 1.1k sprint loop. I hate doing laps but at so many of our venues there's no option for skiing other than a crowded sprint course so I decided I needed to learn to deal with the crowds and the short loops.

This is what I thought about on Friday. I broke the course down, thought about it, and reassembled it. I asked myself, "if this was a line of music, how would I play it?" This isn't normally how I think about race courses. Music, along with most other skills, is a decided non-talent of mine. The course had a playfulness and a flow to it that made it conducive to my musical analogy. I imagined playing this race course on my oboe. It starts with very simple quarter notes, full of energy because they're the first notes and you've been waiting for ever so long for the oboe solo. The pace picks up briefly to eighth notes around the first broad bend, more interesting certainly, but still legato. Then some slow quarters, but these notes carry more potential. It's only a few bars, but there's the option here for some vibrato. how many pulses can you squeeze into each note? How much extra speed can you add with each kick?

Then it starts getting challenging, up the first rolling hill. Now is time for accelerando. The fingering gets tricky and there's no break in the phrase. You have to use all those little keys running down alongside the oboe. You had better know without thinking where exactly you're going step, how exactly you're going to move. Then there's a breath mark, a short down, a short tuck. Which is good because coming up is a short, steep section. Stacato. Allegro. It's going to be hard and there's no room for error because you only get a few seconds of playing before the next breath mark. Then it's a series of trills around a sharp, fast corner. Played with vivace. Finally it's straight into the finish and there's fewer options for technical mistakes but it gets more and more difficult to maintain the proper tone. And then, a finish, a lunge, and the rest of the orchestra takes back over.

This analogy only momentarily got me distracted with trying to remember all the musical terms that I used to know. Thinking about where the breath marks were along the course was helpful. I told myself to take the opportunity to breath and relax. I also focused more on my tempo on the uphills. It's good to be able to look at a race from more than one perspective.

Pictures, Part II

The view looking down toward Vernon, BC, from near the Sovereign Lake Nordic Center.

I qualified in 6th & then went on to win my quarter, semi & A-final. My skis were ridiculously fast. So fast one of my competitors specifically asked afterwards about the flex/grind/wax that I was using. I felt absolutely awful yesterday, this morning, and in the qualifier. Once we started the heats though I started to come around. Racing can be odd like that. Don't worry, my team doesn't let me get arrogant at all... after my 20 minute cool down I came back to find that everyone had left. I had to hitchhike back to our house.


Jeff Ellis got a bloody nose in the race today (along with a fabulous 2nd place finish). It wasn't your traditional bloody nose... it was a a stab wound from, I believe, George Grey. Beware of pole tips. Wear glasses. Maybe even a face guard.

Jeff Ellis (2nd), Laura Valaas (1st), Anders Haugen (4th). Some good results for the APU crew. Anders, incidentally turns 28 tomorrow. I think Taz made him a birthday cake. I love it that my teammates cook.

Casey Fagerquist, Laura Valaas, Becca Rorabaugh, Anders Haugen, Erik Flora. Bart Dengel & Jeff Ellis in front. Being a part of a team and working together is a big part of what makes this fun.

Podium shot. It was LAV vs. Canada in the A-Final. Good job to "the team" (aka: Alberta World Cup Academy), they were trying to tell me they weren't all as fast as Shayla, but I think they lied.

Pictures

I have been abysmally bad at taking pictures this trip. I took some this morning but they lacked any merit as pictures so I didn't even bother bringing my camera with me to the coffee shop to upload them. So, some verbal snapshots for you from Silver Star:

-Two kids (well, the older kind) in snow pants rolling around on one of the hills in the Sovereign Lake stadium. With scissors. Cutting down the plant stalks poking through the snow.

-Men with crow bars and shovels digging big rocks out from their semi-covered state near the high point of the sprint course.

-A man on a very tall genie lift hanging Christmas lights on a very tall tree in Silver Star village.

-Hans, who is Belgian and served me my mocha at Bugaboos. Hans speaks German and French. He was bemoaning that fact that he only had two years of English in school, so silly. So he's here for the winter to improve his English. He tells me this in perfect English. Of course, his native language is actually Flemish.

