IN THE ARENA WITH LAURA

New Pursuits

2010-01-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

BootBuddy
Since retiring from the active ITA roster I seem to have over expanded my other activities. I have been ski racing full time as always, but in addition I have started my own business!

www.SkiTraxx.com

I am manufacturing after market cross country ski accessories. One of the big nuisances when I used to go out skiing was knocking the snow out of the bottom of my ski boot before clipping into the binding. To solve this problem I (along with a lot of help!) created the BootBuddy.

Simple, utile, colorful, indestructible.

So far I've been encouraged by all of the positive feedback and excitement about my first product. There are also several other product we're developing but they won't be out until Fall 2010.

It's an odd turn of life... I was halfway through my actuarial licensing, hoping to work my way up to CFO of a company after my ski career. Now I get to be CFO of my own company AND still ski race!

2009-11-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

Becoming an In the Arena Alumna

2009-11-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

Having served two full years with In the Arena (ITA), Laura Valaas has elected to rotate off of the roster and, thus, to join the ranks of organizational alumni. ITA is deeply grateful for Laura’s 24 months of service and the youth work she generated in Anchorage and beyond during that time. Countless children —students, athletes, ski fans and supporters —have been lifted by Laura’s wisdom, guidance and input; and we all wish her the best in her preparations for the selection races to the US Ski Team that will compete in Vancouver in 2010.

If you would like to keep up-to-date with Laura –or with any of In the Arena’s alumni –please visit the Arena Athlete Alumni blog or Laura’s own site: lauravalaas.com.

Onwards and upwards.
And thank you for your interest and support.

Park City

2009-10-25T21:55:00.001-07:00

I skate rollerskied some intervals around the Soldier Hollow paved trails this morning. Being back in Park city brings back a lot of memories of my race career. I've been here so often over the past few years it feels very much like home. It's odd how race venues make such an intense impact on my memory. Looking at the FIS website, I've only competed in 16 races here, it feels like more. Maybe because we did so many training camps out here.

The first weekend I raced here I earned 346.69 FIS points (if you don't ski race, that's really, really bad). The next year I came back to the same RMISA invite and finished with 177.22 FIS points (again, if you don't ski, that's much better). Two years later I won the same RMISA invite. My first, and, let's be honest, only, RMISA victory. I remember sitting in the little Homestead computer room with Tara Gregg and she said, "I think you won the race." I didn't believe her at first.

It is pretty cool to have one place stay the same and to be able to come back to it year after year and feel the hills getting less steep and the loops getting shorter.

Lake Placid, NY

2009-10-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

I had a fabulous interval session the other day. It was hard, but enjoyably hard, what we call threshold. When I do threshold I get to stretch out the body and use proper race technique but stay out of the lungs-on-fire pain zone. Threshold is the interval type that makes me appreciate my fitness without questioning my sanity for deciding to be a cross country ski racer. (To quote Newell from the other day, "cross country skiing is really fun when you stop.")

We started in Wilmington and skied up the road toward Whiteface. It was the same road that was used for the Race to the Castle rollerski race last week but we started lower and never made it as far as the start of the rollerski race. From the four corners intersection there's still a fair amount of elevation gain to play with before you hit the race course.

We started staggered as we came in from our warm-up and Kristina Strandberg jumped in right behind me. We had a nice headwind and since I was leading and knew Strandberg was behind me I went just a little harder than I would have if I had been by myself so she wouldn't get bored. She came around and led the second interval. It was much easier to follow and draft and be able to relax into Strandberg's rhythm.

After two intervals we got in the van and drove back to the bottom of the hill where we changed into our skate gear and did two more intervals up the hill. Strandberg led the first & I led the second. It was almost like doing two intervals instead of four. There's a huge benefit in being able to ski with someone in a hard workout like that. It's been really nice to be out in Lake Placid working with a lot of different coaches & athletes and see how other people are skiing and training.

And despite how much we make fun of the tourists up here looking at the leaves turning to reds and oranges and yellows, it really is beautiful when we get a sunny afternoon.

p.s. We switched to skate halfway through the workout to simulate the stress of a duathlon race although I don't recall thinking I had to do any duathlon races this winter.

And so it begins...

2009-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today I embark on the first journey of the season. Once this trip begins I may not stop rolling until March. And maybe not even then. The nominal reason for this trip is a training camp over in Lake Placid, NY, but I am going to take advantage of a rest week and take my time getting over there. The current plan includes brief visits to Yakutat, Gustavus, Sitka, Ketchikan, Prince Rupert, BC, and Nanaimo, BC, before ending up at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid and getting back to the hard core ski training.

I put Nanaimo on the list of places to visit because it's the birthplace of Nanaimo bars. Utter deliciousness. My traveling partner foolishly left the planning up to me so we're going to find ourselves in places like Nanaimo. If anyone knows of any other points of culinary interest that I should put on my list of to-visit places, please, let me know. I only happen to know about Nanaimo because my mom makes Nanaimo bars during the Holidays.

Two weeks in Lake Placid and then the race season will be approaching fast. Assuming I don't indulge in too many of Nanaimo's namesakes, I should be ready to hit the races hard. I can't wait. I stayed in Alaska ALL summer and I have been anticipating being back on the road. Back on the road, living from a bag, wandering from town to town, without a permanent address. That's home.

Oslo 2011

2009-09-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

K: "Hey Laura, there's some building going up here. Apparently they're doing some ski thing."

L: "Um, duh, the 2011 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS are in Oslo next winter. I don't know if you know this, but it's kind of a big deal."

K: "meh."

