Green Racing Project Blog

Really, I can feel myself getting geekier by the post.  If I’m writing too many, please someone try to stop me, or check me in to blog rehab or something!  But I figure that I should write blogs now when I have a bit more to write about, and then I’ll cut back down on them when I get home.

But at any rate, yesterday we had a relay race so I thought I’d give a quick update on that.  I’ve given up on posting photos until I get back.

The relay was fun!  I skied the third of four legs, but I started off right with a group of girls  and was able to ski with them, and even passed one or two! Then I cleaned the first shooting, and it was sweet!  The feeling of coming into the range with a group and then leaving ahead of them is pretty exhilarating!  After that I got a bit more tired, and the standing shooting didn’t go as well.  I had to use all three of my extra bullets, and then still had to do one penalty.  I should explain here that in a biathlon relay, you get to shoot one regular clip, and then if you miss any you have 3 extra bullets that you hand-load to try to knock down all of the targets.  If you still have targets standing, you do penalty laps.  So you really want to not have to do any penalty laps.  The winning teams had no penalty laps and only used a few spare rounds. In the end, we ended up 9th out of 11, but we had been ranked 10th, so at least we moved up a spot!

Most of all though, it was just cool to feel like I was really competing with the girls from the other countries, even if it didn’t last that long.  It was fun!

Anyone who knows me knows two things.  One, I have blond or dirty blond hair.  Two, I’m not the hairiest kid you’ll find out there.  Really, at my age, the amount of hair I have can be a little shocking.  I have at most 6 hairs on my chest, none on my back, and very little on my face.  It’s always seemed especially strange given that my college roommate basically looked like a gorilla, but with a hairy chest too.  So it’s a bit of a sore subjucet for me.

This year I’ve been really trying to grow some more facial hair but it turns out that its really hard, not matter how hard you push, how much you water your upper lip, and how much Chia paste you rub on your cheeks.  It just doesn’t help.  And when people tell you the more you shave the thicker it gets, they’re lying.  That doesn’t even make sense.

So a couple weeks ago I decided it was time to rev the engines and really see where I was.  Now I think I could grow a pretty nasty neckbeard, and I might be able to pull of a soulpatch, but the only thing I really wanted was a mustache.  Unfortuantely for me, the hair on my lip is the lightest part.  That didn’t stop me though, and for the past few weeks I’ve been letting it grow.  And I think I speak for everyone when I say, I’m looking pretty good.

Before I really get into the details of what I’m lookin at here, I want to make it clear what I was going for.  There’s a lot of different types of mustaches.  I can think of 6:

1: The Fu-Manchu.  This is a bunch of wispy strands, growing on the upper lip that are so long they hang around the mouth down to the chin.  Popular asian style.

2: The American Fu-Manchu aka the Hulk Hogan.  This is a full dense mustache on the upper lip and down to the chin, but hair actually grows down to the chin, it isn’t hanging.

3: The Adolf.  Not popular.

4: The Pushbroom.  Full dense ’stache on the upper lip only.  Commonly trimmed at the bottom.  Popular in the 80s and perfected by Tom Selleck in “Three Men and a Baby.”

5: The English Colonial.  Thick sideburns down to the jaw and into a mustache.  Basically all facial hair except the beard is shaved off.

6: The Pedro.  From Napoleon Dynamite.  This is a thin, wispy, failed attempt at a mustache.  Popularized by overgrown 8th graders everywhere.

So with this in mind, I was aiming for English Colonial.  But I knew it wasn’t in the cards for me.  One day I’ll nail it, but for now, I had to work with the ingredients I have.  And I don’t have sideburns.  So I settled for the pushbroom.  It’s pretty classic and I thought I might be able to pull it off.  With our big trip to the midwest coming up, I started not shaving for a week (which is normal) and then the night before we left, I shaved everything but the stache.  I was pleasantly surpised.  I could see it, in the right light, standing 2 feet from the mirror.  So that’s like 4 feet in real life, in the right light.  I’m still pushing hard and trying to keep it going, but here’s what I’ve found.  A good stache seems to have two main components: density and length.  I’ve got length, I think.  I don’t have the density though, and that part is hard to change.  I think I’ll keep trying though.  Eventually I’ll get the few hairs I have long enough to fold them over and make it look like more hairs.  Then I’ll be really all set.  Or maybe I’ll just set myself up with rogaine or something.  I heard that stuff can do wonders.