-The Lindt chocolate that came with my mocha, nestled comfortably in the spoon.

-Ronsse, Becca & I stopping one night on a run to dance in the middle of an empty Silver Star village because there's speakers on top of the ticket booth playing music. Directly in front of the "This area under constant video surveillance" sign.

-Snow. Falling from the sky.

-A small child pulling an even smaller child in the smallest sled.

-My skate poles after training on Friday-- dry and clean on the upper half but accumulating more and more ice from precipitation as you go down toward the baskets. A clear indication of the differences in velocity between the grip and basket.

-Matt Whitcomb (incidentally, Kate's brother) walking down the trail holding a chunk of snow. When I asked him why he replied, "because I'm hungry [takes bite] and I'm waiting for Pat to bring my a ham and egg sandwich."

Training Tricks

There's no secret to getting faster. It simply takes work. It takes showing up at practice every day, week after week, year after year, and being ready to push yourself to improve every time you ski. That's all.

Occasionally we get something new to entertain us in aside from the standard sequence of intervals, distance skiing, strength training, & more intervals. This week we harnessed up and tried a new drill. We took turns pulling each other around a small loop out at the Hilltop trails. Aside from the fun of being able to tell Kikkan to "mush, girl!" and getting a nice ride around the loop I learned a ton about skiing from this drill.

Because there was someone trying physically to hold me back, I had to fight to get down the trail. This made me realize how much I had to actually want to go forward. There's nothing like having somebody trying to hold you back to make you determined not to be held back. Maybe us skiers are just ornery like that. Anyway, I had the best forward lean of my entire ski career to date. I hope that I can remember that feeling and use it in my unharnessed skiing.

Getting rigged up and feeling like I was on a leash


Kikkan Randall working on her forward lean with back pressure being applied by Laura Valaas.



Getting pulled behind Kikkan, everything's more epic in the dark.

what is the purpose

Every morning when I wake up the first thing I think about is what I'm doing for training that day. Okay, actually the first thing I think is, "do I really have to wake up right now or can I sleep for another ten minutes?" Which would make the second thing I think about my training. While skiing is my first priority I keep a smorgasbord of other activities on tap and find that they continually bring me new perspectives on skiing and enrich my life. (Working with my Elementary School students definitely falls under this category but that's not the topic for today.)

I had to do something new today, something that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do well, which is how I like to do things. So after 2hrs of skiing this morning I started thinking about this next task. The task, without getting too sidetracked, involved communicating in what I'll describe as coded English. I was nervous and probably as anxious as I ever get. I did all the prep work I could but I knew it would be obvious that I was a complete novice.

I was right, of course, I messed up just about all of my communications. Some things take experience and a comfort level that I frankly didn't have today, couldn't have possibly had. I came away with a list of things-to-do-differently-next-time that would have inked my entire forearm if I'd been taking notes.

I may have bungled all the details of the exercise but I managed to accomplish the main purpose. I didn't do it exactly right but I did it. Afterward I mentally took a step back and considered the experience. I realized (similarly to how you've already realized this was leading to an epiphany) that the important thing was to accomplish the main purpose of my task. I had been getting hung up on the details. Sometimes I get so flustered on the supporting details of what I'm doing that I forget what I'm actually... doing.

When I'm ski racing the main point is not to increase my tempo or pick good lines or get complete weight transfer, the point is to Ski As Fast As I Can. Truly, all the details are there to assist the Ski Fast goal but if I focus on the details sometimes I'm too consumed with skiing well that I forget that I'm supposed to be skiing fast. Plus, when my mind is full of details, a myriad of potential things to do wrong, it is prohibitively intimidating. There's no possible way I can get everything right every race. And if I tell myself that I'm not going to get everything perfect there's a very real possibility that I'll concede defeat before the race even begins. Must not be done. Really, what I need to focus on is the main purpose. I have spent endless hours training and working on my technique. I need to have faith in that training and let go of my technique concerns, my obsession with the details. When I'm ski racing I need to think about covering the most amount of ground in the least time.