L: "Well if I get to race there you can come back to Norway to watch and visit your friends."

K: "Sweet! You should definitely do this race."

My little sister is spending the year in Oslo and we had this conversation the other day. Then I signed onto facebook and saw that she had tagged me in the above photo. Which I thought was cute.

It reminded me that work is busily being accomplished on the 2011 World Champs venue and, in fact, they've been working on it ever since they won the bid. I am, hopefully, going to show up to the 2011 World Championships and stay there for one week training nearby and then two weeks at the championships, then they're over and all the athletes go their merry ways. The organizing committee, on the other hand, is working on this as a full-time job starting last year and ending well after I'm snuggled back into my own home in America.

The amount of work that goes into organizing and running an event is staggering. I am so grateful that people are willing to do this and to do it well. I can't even imagine having to sit down and think out all of the needs of an event of that magnitude-- the needs of all the athletes, coaches, waxers, staff, physicians, attaches, then all of the race organizers and volunteers, the sound system requirements of the announcers, the wiring needs of the timing crew and of the film crew, the comfort of the spectators. And before all of the people show up needing things the actual, physical venue needs to be built-- ski trails, stadium, ski jumps, waxing areas, housing, parking lots, WADA testing area. It is unbelievable.

I feel so lucky to get to enjoy the hard work of so many people every time I show up to a starting line.

Speeds

2009-08-29T23:31:00.001-07:00

We did some skate speeds down by the Kincaid Chalet on Friday. After I had finished my speeds I was skiing back down the road. Bart Dengel still had a couple speeds to go and as I was starting my cool-down he took off V2-ing in front of me. Now Bart was really hammering these 30sec speeds and as I watched him an entire scene recreated itself around him-- snow, pin-flags outlining finishing lanes, phantom competitors (two on his left, one on his right), a finish line just over the crest of the hill.

It was only the access road to Kincaid, but he was skiing with such a purpose it was no stretch of the imagination for me to put him into a race. Now THAT is cool, that is how you should train. To really train for ski racing is to be able to hear the cheering of spectators during your intervals, it's being able to feel the elastic of your bib across your ribcage. To really be able to train is to feel like everyone is watching your splits on the big screen even is you're the only one who will look down at the time on your wrist watch at the end.

There should be such a purpose that your teammates can recreate a race around you as you train.

IAAF World Champs

2009-08-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Two of my In The Arena teammates competed at the Track & Field World Championships in Berlin this week. I am so proud of both of them!

Mike Hazle threw the javelin 78.17m.

Zoila Gomez ran the marathon in 2:42:49.

Click on either of their names to read about their experiences at the World Championships!

Eagle Glacier August 10-16

2009-08-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

I had my final glacier camp of the summer this week. I'll let the photos do the talking. Don't forget you can click on each photo to enlarge it!
coach-athlete meetings on the glacier.

Stretching party.

sling load
Mark Iverson
Becca Rorabaugh
Kate Fitzgerald

Rollerskiing and Realskiing

2009-08-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

We had our first rollerski race on Saturday. Even though it was super low key I realized that it had been forever since I'd put on a race bib. All this training sometimes gets in the way of racing! I set a PR by three seconds. Which is a very small PR, but still my fastest time over this course so far! I would also like to point out that there were more girls racing than boys. I'm liking the gender equality that I'm seeing these days in skiing.

The type of rollerski is listed along with the results because rollerskis can have drastically different speeds depending on the bearings and the wheels.

Sunday we head into the glacier for another week. Hopefully we have some snow.

This photo is shot from down glacier. The facility sits on the ridge in the middle-left of the photo and the ski trails we use go from there off to the right. We stay high up on the glacier because once you get closer to the foreground the slope gets much steeper and the cravasses get much more intense. The ash has made for some unique melting this summer and you can very clearly see how variable the weather is up there. The patches of white snow are where there's been snowfall recently. When we're out skiing we can go from sunshine to snowstorm or white-out as we move around the course.

Kincaid Adventure Camp

2009-08-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

Since school was out for the summer, I helped out with the Kincaid Adventure Camp down at Kincaid park. It's a camp for local youth with three different week-long sessions, each focusing on a different zone of the outdoors. One week focused on terrestrial life, the second on things that fly, and the final week on aquatic life. The really cool thing about these camps was that the main focus was outdoor recreation so our goal was to be active while exploring the outdoor world.

On one of the days we were paddling the kids were super jazzed up to get out into the lake. We had to go over all of the water safety and how to paddle talks first.

The kids were psyched to finally get into the water, practice their canoeing strokes, and explore the riparian zone from the water side.

After they got comfortable with the canoes, we let them "upgrade" to kayaks.

It was super fun to get involved with another activity during summer break, hanging out with kids is a refreshing way to see the world!

Eagle Glacier Photos July 2009

2009-07-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

I had my second of three weeks on the glacier this last week. Because of the ash cover from the Mt. Redoubt eruptions the landscape took on an eerie appearance. Skiing 20+ hrs over the week gave me plenty of time to focus on my technique and wonder at how the ash changed the melting patterns of the glacier snow. Thankfully we had the pisten bully up and running to clear a path through the ash for us so that, for the most part, we got to ski on precious white snow.

Testing

2009-07-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

Like any school, in the school of skiing we undergo periodic testing to gauge the effectiveness of our training. There are as many different protocols for testing fitness as there are ski teams and training groups. Everything from the most basic time trial to the the most sophisticated physiological testing is used. With my APU training group we opt for simpler testing. Over two days and three workouts we run through a series of time trials and intervals over set courses. We'll look at our times, heart rates, and blood lactate levels at the end of each effort.