I’ll try to get a picture up soon, if my camera can capture it, in the right light.  or maybe if you see me you’ll be able to see it yourself.  If you’re within 6 feet.  In the right light.

Well, the ice is broken on my first international biathlon racing experience! And it was definitely an interesting one. To begin with, it was a new type of race for me, what is called an individual race in biathlon. That means that you shoot 4 times—prone, standing, prone, standing—but instead of doing penalty laps, you get one minute added to your time for each missed target. For this reason it’s known as the shooters race, since it’s highly beneficial to hit lots of targets. For the women, it was a 15k race made up of five 3k loops.
I was pretty excited and a bit nervous before my start, primarily because I was worried that I would somehow forget to do something important, or otherwise make some dumb mistake. But I zeroed my rifle and warmed up without getting too distracted by all the colorful uniforms and foreign languages around me. I was starting last in the field of 55 women, and decided that my goal was to place higher than my bib number. Secretly though, I was hoping to shoot reasonable well and actually be somewhere in the middle of the pack.
But alas, it was not to be. To begin with, the range here seems to be in a wind tunnel. Even when its not windy anywhere else, the range is windy. And I’m just not very comfortable shooting in wind. On top of that, the flurries that we’ve had pretty consistently since getting here decided to pick up into a full-fledged blizzard just in time for our race. The big fat flakes made the skiing slow too.
I skied a pretty hard first lap, trying to keep up with the girls lapping in front of me, and then missed two in my first prone shooting. Which could have been worse, I thought. I knew that everyone would be missing a lot on a day like this. But then in my second standing I did what’s called “dirtying”—I missed all 5. It was sort of embarrassing, but I also had to sort of just laugh. As I skied by the penalty loop, I was at least happy that it wasn’t a penalty lap race! After that I’ll admit it was hard to really stay super psyched, especially as I was getting passed every few minutes, and struggling along in the slow snow. 15k felt like a really long way to ski with a rifle on my back!
In the end, I finished with 11 penalties—tied for the second worst shooting in the race. I was also almost 16 minutes off the leader—meaning that I also skied and shot a lot slower than the leaders.
But with a whopping 53rd place, I beat my bib!
It certainly wasn’t the most exciting way to make my international debut, but it was definitely a learning experience! I’m definitely realizing how fast the girls are here—it’s a whole different league! And its impressive and inspiring. Its also made me realize how important it is for U.S. athletes to race over here—the level of competition is just so totally different, and its hard to comprehend that difference until you see it.
And now I have three more races to try to have some fun and hopefully improve upon this one! Really its not a bad starting place, since I can only go up from here!

After my travel nightmare getting home from Madison, I wasn’t very excited for the travel portion of my Estonian adventure.  And sure enough, it was another series of fiascos! Luckily my luggage made it to Burlington the day before I had to leave.  But my flight from Burlington also got cancelled the same day.  I ended up driving with my mom to Newark to make my flight to Stockholm.  I only barely made it onto the flight with the help of a very nice Continental guy who hot rushed my bags and put me through the employee security line.  Then I missed my connection to Tallinn, and also discovered that my bags had only been checked to Stockholm.  It took a solid 3 hours to convince Estonian Air to check my rifle, but I finally got put on standby for an afternoon flight to Tallinn.  During my 6 hours in Stockholm, I got to watch the end of the Olympic Nordic combined race on TV, with Billy Demong and Johnny Spillane going 1-2.  I was pumped!  It was by far the high point of my 30+ hour traveling experience!

I finally made it to Tallinn though, and met up with most of the rest of the U.S. team to get a ride to Otepää, where we would be racing.  We moved into our funny little hotel, which we would be sharing with the Russian team! No one seems to speak much English, and Estonian is pretty crazy—a lot like Finnish, and not a lot like anything else!  Now the fun part of the adventure had begun!

