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Best from a warm and rainy Finland, albeit with a still solid 3km of skiing.

Pat in the 10km

Rogla is a wild place.  It’s a small resort perched on the summit of big hill in northeastern Slovenia.  The wind howls and snow blows constantly, but unfortunately there was only a few centimeters of it for us to ski on.  The organizers managed to shovel the 5k World Cup loop into decent shape, and the weather cooperated perfectly for the weekend races, a 5k/10k classic on Saturday and a 15k/30k skate mass start on Sunday.  We had 40 degree weather and blue bird skies that lasted until the finish of the 30km, when the clouds immediately rolled in and the sun disappeared.  Our top result of the weekend was Ida in 10th in the classic race.  It’s a small but talented field here, with 15 racers with FIS points under 40 on the men’s side.  If you’re off, you can easily be at the back.  If you’re on though, you can mix it up at the front.  Sylvan (Vail/Team Homegrown) had a solid race in 6th.

Sylvan moving down the hill.

Everyone is looking forward to the races in Ramsau am Dachstein this weekend, and with few more days to adjust and rest we should be ready to go.

Tim skating the corners Italian style.

With three  races on tap, it was a busy weekend with little downtime between racing and prepping skis for the next day.  We were greeted with cold temps and thin snow at the Nakkertok ski club, a funky little operation whose trails mainly wind up and over a single steep ridge, with tough climbs and fast descents.  On Friday, in the 3km skate prologue, the stomach-dropping downhills were almost enough to distract from the leg-burning acidosis that highlights this new and increasingly present race format.  It’s short enough to require precise pacing, but it’s long enough to really, really hurt.  Pepa’s unofficial splits had me finishing a bit higher than either of us expected, but after we found and corrected her mathematical error and confirmed the results on her new best friend and attractive single Canadian coach Eric’s iphone, I had snagged the last spot on the podium for a satisfying 3rd place.

With over 500 starters, Saturday’s skate sprint was an even longer day than usual.  All three of us moved on from the qualifier, to mixed excitement and disappointment from our expressive coach.  Three more pairs of skis to touch up and prep for the rounds is a lot for one tech, but a huge thanks to her for making some fast boards all weekend long and especially in the sprint race.  Matt and I were placed in the same quarter, but with an extremely tight course, most of the decisive moves were made in the start and finish lanes.  Matty wound up 4th and I moved on in 2nd, and again as 2nd in my semi to ultimately finish 3rd again in the A final.  All in all a solid start to the tour.

Sprint Podium: Cockney, Nishikawa, Reynolds

With two thirds, I started an unsurprising third in the final stage, the handicap pursuit.  Three days of consecutive racing is a lot; but it’s even more when the final day is a 30km.  With the top ten skiers going out in less than 45 seconds, it was going to be a tight race.  I planned to start easy and hang with the pack I  knew would form behind me.  Well the pack formed, but I didn’t hang.  Only a few kilometers after they skied me in, I got taken out on a long downhill.  While I regained contact after the fall, I’d burned a lot of energy doing it and was definitely feeling the previous two days in my legs.  I had to settle in for a solo 15km, going back and forth with one other guy to finish 10th overall and 10th on the day.  Chelsea had a good showing, moving up a few spots in the overall, while Matty sat out largely due to some nagging back issues he’s been battling the past couple of weeks.

I’ve got to say, I like stage racing.  The Canadians have overwhelmingly adopted the new race format, with 4 of their 5 NorAm weekends going off as mini-tours.  It definitely adds an exciting element of ‘overall’ standings and has breathed life into the otherwise deceased handicap start format in cross country.  I’m looking forward to our own iteration of the Tour format at Craftsbury in mid March! For now though, it’s back to the grind of long easy hours at the Outdoor Center, getting ready for a big month of racing ahead.

Volume week with the boys. How many hours can you ski in a day?

Finding ways to make a professional ski team ‘green’ is a tough job. On one hand we’ve made a commitment to developing young skiers into international competitors. On the other, we’ve also made environmental initiatives and awareness an equally important goal. It’s a difficult position to be in- the Green Racing Project isn’t going to sacrifice racing opportunities just because it may take some jet fuel to get to the start line, but we are also constantly working on ways to counter those rather inflexible decisions. We’ve put ourselves under a public microscope, at least within the skiing community, and the things we do really do draw attention, both in negative and positive ways. Unfortunately for us, the majority of our ‘green’ initiatives, namely projects we’ve worked on at Craftsbury, aren’t seen on race days away from home.

What the green problem really comes down to for us as skiers though, is transportation. There is no way around it. We can’t avoid traveling, though we’ve done what we can to be efficient; the whole team fits in our diesel Sprinter that gets significantly better mileage than our old ski van. Flying is the stickler, and every season there are important races on the west coast and in Europe.