This morning we did two max efforts, both about 90 seconds, one an uphill skate and the other a flat double pole on rollerskis. This gives us a chance to see how our high end speed and fitness is developing. This afternoon we'll do a 30min threshold workout skate rollerskiing to measure our aerobic fitness. Finally, tomorrow we'll do a L4, or 5k race pace, interval set of uphill bounding with poles. Using a combination of skate rollerskiing, classic rollerskiing, and bounding gives us a good overview of how our ski-specific fitness is developing. Although many of us do some running and other races over the summer, we don't use those as an official gauge of how our ski preparation is going since the ski and run systems are different.

So far I'm about par for the summer in our tests, but I feel good about my training and my fitness and sometimes when all the official testing is done that's the best indication of how your preparation for the season is going.

Back to Alaska

2009-06-21T00:27:00.000-07:00

Happy Fathers' Day and celebration of the summer solstice! I returned on Friday night from our first week long on-snow camp at APUNSC's Eagle Glacier training facility. We take advantage of this Alaskan glacier to maintain our snow-feel and ski-specific training over the summer. We'll be up for three weeks total over the summer: one week each in June, July, and August. Following are some snapshots from the week:

Due to low cloud cover, Alpine Air dropped us off lower on the glacier than our facility is located. So our coaches drove down in the Pisten Bully and picked us up as we arrived. This is one of the college students on our team, Kate "Fitz" Fitzegerald, getting a ride up on the back of the Pisten Bully. Fitz has improved so much in both technique and fitness since we started training together three years ago. It is really cool to watch our whole team improve over the years.

Some of my team down at the intersection where we drop clothes and water bottles and meet for speeds or intervals.

Because of the Mt. Redoubt eruptions this winter we have a layer of volcanic ash over the glacier. This has caused a REALLY fast melt rate, last year we had many many more feet of snow depth up here. It also makes the snow dirty and abrasive to ski bases. While it's not the classic glacier beauty, the ash does play an interesting visual dynamic across the snow.

The APUNSC Team out playing a game of speed ball. Or maybe they're just playing follow the leader. Usually it's foggy like this, so for all the moments that you can actually see farther than 400m, there's hours of not knowing what's happening outside.

Laura Valaas, ready to ski.

There are moments skiing out here when I am overwhelmed by the natural beauty. Watching the way the clouds move in and out. We're skiing on the top of a mountain and we get the rapidly changing mountain weather.

One of the markers for the finish of an interval was a Coke can next to the trail. I've never been so glad to see a can of coke each lap and I didn't even get to drink it! (I'm sure someone did though.)

This was a sign Duser put up on our mirror. What a nice note to brush your teeth to in the morning.

Becca Rorabaugh, ready to ski.

The one glitch in our camp was that on the second day the Pisten Bully broke down. So for the entire week we classic skied on snow machine set tracks. By the end of the week I was starting to worry about overuse injuries from the repetitive motion but I think we all made it through the many hours of classic skiing unscathed.

I do love my klister skis!

After returning on Friday we had the weekend basically off to recover and get refreshed for another training week starting on Monday. I took a trip to explore some more parts of Alaska. Alaska is unbelievable, you can get out into wilderness so quickly from Anchorage. And it is beautiful. I love having the training opportunities up here and then having the adventure opportunities on my days off.

This is one of the many beautiful examples of a medial moraine. When two, or frequently more, glaciers merge their lateral moraines combine to form a ribbon of debris tracing the path of the glaciers down valley.

On this trip we went out to explore an ole gold mine. We tramped around on old trails finding slag piles, steam pipes, mine shafts, old leather boots, and all kinds of abandoned mining equipment. It was so cool to try to recreate in our imaginations how the mine functioned and what life was like here for the miners.

Hydro-electric generators, circa 1912. These things look pretty sweet, if I had a water feature in my yard I'd put in some hydro-electric generators for electricity. Why did we move away from this type of free energy?

On to the next adventure!

To Broken Top Mountain

2009-05-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

Heading out on a crust ski! Mt. Bachelor is in the background but for Sunday's crust ski our destination was Broken Top, to the North of Bachelor. I spent the previous week doing some on snow training down in Bend, OR. Most of the training was technique or intensity focused but some days you simply have to get off the trails and enjoy the mountains!

Laura Valaas, ITA Athlete Brian Gregg, & Kristina Owen taking a photo break.

Crossing Todd Lake, Broken Top barely peeking out above the horizon.

We paused to regroup once we neared the edge of the trees and finally had a clear sight of our goal... that bowl under the peak and above those moraines that look like pinball arms.

Slowly, the mountain came closer.

and even closer, over playgrounds of snow.

When we made the top we could see the multicolored bands from red to yellow and back to rock-colored undulating through the peak.

Jamie Bronga & Sadie Bjornsen just finished their first year of NCAA skiing and are going to be training together in the beautiful Methow valley this summer. They got the summer training season started off right with a ton of skiing here in Bend under the watchful eye of their coach Scott. Go get it done, girls!

See those tiny dots in the middle of the snowfield?

...they're skiers!

KO & LAV's Super-Awesome-For-Girls-Only Ski Camp

2009-05-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Stina & I hosted our inaugural training camp this weekend for girls in the old-enough-to-roller-ski-but-young-enough-to-respect-us age bracket. We had a small group but it allowed for great customization and we got to work with each of our athletes (I feel so proud to be able to claim athletes as mine!) on what they needed to focus on. This was a good thing because we had a wide range of abilities. But ALL the girls were super tough and up for whatever we suggested. I love having tough girls around!