Now that I’ve been here for two days, I’m finally feeling a bit less jet-lagged and a bit more settled in.  Today was our first day skiing and shooting with all of the other teams there, and it was pretty crazy!  It made me realize that I’ve never been to a real competitive biathlon race, because I’ve only ever raced in the U.S.  It was exciting and scary to see all those other girls from other countries, and I felt a overly official in my Adidas U.S. biathlon stuff.  I was a bit too excited and shaky whenever I came in to shoot, and missed lots of targets.  I’m going to have to work on that!   The first race is Tuesday, so I have tomorrow to try to calm myself down out there.  I’ve never really been nervous for biathlon races before, so I’m going to have to try to get back to that laid-back place and just enjoy the experience!

I’ll try to post again in the next few days with some pictures, though the internet might be too slow for uploading them.

Birkie Fever.  Things are heating up here in northern Wisconsin- the Birkie is tomorrow morning, bright and early.  We’re planning a 5:45am departure from our cabin in Springbrook, just south of Hayward.  It’s a fair haul to the start line up to Cable, and we’re going to be navigating it along with 10,000 other skiers.  It’s guaranteed to be a complete mess.

Ollie and Matt are resting upstairs- their fever seems to be much more severe than my own.  Matt has had a cold compress on his forehead all night trying to stave off the effects.  Don’t worry Pepa- this certainly doesn’t count as another sickness for the year, unlike that time Matt went snow blind.  Ollie has been taking on fluids like the Titanic trying to keep the numbers on the thermometer low.  Compliment that with a large dose of ski porn and he should be right as rain after crossing the finish line tomorrow.  Just what the doctor ordered.

Check back in to see how we’ve coped with the lingering symptoms- race tomorrow, dinner at the Sawmill, and up bright and early again on Sunday for the even long haul back to Craftsbury.  Pin it?

Back in the fall when we were flying out to Bozeman, Ollie wrote a blog entitled “adventures in air travel”.  It was about how his boot bag got lost in Detroit.  I’m not even sure that qualifies as an adventure.  Also, I just one-upped  his “adventure” like none other.  So as a fun little exercise, I decided that it would be interesting to list everything that went wrong with my trip home from Wisconsin, just to see how long it got.  Here, for your reading pleasure, is that list:

1. I started the trip off in a bad mood because I wasn’t happy with my races in Madison, and I was already feeling torn about not going to the Birkie, and not seeing my friends there.  I also felt like it had been a bit of a waste to go out there, since I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known I was going to just come back after the Madison races.
2. I arrived in Detroit to discover than my flight to Burlington had been canceled.
3. It was 9:30 at night, so the outbound flights were winding down for the night.
4. I made a desperate attempt to get on a flight to Manchester, which failed.
5. I waited in a Delta help desk line for a long time.
6. There were no other flights to Burlington until Tuesday night (it was Sunday night at the time).
7. The cancellation was due to weather (though it was clear in Burlington), which means that I couldn’t get a free hotel room.
8. I also couldn’t fly with another airline, unless I wanted to buy new tickets—also because it was a weather cancellation.
9. Finally I got the last seat on a flight to Montreal Monday morning. (I guess this was maybe actually a good thing…).
10. The shuttle to the hotel at which I was given a slight discount took almost an hour to come.
11. By this time it was almost 1:00 am.
12. It took over an hour of waiting to get a ticket printed for my new itinerary the next morning.
13. While on my flight to Montreal on Monday morning, I realized that I didn’t have my jacket with me any more.
14. I’d somehow left the jacket in Detroit.
15. I felt very dumb and hated myself a lot.
16. The $300 check that I’d won at the Supertour was in the pocket of the jacket.
17. My luggage didn’t come to Montreal.
18. The baggage claim tags for my luggage was in the pocket of my jacket that was in Detroit.
19. So far the baggage has not been located by Delta.
20. I get to fly again in 3 days!

I think that’s just about it.  I realize that this was a very negative blog, and though that is highly reflective of my current mental state, I should probably try to make it a little less biased by my brain chemistry.

THE HAPPY PART: In reality, I have a lot to be excited about!  Halfway through our drive out to Madison, I found out that I’d made the team for the U-26 World Biathlon Championships! Really this should be an awesome trip, and a great chance to get some more biathlon experience and see what it is like to race in Europe.  So I’ll have a few days back here in Craftsbury to train and shoot and then I’m heading across the pond to Estonia!