I also took a deep breath today and acknowledged that being inept at something wasn't all that bad. I'm still learning. A lot. In all areas of my life. And it's okay to be wrong and mistaken and imperfect.

Alaska is beautiful

Inner Lake George

I am so grateful to live somewhere I can bask in the beauty of my surroundings. There are so many breathtaking places around Anchorage and many more that I haven't even discovered yet.

Knik Glacier

Knik Glacier

Independence Mine, Hatcher Pass

Fight

During the cooldown after a hard L5 workout up at Hatcher Pass Ellis called me over to where he was standing. He'd come across an ermine and a squirrel fighting in the snow. Maybe it's more properly called a weasel, or a stoat, I'm not sure. The loop up there isn't too big so it only took a couple of minutes before the rest of our teammates stepped off alongside us as the straggled past on their cooldown. It didn't take us very long to asses the situation and determine that the ground squirrel was not in a good place. Carnivore vs herbivore is never good for the herbivore. We spent probably a good five minutes of our cooldown ski watching this fight. After all, I hardly ever see an ermine, much less one that's going after a supply of food for the winter. I decided that I wasn't as much of a fan of ermine as I thought I was. I no longer think of them as "cute." We watched until it was pretty clear there was no hope for the squirrel.

Erik and Jeff said they skied by later and the ground squirrel was STILL putting up a fight.

Did I fight that hard in my intervals that morning? Nope. Do I fight that hard in races? Nope. I'd like to think I do but I know I don't. I get in this zone of complacency thinking that I'm working really hard and striving to do my best and pushing my limits. I think I know what it means to fight. I don't think of myself as a quitter but I know there's been races where I've figured out the outcome and quit pushing. I'm not proud of that but I can't deny it either. This squirrel probably figured out the outcome but he did not stop fighting. Even when the weasel was ready to drag him away for a food stash he was fighting back. After watching the two rodents battle I had to ask myself if I knew what it meant to really fight for something. To struggle with every ounce of my being to some goal. I don't. I'm not sure if you can know it unless you actually have to fight for your life (or something equally important). What I will remember from this glimpse into the rest of the natural world is that there are many, many levels of fight above what I'm producing. As hard as I think I'm fighting... I can fight harder.

Skiing.

Today was one of those priceless sunny and calm days at Glenn Alps. There was fresh snow covering everything; it looked like an artist's nightmare (although maybe real artists are more optimistic about depicting snowscapes). Being aware that it could be my last ski up to Powerline Pass of the year without fighting a monstrous headwind I was loath to turn around. So I didn't. I kept skiing.

I skied passed the point where my girls team turned around, passed the point where my boys team turned around, passed where Dylan's tracks turned back, along a faded track from before last night's snowfall, until those tracks too stopped to make an asterisk in the snow and disappeared into themselves for their return path. I skied through the sparkling and untouched snow, passed chortling ptarmigans, a few of whom the winter white seemed to have caught by surprise. I skied over snow dunes and among plebeian shrubs looking regal in their ermine fur coats. Although enjoying the sun rise over the mountains I skied before the dawn into the shadows at the very base of Powerline Pass. I skied into five runs of (admittedly very bad) tele turns and through seven layers of kick wax. I prayed to stay ahead of the cloud of snow dust licking up the legs of my shadow as I descended the upper valley. I skied into the whispered, hissing conversation between my skis as they returned to smoother tracks without interrupting them. It was a day to rekindle my passion for skiing.

The Glenn Alps parking lot.
Ky Eiben waiting for a calf to follow mother moose across the trail.

The APU team in the lower left corner heading home.

Doing math with Dallas Price's Pre-Algebra class at Rogers Park Elementary in Anchorage.

I finally get it

"And what are you studying/did you study in school?"
"Math"
"Oh," [pause & blank stare] "so do you want to teach?"

After getting this question so frequently I was probably more anti-teaching than if I wasn't forced to say, "no, I'm really not interested in being a teacher" over and over again. I really appreciated my teachers and professors but I was certain that I didn't have the patience to coax the painfully ignorant students (as I often was) into enlightenment in one subject after another. Teaching seemed to me near the bottom of the list of desirable professions. Even after volunteering all last school year at Sand Lake I still thought that teaching seemed way too arduous for the benefits and I was completely satisfied with my 1-2 hours in the afternoons.