KO & I have a very spontaneous style and I felt a little guilty for subjecting these girls to our whims and impromptu decisions but they took it in stride. All-in-all I think we accomplished our goals for the weekend: have fun, teach some technique, inspire, not kill anyone. We also managed to go over some topics sitting around and while we were out trainings such as goal setting, college & skiing, coaches, training hours & types, boys (come on, we're not that mature that we're not still giggling about boys).

We have a long list of things we should do better if we repeat the camp. Actually, for just about any activity I pursue I have a long list of things I could improve upon, so there's nothing new there!

For the year...

2009-04-26T16:56:00.001-07:00

Today is the final day of the 08-09 season. Monday, April 27th we start training for the 2010 season!

Number of races: 35
Kilometers raced: 317
Pairs of skis raced: 8
Workouts Skate skiing: 89
Workouts Classic skiing: 102
Number of times I went for a run: 185
Hours spent doing activity defined as "other": 72
Times I went rollerskiing: 63
Countries visisted: 5
Number of entries in my morning HR chart: 0
Percentage of my training that was ski-specific: 60%

Everything we did last season is now officially base for next year. It's time to build the next level of fitness, take our technique and improve it, and train with a purpose once again.

You can always check out last year's recap too.

Ridge To River

2009-04-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

-Sadie Bjornsen came over Friday night and took me to the airport. I flew all night and Saturday morning
-Valerie Valaas and
-Susan Valaas picked me up from the Wenatchee airport. After some time at home I borrowed
-Tom Feil's surfski and ran the Wenatchee river (dumping TWICE). Later, picking up my registration which
-Biosports had sponsored and taken care of, I finally made it home to find
-Chad Gregg,
-Aleeta,
-Simon, and
-Tara Gregg had not only brought food to our house but were cooking us dinner. Entertainment was, as usual, provided by
-Kirsten Valaas and her posse. It was a frantic, frantic day and I was starting to get frazzled so I was glad to have my
-Dad and my
-Mom around to keep my calm and make me feel like everything would go smoothly. Sunday morning was race day. After sleeping through my alarm (due to not sleeping Friday night) I headed up to Mission Ridge. Until the car had a mechanical 2miles from the parking lot & we unloaded our gear and a white
-F-150 pulled over and we hopped in the truck bed.
-Hugh Owen took my xc skis and poles up the chairlift for me in his ski bag. I set up my exchange zone and ran into
-TJ Owen on my way to the start and she rubbed some jet stream into my skis. At my xc-alpine exchange
-Sean graciously stepped in at the last minute and baby-powdered my alpine boots and pulled open the tongue so I could get my feet into them. Sweet boots given to me by
-David Tewell and skis borrowed from
-Michael Hansen. At the ski to run exchange,
-Aleeta had my shoes and even had a gel with the top torn off for me already. Mid way through the run
-Mark Broberg caught me (as usual) and gave me a good pace for the rest of the run. I was super psyched when I heard my old running coach
-Kelso cheering. At the run-bike exchange I was super happy to see
-Emily Martin with my helmet and
-Barb Braley with a stool for me to sit on, my bike shoes and my beautiful time trail bike. I caught
-Broberg and teased him about putting a 13 on the cassette on his wheels which I had on my bike so I wouldn't be able to peddle down the (long) hill. It wasn't a 13, but I was using a sweet set of his wheels. Then we hit Saddle Rock and stopped talking. And then he pulled away from me. At the bike-paddle exchange, the lovely miss
-Kari Koos had my shoes for me and picked up the front of my boat and ran full tilt into the Wenatchee River, handed me my paddle and sent me on my way. My mom had my lifejacket for me. Of course the lifejacket and paddle were borrowed from
-someone-who-doesn't-know-I-borrowed-them and the boat belonged to
-Greg Harnish and was one of the very coveted Futura IIs, which are nice and fast and I couldn't have flipped it if I'd tried. Post race a cold, stiff & soggy LAV got a ride home to a shower and dry clothes from
-Barb Braley.

I did, incidentally, win the race (Max Christman, one of the junior nordic skiers in town won the Overall!!!) but before you tell ME good job, count the number of dash marks in my race report. And those are only the obvious contributors on this particular day.

Ski Clinic

2009-04-12T23:43:00.001-07:00

On Saturday some of the elite skiers who were in Anchorage coached at a youth ski clinic at the Hilltop Ski Area sponsored mainly by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Alaska Chapter, as a vehicle to educate young athletes about, as you probably guessed, asthma and related issues.

We broke into small groups to ski with and talk to the kids and then reconvened as a large group for some obstacle course competitions and a game of speedball. Above, Kristina Strandberg demonstrates some skating technique.

Speedball is one of the standard ski-games. For this game we had two soccer balls, one ski per skier, and no poles. This set of equipment minimizes the severity of the inevitable collisions. It's a melding of ultimate frisbee and soccer-- you can either dribble or throw but not run with the ball. Then again, as far as rules go it's the kind of game where rules can change on a whim.

There was also race video from the World Champs playing and we signed posters for the kids. It was really fun to see how excited the kids were about skiing and how engrossed they got in the race video. Are these kids going to take home these posters, hang them up, look at them, think about skiing, start identifying as a skier, and become a skier? I don't know. It's certainly possible. I could see that possibility at the clinic. I could see that seed being planted and that the kids thought that being a skier was something super cool.