One rather controversial way to minimize the impact of air travel is carbon offsets. We’ve recently joined this controversy in a big way through an agreement with Brighter Planet to offset all of the team’s travel to races for the 2010-11 season- some 110,000 pounds of carbon we are responsible for over the winter. This one is going to give the folks looking through the microscope something to talk about.

It wasn’t an easy decision for the team to make. There has been lots of print about fraudulent offset companies taking money from costumers and putting it directly into their pockets; no trees were planted, no windmills were built. There’s the papal indulgence argument, that carbon offsets are the modern equivalent of what set Martin Luther off a half-millenium ago, a payment for absolution rather than changed behavior. And there’s the criticism of forepayment; the fact that helping build a future windmill isn’t actually offsetting your carbon footprint today. Treeplanting isn’t as effective as they claim. Indigenous land rights are being violated. There’s no regulation in this voluntary market of $700 million per year.

There’s certainly plenty of nay-saying when it comes to carbon offsets. But Brighter Planet seems to stand on firmer ground than the shaky depictions by the media. We know where our offsets are going- directly to financing a wind turbine at the Hanson Farm in Minnesota. While this turbine might not be directly offsetting our travel by this winter, what’s more important is that our investment is leading to additional clean energy production that otherwise would not have been built. Brighter Planet also has complete transparency with their offset projects; the selection process includes a public comment period for those under consideration and annual audits of sales and retirements.

The company started in Vermont with a credit card offering carbon offset points for purchases made instead of frequent flier miles or cash rewards. It seems a just substitution. They also donate a percentage of their profits to the Project Fund, an online community where Brighter Planet members vote on projects proposed by Brighter Planet members. The winning proposals receive a grant to implement their project in their home communities. Craftsbury is looking forward to putting some of our own projects up to the Project Fund and looking into to using their card for team expenses.

While I can’t say that we’ve changed our behavior when it comes to transportation, we have invested in shifting towards a clean energy future. It doesn’t feel like absolution to me- it feels like we’re doing what we can as a relatively inconsequential group of cross country skiers in northern Vermont. We don’t really have many other options. Maybe supporting renewable energy projects now can lead to a better solution to the clean transportation dilemma.

If guilty consciences are voluntarily putting up $700 million per year, imagine what a guilty government might be able to do with their investments. We can only hope that serious investment in renewable energy at a global scale may follow. For those looking through the microscope- carbon offsets aren’t a solution, but they certainly help.

Republished from Vermont Sports January 2011.

Boys Team. Thumbs Up.

While the rest of the GRP took off early Monday morning last week, I managed to grab an extra hour or so of sleep before embarking on a marathon of bus rides to Aare, Sweden.  In fact, my teammates made it back to Craftsbury on Monday before I made it to my friend’s house in Sweden.

16 hours on a bus actually turned out to be not as bad as it might have been.  I caught the last bit of Sherlock Holmes, found the wireless connection for the 42 minutes my battery lasts, and managed to take a few hot laps from the upper deck to the lower deck to ward off the kankles I tend to get on long trips- long legs do have their drawbacks.

I arrived in Östersund late Monday night after a taxi and 6 different buses to meet the Swedish version of my real mother.  She gave me a ride the last hour into Aare, a small ski town where I spent 9 months after I graduated from high school 5 long years ago.  I spent a lot of time with Karin (mom) and her family while I lived here, and while I had seen her and her husband at my college graduation, I hadn’t seen their three little kids in 5 years.  They’re much bigger now- but that hasn’t stopped them from hanging off any vacant part of my body when I move around the house.  It’s quite lovely to be back here to catch up with old friends and family alike.

I’ve also managed to train quite a bit aside from lugging small children around.  It’s been snowing every day since I arrived, and mediocre tracks have improved to mid-winter perfection.  It’s been great to be able to keep this streak of on-snow days rolling, as the forecast in Vermont calls for rain, rain and a little more rain.  This coming weekend I’ll make the hour long trek across the border to Meraaker, Norway for a weekend of Norway Cup racing.  A 30km individual skate and 10km individual classic are on the schedule and I’m looking forward to both- they’ve got some really tough courses over there that suit me well and it will be fun to get some more high level FIS racing in before heading back stateside.

All in all it’s been a great tour in Finland and now Sweden, and soon to be Norway.  Here’s some pics from the Finland days and Aare.

Snowy Åre at sundown.

Don't mess with Big Dilly.

Ida leading out her quarterfinal.

First of three races down for the weekend this morning against one of the deepest fields I’ve ever raced.  Ida crushed the qualifying again in 5th just behind the likes of Petra, Kikkan, and Justyna Kowalcyk.  A pretty impressive performance for her, and we’re all hoping she gets the nod for a World Cup start while she’s over here.

I still haven’t seen results but it sounds like our crew fared alright skiing even with or above their rankings.  I can’t read the Finnish google results so I guess we’ll have to wait for them to come up on FIS.  We stuck around after the prelims to cheer on Ida and catch most of the heats.  It was fun to watch the top skiers up close on a really tight course in the rounds, and especially seeing Kikkan ski to a big win over Kowalyck and Majdic.