Then, sometime this fall I finally got it. I finally got a teacher's high. I remember coming away from class one day feeling like I'd improved the world. (Just a little tiny bit, but still...) I realized that teaching could be totally fulfilling and uplifting and a worthwhile use of my time. Don't get me wrong, I still doubt I'd cut it as a teacher and it's not in the career plan, but now at least I understand why people love teaching. Why one of my brilliant friends would struggle through two years of teaching math in inner city Las Vegas instead of getting a PhD and earning fame and money (although she did pick up a Masters degree, I was serious about the brilliant descriptor). I am so glad that I'm getting this exposure to teaching through In The Arena... I think the perspective's been good for me and it's been good to realize that the value of having a challenging and fulfilling career matters way more than the paycheck.

Joy

In Elizabeth Gilbert's book "eat, pray, love" one of her friends insists that every city has a word:

Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be-- that is the word of the city. (pg 103)

Of course, being a book about self-discovery, this discussion quickly leads to what Liz's word is.

Of couse, being rather self-reflective myself, this quickly led myself to ponder what my word is. Although, being a greedy reader I kept reading and merely stored the question for future consideration. Then on my run this afternoon I had the answer. JOY. It probably wasn't my word a couple of weeks ago and it might not be my word next week either, but for right now it's the best word for my life.

When I ask myself, "why am I doing this?" it's for the joy of it. Why am I rollerskiing? Because it brings me joy. Why am I doing one activity or another? Joy. There was a strong wind tonight and I can tell it's bringing winter to the Chugiak. And that brings me joy. Running this afternoon I was joyful simply to be out and capable of running. This morning I spent 2hrs with Dallas Price's 6th grade class (well, technically an hour with her Pre-Algebra class and an hour with her homeroom class). After math class one of the boys came up radiating excitement as he told me, "that was so cool!" I assured him that stuff got even cooler in higher mathematics. He asked if he could also expand (x+y)^7 (I'd encouraged them to try (x+y)^6 on their own and he had already done it) and I told him to "do it" but if you'd listened to the tone of the exchange rather than the words you would have thought we were talking about something way more trendy than math such as "I'd like to hit this sick jump, I'm pretty sure I could do it but it might be too big for me, should I try it?" "do it." I had shared some of my joy in mathematics with this boy and that made today even more joyful.

Obviously, I expect you to try to pick your own word at this point :)

The Olympics are over and school's starting!

First, be sure and check out Mike Hazle's recap of his Olympic experience for a very good perspective on competition for any athlete at any level.

Second, school started again here in the Anchorage on August 20th and my community service projects are back in full swing! I'm continuing to work at Sand Lake in the afternoons, this year with Mr. Maurer's 6th grade class. I've also followed the teacher with whom I worked last year, Dallas Price, to her new 6th grade class at Rogers Park Elementary. While I will have specific home room classes at both these schools I'm hoping to get to work with all of the 6th graders over the year. I already got to meet all of the Rogers Park 6th graders since they invited me to be a guest speaker for their first day convention. My class at Sand Lake is a hugely diverse group of students and I'm pretty excited to get to know them better.

Training

These last two weeks of training have been my favorite so far. Make that three if I include this week of recovery. The first week was in town mostly on rollerskis, the second week was on the glacier skiing for seven days and the third week is back home not thinking at all about training and enjoying the other aspects of life. Our hard weeks have been low volume this cycle but high intensity. I've never felt so confident in my training before. We train hard and we train specifically. I know my coaches think about our training and have an overarching scheme for the training and racing season to get us in the best shape possible. I also trust their eyes on my technique and know that they know how to decipher what they see me doing differently than what my perfect technique should look like. It's a very worry-free way to train. All I have to do is to train hard when I'm supposed to and work on my technique while I'm skiing. And then I get this week of not-really-training to enjoy life totally guilt free because I know the next five weeks are going to be another set of tough training.

Thomas Trainin Center on Eagle Glacier

Kate Fitzgerald and Becca Rorabaugh enjoying an evening outside.