Statistics

2009-03-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

In my Rogers Park Elementary School class the students were working on statistics this winter. I was away racing, but I keep in touch with Ms. Price & suggested that they do a project looking at the statistics section of the FIS website. FIS does a great job of providing not only individual bios and career histories but also cumulative information. When I returned from Canadian Nationals and got back into going to math class they showed me their projects and we did a group discussion/critique.

Here's a sampling of their work...

(and yes, I can tell that I'm becoming more teacher-esque because I brag to my friends about how brilliant "my" kids are.!

"What I'm graphing: I'm going to graph how many girls from USA ranked in the World Cup for cross country skiing over the years."
I think that this is specifically number of American females who made it into the top 100 of the FIS points list, covering 1982-2009. I think that this trend looks encouraging... moving upwards!

"Average Age of Cross Country 5k Winners"
This, in addition to being a visually appealing graph, shows that the average age doesn't vary too much, mostly being about 25 years old. 1983 is at the far left and the data continues through 2009.

"Places Where Ski Jumping Competitions Were Held"
Germany & Austria held way more World Cup ski jumping comps this season with 11 & 10, respectively. It was pretty clear when we were in Austria that they had a strong culture of skiing with ski areas and trails all over the mountains. It would be interesting to look at how the number of World Cup competitions held in an area affects the development and success of that sport in the area.

"Amount of Female Skiing Wins for Norway in the World Cup"
Be careful, the years run from 2009 at the left of the graph to 1982 (I think) at the right side of the graph. So it looks like Norwegian women are increasing their dominance, albeit with a sharp drop off from last year to this season... looks like the Norwegian team missed having Astrid on the world cup this year. It is worth considering that the number of races and hence overall number of wins available in a season might have changed over the years. A more consistent stat would have been percentage of races won by Norwegian women.

"Youngest Average Age For Female Skiers: World Cup 1982-2009"
From which I would surmise that there's no noticeable trend in the age at which the youngest females are winning world cups. I think this is the average of youngest 5k winner, youngest 30k winner, and so on over the season.

I always do feel grateful that I get to work with such wonderful students and that I can help spark their interest in math & skiing!

Canadian Nationals

2009-03-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

It happens so rarely that you perform better than you had expected or hoped. Usually I demand more from my body than it can give me. There aren't too many days when you laugh when a teammate tells you your place because you're both happy and unsure that she's telling the truth, or when your first glance at a results list your own name jumps out at you from the very top. It's been awhile since I've been able to finish a sprint race, stop, turn around and watch the sprint for second. I am currently in Collingwood, Ontario at the Canadian National Championships and the racing has been going exceptionally well-- I had a clear margin of victory in the 10k classic & classic sprint, third in the 5k skate, and Ronsse & I won the team sprint prior to the start of the official Nationals.

I know that if I was on the World Cup I could have had the same races with much less celebrated results. Racing domestically makes a good race look phenomenal. It would be easy to point out that if so-and-so had been here I wouldn't have won. This week, though, I'm going to give myself a gold star for a job well done and simply be happy about it. I always look back at my races and analyze what I could have done better, what I would have changed, how I need to adjust for the next race where I encounter similar conditions/terrain/situations. This is certainly important self-reflection for the growing process (and still a process I went through after the races this week, some habits are hard to break), but it's important to give credit for what you've done well. So about this week I will say, these are races where I skied well. Right now I'm letting success motivate me. Starting in May it's going to be another long summer and fall of focused training... it's good to have remembrances of both success and failure from the season before to drive your will to train. Failures, for most of us, are easy to find so grab what successes you can.

Success & Failure

2009-03-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

The 2009 World Championship courses in Liberec, CZE.

There are two things which drive an obsession for competition-- success and failure. It seems a paradox that the two extremes of the performance spectrum lead to the same outcome. Really, the worst race is one in which you are happy with your performance but not inspired to strive for greater heights. Enough of those races will stall a career as surely as an LJ03 grind at -17°c brings your skis to a halt.

As I'm growing as a skier I see the importance of choosing the field in which I compete, providing myself with a balance of failure and success. Exposure to the best field is good but last year I stayed on the World Cup circuit too long and got disheartened. This year I'm staying not quite long enough. It's still long enough to get an infusion of dreams and aspirations.

I ski here, at the World Champs, look around me and tell myself, "that's how I want to ski. That's the skier I want to be." It's an ongoing lesson in potential and concrete examples of the goals I have being realized. I want to ski well. I want to ski better than I have skied before and better than I ski now. How I ski now is not good enough. My fitness now is not high enough. Watching my competitors makes this clear. Skiing requires a combination of brute capacity and beautiful efficiency.

It's easy to fail. It's equally easy to convince yourself that you haven't failed. If I went home I would be perceived as a better skier. It's that simple to turn failure into success. I don't want that facade of success. I would rather receive condolences despite a good race than congratulations despite a poorly skied race.

A Day Off

2009-02-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

In the Piazzo d'Oro cafe on the edge of the Liberec town plaza the overlaying of Eastern European history and the lycra-clad world of skiing makes an odd juxtaposition. Directly outside my cafe window looms the elaborate stone facade of the Liberec town hall, built in 1888-93. As my gaze travels from the copper spires, green with time, down to street level, the current World Championship event demands acknowledgement. A large "Liberec 2009" banner plasters a short temporary fence in front of the building and neon-coated security guards stand in pairs shifting their weight from foot to foot and taking purposeless steps.

Slightly out of view to my right is a large screen showing the day's events in real-time. Green plants, feeling defected about the persistent snow and mythical sun, obscure my view of the temporary stage where they award the coveted FIS snowflakes. I don't need to see it to be reminded of all it represents-- the years of training, broken down into months, weeks, hours, and minutes of our lives dedicated to a pursuit and a passion that's difficult to justify.