Hopefully we’ll be able to mix it up ourselves  in the top 30 next weekend in Rovaniemi in our last sprint start when the rest of the World Cup skiers head North to Gällivare.  We’ll be back with results but I just wanted to post this picture of Ida hammering up the first wall on the sprint course leading her heat.  Check back in again soon.

During the sprint on Friday I went through my entire training wardrobe trying to stay warm.  Along with the USST, NEG, Sun Valley, Vail, and the NENSA crew, we ran a classic sprint from prelim to finals.  The mildly uncomfortable 40 degree rain turned to extremely uncomfortable 32 degree rain and then finally snow by the time we were warming down.  Staying warm was basically an impossibility, no matter how many times I changed into dry clothes between heats.

Dylan coming through one of many puddles on the sprint course. (Photo: Topher Sabot)

The rain aside, it was a good day.  Dylan and Pat both looked really strong in their heats, and despite a crash in my semifinal, I felt good all day long as well.  It was fun to mix it up with the National Team boys and build a little confidence before heading to Europe after a secluded summer in Craftsbury.

Tim chasing up the finish hill in the quarters. (Vordenberg)

Saturday we headed out for a long run in Keene Valley.  Simi, the brothers Rodgers, and the rest of the Sun Valley crew and I opted out of the rollerski and decided to brave whatever the Nor’Easter had left behind up high.  It proved to be too much for us to finish the original loop we had planned out over Wolfjaws, Hedgehog and Rooster Comb back into Keene Valley.  Instead, we hit about 18″ of snow at around 3000′ and it took over two hours to bag the first peak.  We opted to turn around at the top and it still took over 3 hours to get back to the car. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pics from this one- it was full on winter up there, but we were also full on freezing and didn’t stop for much on the way down.

A huge thanks to the McClelland family for hosting me and Sylvan during the camp and also feeding a handful of hungry skiers after a long run, not to mention having the sauna burning hot when we got back.  I’m home in Craftsbury now for a week and then it’s across the pond to Finland for first snow and the season opening races.

Patty crushing his heat. (Sabot)

Since then, it’s been a speed workout, a day off, and two more days of really hard intervals with the USST and their NEG/NTG squads.  Yesterday we had tough V1 max skate intervals up Schaeffer Rd. in Keene with shuttles bringing 30+ rollerskiers down in between sets of intervals.  It was quite a scene on that hill but fortunately the traffic was low and all the drivers more awed than annoyed with what was going on.

Tim, Pat and Sylvan just a little tired at the end of the workout.

Today was 6×4 minutes of vo2max bounding intervals up Whiteface.  It was a tough workout and everyone here is definitely looking forward to an easy day tomorrow before rolling in to two more days of big speed with a prologue and a sprint time trial.

Tim, Sylvan, Dylan and Pat charging on our 4th interval today.

This place is unbelievable for training.  In three weeks I barely dusted the surface on the miles of singletrack that unroll from the edges of town.  I took advantage of the thin air by really pushing the volume for the 20 days I was out there, logging over 60 hours and also joining in with the USST on a few speed works during their training camp.  With a slight heel injury towards the end of my time in Sun Valley, I was able to really push the mountain biking hours without a guilty conscience.  It’s funny now that I’m back in VT where it’s too wet to ride right now, my foot is miraculously feeling much better.  I suppose Pepa’s gypsy remedies might be partially responsible as well.

Running up High in SV.

Simi and I headed down to southern Idaho towards the end of my stay to catch the tail end of the summer heat and get in some climbing and camping at the City of Rocks.  I had never been down there before, and three days wasn’t nearly enough to soak up all the radicalness that place has to offer.  Simi, a geology major at Midd, informed me on our drive down that the rock there is a giant granite basilisk, which I am 90% certain is the big snake Harry Potter killed in his 2nd year at Hogwarts.  Upon closer reading of the National Reserve website, it turns out Simi was actually correctly informed (but he is still 2 credits short of earning that elusive college degree).  This batholith offers some of the coolest granite spires I’ve ever climbed.  In the few short days we were there, we basically climbed while it was light and slept when it was dark.  With plenty of fire-cooked dinner each evening, followed with of course dessert, we were ready to rally in the morning.  I was even fortunate enough to make acquaintance with a kindly Welsh fellow who ended up giving me a ride to SLC and saving Sim the trek.

Sim and Tim topping out on Theatre of Shadows, a classic 4 pitch 5.7.

All in all- a great training camp with solid company and a superb ending.  Despite the three days of torrential rain I’ve been greeted with back in VT, it’s good to be home and smell fall in the air and chase the leaves as they head to the ground.  Now it’s down to business taking care of all the little details before the ski season starts.  We head to Lake Placid camp with the USST next week, and then on the 25th it’s go time to find snow across the pond in Finland.  I’m ready for it.

Looking out at all the carnage Harry caused.

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?