The view from Eagle Glacier down over Girdwood and toward Turnagain Arm.

Becca Rorabaugh, Laura Valaas, Katie Ronsse

Sunset on Eagle Glacier

Jeff Ellis retrieving a frisbee from the semi-frozen pond.

Becca Rorabaugh

Olympics 8/8/08

Congratulations to my fellow In The Arena teammate, Mike Hazle, as he begins his Olympic competitions in the javelin!

Eagle River

One of the things I love about training in Alaska is that there's innumerable beautiful places for me to train and explore. One of my projects takes me out to the town of Chugiak and I often stop for my afternoon run at a random access point for the Chugach Park. Pictured here is Eagle River.




Next week we will spend our fourth and last week this summer at the Thomas Training Center on Eagle Glacier. The week following that I'm hoping to take a short trip to Kodiak to get to spend a couple days exploring yet another of Alaskas beautiful places.

Tafraout

We picked Tafraout out of many small and unknown dots on our map. I'd taken two weeks off of my training life in Alaska to explore Morocco with a friend and fellow math major from Whitman College. I thought the mental and physical break would be good for me especially since with such a good spring of skiing I hadn't really yet taken a break from training. Plus, I feel it's important for me to get out and experience the world.

We fell in love with Tafraout and ended up staying almost twice as long as we'd originally planned. The rocks were breathtakingly amazing, having been carved into eerie formations by the elements. We rented mountain bikes to visit rock formations, small villages, isolated oases, and ruined kasbahs. I ran into the surrounding mountains to play on the jungle gym of rocks. We swam in our hotel pool during the hottest part of the day and relaxed with a scrumptious tajine in the evenings. Once the day cooled enough we would relax on a terrace with a cup of hot chocolate or some of the delicious house yogurt that every restaurant in Morocco keeps on hand.



We "discovered" a cluster of crumbling, abandoned buildings to explore.

Old pottery in the abandoned Kasbah.

I dust off an old piece of leather from a Moroccan slipper.

Prehistoric rock carving of an antelope.

Newer rock carving

Blacktail Ridge near Eagle River, AK

A hiker descending toward Eagle River, AK.

I had a beautiful hike up near Eagle River except that it was SNOWING on me for part of the time. In fact it snowed me out of the higher mountains and back to the lower tundra.

For this trip up to the glacier the weather was dubious enough that we didn't think we'd ever get in if we waited to fly so we opted to hike.



You can see that it's a daunting trip up to Eagle Glacier... we did 4200 vertical feet in 2.5hrs. Even with all the training we do my quads were hurting from our little jaunt.



Tazlina Mannix paused to bundle up as we gained elevation the weather changed drastically from nice and summery to full on winter.



We even got to rope up for one of the trickier sections near the top.

Just getting to the training venue can be an adventure!

Kikkan Randall... the girl knows how to ski.

Bobby Miller, originally from MN, gets a glimpse of the chugiak range while resting on a gradual descent.

Erik Flora

Kalysta Schmidt and Erika Klaar making water.

It's not ALL skiing up on the glacier. Due to the fabulous winter we had some wintry weather on the glacier (that's right, I mean we were kicking on HARDWAX). It also meant that the snow hadn't started melting into water yet so we had to make some. Luckily there's some very talented chefs in our group. That also means that I went five days without showering. Which, actually, I was fine with. I mean, showering is just one more thing to do during the day and if you can skip it without feeling guilty why not? At the same time though, the first stop after coming off the glacier was to a gas station where Taz & I practically ran into the bathroom... to turn on the faucets and wash our hands lengthily in warm, running water. For drinking though, there's not much better than fresh snow-melt! Things were starting to melt by the end of the week so next time we go up there should be lots of sun melted snow so we won't have to do any coaxing.

Peter Kling and Galen Johnston cleaning out a winter's accumulation of snow drift from the wax trailer.

Erika Klaar and Becca Rorabaugh heading out for a ski.

James Southam being followed and coached by Erik Flora.

I really do feel fortunate to have such a great group of teammates and coaches to live and train with at APU.