Further down the plaza is a temporary building housing the official "Liberec 2009" merchandise, chintzy hats and t-shirts using the World Champs to promote the city of Liberec. A trail of booths selling souvenirs, food, and booze stretch optimistically down the streets hoping to lure tourist and czech alike into pausing and purchasing en route from the city's main bus stop to the plaza. I shouldered my way through the crowds the other night, peering into booths and enjoying the festival atmosphere with my teammates as the slush soaked into our shoes but it's a Sunday morning now and the plaza is quiet. Most good czechs are in church or, more probably, sleeping off Saturday night's indulgences in the cheap and renowned czech pilsner.

Many of the pedestrians outside my window are associated with the World Champs, identifiable by team jackets, hats, and that look by which skiers can recognize each other. Like me, they're seeing what Liberec has to offer aside from ski trails and jumping hills. I have to wonder to what life they'll be returning after the championships are over. Different norms and mores back home, different motivations, languages, but we still end up at the same ski race and have a shared experience.

Tomorrow I'll be back at the venue, testing skis, coaxing the muscles into firing, and finishing the final preparations for the skate sprints on Tuesday but today I'm taking a break from the streets defined by wax trailers and ski trails outlined in v-boards, letting the body rest, letting the mind wander.

Ski with Intention

2009-02-14T00:13:00.001-08:00

While I was in Rossland training before coming over to Europe, Ellis & I, along with some of the rosslanders, spent some time discussing technique. It was good to have some technique discussions that were more egalitarian than the normal coach-athlete technique session. Ellis & I did some video analysis and put some thought into how I could be skiing better, faster, more efficiently. I think this type of peer review is a superlative way to approach technique because it encourages me to take ownership of my technique changes and decide for myself what needs to be done instead of depending on someone else to tell me.

My conclusion after two weeks of focused, uninterrupted training in Rossland was that I need to ski with intention. Maybe I liked that idea because I'm not exactly sure what I mean by it. There's something freeing in choosing a catch phrase that's open to whatever interpretation fits my mood.

Too often when I watch myself skiing I think "lazy, lazy, lazy." There's not so much wrong with the basic technique movements as there is the attitude behind them. There's too much of just going through the motions; I'm lacking the frenzy of wanting to cover that next 10m so badly that I look like I just might fall on my face. Not, of course, that falling on one's face would be the goal.

Ski with intention. Other candidates for my slogan were ski with a purpose (except I kept thinking "porpoise" instead of "purpose" which is distracting) and ski like you mean it (but I frequently like words based on their syllable count). Ski as though the only thing you desire in the world is to move down the track as fast as possible. It's simple, but sometimes I get caught up in weight transfer and dynamic legs and my world view shrinks to the space my body currently occupies and I fail to plan its future occupation of the space ahead of me.

I want to ski with intention. I want to live my life with intention. If I can ski and race like it matters, then I can live like it matters. I believe that's a sufficient (although not necessary) condition for achieving that elusive satisfaction with life. If you can convince yourself that a ski race is meaningful I think it's easier to find the meaning in the rest of life.

Nature vs Nurture

2009-02-01T22:37:00.000-08:00

One of my fellow ITA athletes, Matt Chisam sent out a query concerning nature vs nurture in regards to sports. I think nurture is much more important and nature only incidental. Below are my responses to his questions. Be sure to check out the thoughts of the other ITA athletes on this subject!

THE BASICS
1. What is the athletic background of your parents and family?
Neither of my parents have been competitive athletes, or even the more general definition of athletes who compete in their sport. My family was very active while I was growing up-- our summer vacations were week-long backpacking trips and I was introduced to a variety of sports and activities.

2. When did you begin participating in your sport?
I started skiing as soon as I could walk. I also competed in local races since I was young but I didn't think of myself as a ski racer until I was about 12 years old.

THE EXTRAS
1. What was your early experiences with sport like?
My early memories of sport are fun and laid-back. I don't remember any pressure and at races we were more concerned with hanging out before and after the race as what happened during the race. Participating in sports was a good reason to travel and hang out with my friends.

2. How instrumental were parents and coaches in the early part of your development as an athlete?
My parents have certainly been instrumental in my development as a person, which has had a big influence on me as an athlete. I've also had very good and influential coaches. Despite that, as a whole, my teammates and fellow athletes have been more instrumental in my development as an athlete. They're the ones who really inspire me to work hard because they're doing the same.

3. How were you introduced to your sport and how many other sports did you seriously participate in?
I was introduced to cross country skiing as a family activity. I also participated in the local youth program. I was a serious runner and road cyclist at various times but there was never a conflict in priorities-- I always knew that skiing was my number one sport-- everything else was cross-training for skiing!

4. Is your success a product of nature or nurture?
Both! There are attributes that are certainly genetic but without the encouragement and support of my family, friends & coaches I never would have realized that I had any talent. I would give more weight to nurture as a source of success because in any different setting I almost certainly would have taken up a different pursuit. I was first introduced to skiing and then given continuous opportunities to engage in it and learn.

5. Are you an expert in your field? (by your own definition)
Nope. It seems that I'm always on the cusp of being an expert in skiing, but every time I get close to that my definition of expert changes!

Whistler World Cups

2009-01-18T23:21:00.000-08:00

We raced this morning at Whistler-- a skate team sprint. The format is a two person teams alternating 1.3km laps, three laps each for a total of six laps.

I love being at the World Cups! My favorite part of the course today was the 200m sign. (This was my favorite part of the warm-up, I certainly didn't have the presence of mind to notice it during the race!) 200 meters to the finish was right before the last turn and marked the separation of the lap lane and the finish lane. Since they kept this part of the stadium fenced off the corduroy here was almost unbroken and wicked fast. The 200m sign was written vertically, like this:

2
0
0
m

but it was written in a modern, angular font so the two wasn't very curvy and the sign looked more like this:

Z
0
0
M

which I thought was appropriate signage.

Standing with some of my APU teammates in front of Stony while waiting for a shuttle to where we parked.

A course marshal raking out the course after the snowmobile drove across.

Andy Newell in Friday's classic sprint.

Playing Go

2009-01-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

I learned how to play Go Thursday night. I was studying in a bookstore and a couple of people started playing a board game next to me. I didn't recognize the game and was curious because I love games but I really was trying to focus on my studies, so I focused. Then a few more people came over and it was clear that this was a routine gathering and also that I was sitting in their space so I got up to relocate. This opened the door to conversation and I asked what they were playing. They gathered to play the three great games of strategy: chess, backgammon, and go. "Go?" I asked, "how have I not heard about this game." And it didn't take them any time at all to convince me to learn.

Bob sat me down and explained Go, as well as telling me about the history of Go.. So we played, on a smaller board, and I had a six stone handicap. With Best Play a player can win with a five stone handicap. Bob played his first move. I panicked and froze, staring at the board. Where to put my stone? I knew the goal, I knew the rules, I knew about smothering and ko, but I couldn't see what the consequences of possible moves would be. What would be his next move? Would I play into a trap? Do something foolish? Bob, clearly an experienced Go teacher, noticed my tension and said, "be at peace with yourself. You can't possibly know what the best move is right now. You'll learn. Accept that you'll make mistakes. The best Go player in the world still studies Go every day." So I relaxed, and mimicked his move. In the end, thanks to my handicap, I won the game. I won our second game too. And then I ended my excursion into game theory and returned to my equally puzzling and less entertaining textbook.

During our speeds Friday around the sprint course I was getting so frustrated. I got dropped by the rest of the girls, I switched to skate skis (double-poling) and I got dropped even worse. It was the day before the first race of US Nationals and I thought, "what am I even doing here, I don't belong, I should just go home." Then I thought about Bob. Be at peace with myself. Where I am with my training and where I am with my technique is where I am. I can do my best today with what I have. I'll make mistakes. That's okay. I'll learn. I recognized the room that I still had to grow and develop as a skier. There's so much room for improvement, there's the ability to improve too. The danger lies in getting frustrated with myself and not being patient.

Stemilt Ski Trails!

2008-12-21T20:38:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-15T22:55:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-07T22:47:00.001-08:00

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

2008-12-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-05T15:46:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-20T23:36:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-08T18:07:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-26T22:15:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-10-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

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

I finally get it

2008-10-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-09-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

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

Eagle River

2008-08-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-07-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tafraout

2008-07-14T20:24:00.001-07:00

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

2008-07-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-06-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

I spent last week with my Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Club teammates up on Eagle Glacier near Girdwood, AK. APU is fortunate enough to have access to Eagle Glacier so we get to hone our o- snow skills throughout the summer. This week it was truly still winter up there with fresh snow falling almost everyday and hardwax conditions for our first three days.

The small object on the horizon is Casey grooming ski trails in the Piston Bully.

I love being on the glacier, it changes constantly. I realize that I might be waxing a little too poetic but it's like a symphony of white. The clouds dance around, swoop and swirl. The light changes throughout the day and you can look out across the glacier and see the cloud shadows (the echoes, if you will) spread out on the snow. Beautiful. I think I spent the entire time this week I was out skiing thinking to myself that if I could be anywhere in the world right now I'd be right here skiing on Eagle Glacier. It's reassuring to think that out of all the things I could be doing right now what I most desire is what I'm actually pursuing.

Brent Knight keeping his snow-feel intact in preparation for our first races in November.

2008-06-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

2008-05-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

Some of Mrs. Price's students at Sand Lake Elementary.

I ended the year with my Sand Lake students this week. We had a field trip to the nearby bowling alley on Monday, a field day on Tuesday, and Thursday was the last day of school and all the 6th graders looked very nice as they came up to get their certificates.

Starting one of the races.

Racing (but not winning) one of the races.

I learned a new sport at the field day-- team walking.

I approve of team walking, it requires good individual balance and good time communication and cooperation.

One of my talented students.

Inside a hula hoop (after practicing our hulas).

I think these kids have potential. It's been fun to be part of their lives this year.

April 28th

2008-04-28T23:15:00.001-07:00

There are many different ways to think about the ending of an old year and the beginning of a new one. At some point we stop, take a deep breath, settle the events of the past year in our mind and move on to sketching a rough outline of plans for the upcoming year. For some it's based on nature-- blooming crocuses and new energy for life and all those introspective musings. Some use the calendar year-- throwing a big party one night to indulge in all sorts of vices and resolving the next day not to do so again. Birthdays mark the cumulation of another year of gleaning wisdom while the close of each fiscal year hopes to see us also expanding our financial wisdom. For most of my life thus far, the years were divided into school years with the start of a new year falling on August 30th, or thereabouts.

Now, however, there's a little noted day in late April or early May that signals the demarcation between past and future. I want you to be cognizant that for some of us, April 28th marks the first day of our year. For us skiers this Monday is the first day that gets written down on the 08-09 training log. The 07-08 log has been polished off and filled out to completion and now stands as a historic document instead of the daily news. All of the training and racing from last year gets added to the satchel of lifetime base training and now is nothing more than a platform from which to jump into the upcoming season.

It's time to stop bemoaning that bungled pursuit exchange, that race missed due to sickness, or that beautiful day when you absolutely, positively, and regrettably could not find the time to go outside and enjoy it. It's also time to stand up from where you may have been resting on your laurels and acknowledge that it's time to get back to work since no one next winter is going to step aside and let you beat them merely because you made the top ten, attained your goal on that one course or finally and painfully qualified for the elite wave at the Birkie. Nope, starting today it's time to learn from your mistakes, and your successes, and apply that to the next workout and the next year of training and racing.

The first day of my new year started off with a mélange of training activities. There were rock hard ruts in the trails at Hilltop this morning so we reconvened with running shoes and did about 45 minutes worth of uphill running, bounding & ski walking just below threshold. Along with a warm up and cool down, that amount of running to kick off the season is sure to make me sore this week! Then in the afternoon when the trails had softened up to a sopping wet, klister-demanding slush we classic skied and did five one-minute double pole speeds and then some more fast paced distance skiing. It feels good to start off the 08-09 season with some focused training... Happy New Year!

Interviews with Sand Lake Elementary Students

2008-04-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Price's class is really working a lot with technology this year and Ashton conducted some short interviews with her classmates on video. The following video gives you a glimpse of some of the delightful students I get to work with every day!

2008-04-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

When it's 8:30pm on Friday and you get the following email from your coach, you know it's going to be a good Saturday...

"Let’s meet at Glenn Alps at 8:15 AM

Skate-classic-touring…bring it all!

Looks like it will be cold overnight and warm tomorrow

We will ski 2-4 hrs…bring a little food-H20

Van will depart 7:45

See you in the AM

Erik"

Recess!

2008-04-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm in Anchorage again I've started going back the Mrs. Price's class in the afternoons to help out with her 5th & 6th graders.

Today I talked to them a little bit about what it takes to get into college and why they should go. Then, since they'd been doing Anchorage's standardized testing all morning, we got to go outside for a short recess!

It was a great opportunity after being gone so long to get to reconnect with the kids one on one. Being in the classroom and helping with the academics is great but it's nice to just get to play too.

It was also great to see that I was still fairly competent on the monkey bars!

You can see that there's the added excitement of having a nice puddle of April slush below you if you were to slip!

"Can girls get six-packs?"

2008-03-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

At home for a week between races, my sister asked my to come to track practice with her at the high school.

"We train hard," she said, in an effort to pique my interest, "Monday and Wednesday are really hard, Tuesday and Thursday are pretty hard, Friday's our easy day-- but even Friday's hard."

Unable to resist the opportunity to run with my sister and visit with my old running coaches, 3:20 on Monday saw me driving too fast over Skyline Drive and pulling up to the back side of the Wenatchee High School track. I spotted my sister's ponytail and joined her along with the rest of the distance runner clan. I was on a break from focused training to get a little mental rejuvenation after the World Cup season and before Canadian and US Long Distance Nationals in the following, consecutive weeks. Along with extracting my promise to do a level 4 interval session on Tuesday my coach, Erik, had given me the following instructions, "don't do anything too unusual, like going for a two hour run." I'm sure if Erik had even been able to imagine that I'd be tempted to run 600m intervals on a track he would have explicitly banned those too but seeing as how he hadn't...

After intervals and a cool-down jog we regrouped for stretching and abs. It had been my first time running fast since intermittently sprinting around a golf course to cheer for my sister in a cross country running race last fall and that had been on nice soft grass. By the end of our cool-down I could already feel my calves starting to think about cramping. They would have been fine if I hadn't tacked on those last 4x200m sprints, but how could I say no to a seemingly innocuous 200m? During our last set of ab exercises I was informally fielding some questions from the rest of the girls' team and willing my calves to unclench when one of the girls asked, "Can girls get six-packs?"

I was momentarily speechless and she followed up her question by commenting, "because my dad says they can't." I laughed because of how absurd I found that theory and quickly reassured her, supported by several other girls on the team, that anyone could get a six-pack with enough determination. Then I sobered up because after two months of brushing elbows with the women racing on the World Cup I had forgotten that the "women are weak and fragile" myth was still out there. There are a lot of girls, even girls who are already participating in sports, that still have yet to discover that women can be as tough and as strong as they want to be.

And dads... don't tell your girls that they can't have six-pack abs.

Kikkan Randall

2008-02-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

Laura Valaas & Kikkan Randall, Otepää, Estonia.

It's a long time away from home when you're racing the World Cup circuit so I have been thrilled to have Miss Kikkan Randall around to show me the ropes and lead me through my first winter of World Cup races. Kikkan's a 2002 & 2006 Olympian and recently bagged her first World Cup victory.

2008-01-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

Photo by Phil Bowen, Competitive Image

On January 23rd & 26th I kicked off my World Cup tour with some "local" races in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. For World Cup races I would consider anything on the North American continent to be local. These races didn't go as well as I had wanted so I'm looking forward to getting another chance to race the same girls at our next venue- Otepää, Estonia.

2007-12-21T15:48:00.001-08:00

Some of Dallas Price's 5th & 6th grade students sitting with me at Sand Lake Elementary School in Anchorage, AK where I volunteer.

Introduction

2007-11-27T11:10:00.001-08:00

Welcome to my new In The Arena blog. Until I get this blog linked up to my current website I will continue posting primarily at lauravalaas.com where you can find daily updates and lots more archives and info about me!