No One Likes a Tease-Part Two

Word on the street is the start just got moved back until two, that's a two hour delay. This is not looking promising at all...
Good night.

No One Likes a Tease-Anchorage 2009

It's just a tad after nine in the morning and we will be leaving for Kincaid Park in an hour and half for a race that will most likely not happen at all; however, that really is the story of the week. We're currently 1 for 4 and after this afternoon might just be 1 for 5, that would be 5 attempts to hold a race in this arctic temperatures and only one success. The organizers are great, the volunteers are awesome, but I can see how alot of people might be sitting in hotel rooms or wax trailers a little frustrated right now. We wake up every morning, jog, eat breakfast with the hopes of racing dancing through our heads and then we check the weather and watch those very same dreams trickle away... Every day we check what the temperature high is predicted to be and from that we know what the probability of us actually toeing the start line is. High for today, -10, likely hood of racing...not good. Blurg!?!?!?!?!?
Going into Senior Nationals I knew making the World Juniors team would be a long shot but I also knew that it was another opportunity for me to race with the best girls in the country, and that I was looking forward to. Well we were given one opportunity in a shortened, cold, 5k skate race earlier this week. It was cold and miserable and far from my best showing. We were each presented with a challenge when we stood on the start line that day and instead of stepping up to the plate I struggled immensely. It wasn't one of those races where I felt fast or in control, it was almost as if I took everything I knew about skiing, started out of the gate in an attempt to go fast and immediately forget everything I knew. Instead of powering up the hills and flying around the corners I floundered and flailed all over the place for a solid 5k. It wasn't my worst race and it was far from my best, and even farther from where I would like to be, but that's alright. A few steps and a bound through some frustration later I am ready to get back onto a course, back onto some fast skis, and ready to push myself.
Game on.

A Touch of Winter Break.

I've been home for just over a week now, and I have a feeling the last couple of days I'm home are going to fly by incredibly fast. They always do. It has snowed just over a foot of snow since I've been home which has led to some incredible skiing on the Birkie Trail. Christmas afternoon I went for a long classic ski with my old coach and honestly I don't think I have ever seen such perfect tracks in my life. The trail was hard and fast, the kind of conditions that make it hard to slow down. Right off the bat when I came back from Bozeman the temperature was hovering just below zero with overnight wind chills in the -25F to -40F range. Far too cold for my taste. I've decided it should be 26F and lightly snowing all the time, with clear blue skis and never the threat of freezing rain, or what we got yesterday...freezing drizzle. Nasty stuff.
Right now it's 35F, and pretty darn dreary. Hopefully the temperature will drop a little so that skiing today on the Brule trails won't be miserable, of course with the company I'm in it's hard to find skiing miserable but these warm temperatures are kind of pushing it. I've got my fingers crossed that the weather will take a turn for more winter like conditions later on today.

Merry Christmas

Show us what you're made of old man winter.

In just under two weeks I will be back home in Wisconsin, and I can't describe how excited I am at the idea that I will soon get to sleep in my own bed in my own room in my own home again. I love Bozeman and it is slowly becoming a place I like to call home but when I look out my dorm window the river isn't waiting for me, and outside my dorm door isn't the little yellow hallway that leads past my brothers' bedrooms to the kitchen where I can cook whatever I want whenever my heart desires. Hopefully wisconsin will get some snow this next week and a half so I can put in some quality hours on the trails where I first fell in love with skiing once I'm back in the north woods again.

West Yellowstone has come and gone but the week with my team up on the plateau was worth every minute. The week before west I did some treadmill testing in the lab in part of their Zoot compression tights testing, I spent around two hours running on a jumbo treadmill getting my fingers pricked, anything for that lab, and I also did a upper body out put test. The upper body test simulated double pole sprint of 10 seconds and one minute, it will be interesting to see how the numbers they gathered correlated with the classic race in West.
The normal day in west looked something like this.
7:20am: morning wake up run with Dan and Eileen
7:45am: breakfast, yum.
8:30-9am: 2 hour classic ski
12:00pm: lunch
afternoon: lounge around, do homework, watch movies, occasionally avoid getting anything accomplished.
3:30pm: 1.5 hour skate ski
6:00pm: Dinner, more importantly dessert
7:30pm: Team meeting
Night time: Sleep
Repeat.

It was a week of awkward re-introductions to how skis move on snow, technique analysis (or rather my lack of technique), hours and hours on the white stuff, the consumption of large quantities of food, and of course the first two races of the season.

The races went really well, I'm "befriending" the pain, and trying to ski as relaxed as possible while attempting to kill it all at the same time. I finished 29th in the 11.5km classic and 25th in the 9-9.5 km skate, that put me second on the MSU ski team both days and the fourth junior both days. My coach asked me how I thought my races went, when I responded, "I'm happy, I think I skied relaxed, but my technique was pretty darn crappy..." her response was, "Your technique is usually pretty crappy." Just what I like to hear. So okay I have a long way to go, and it is going to be a long season, but I've got all the determination in the world and the heart to back it up. Hopefully this is just the starting point for the season and I can post some really solid results. I'm confident in our training, and I think we are prepared to lay the hammer down this winter.
Game on.

Winter is knocking.

Two weeks later I've run another cross country race (Conference Championships in Portland), completed eight intensity work outs in ten days, rested, completed numerous quizzes, finished a major project/paper, taken three exams, and VO2 Max tested in the lab. It's been a busy handful of days, but good none the less.

Conference was an experience as I once again attempted to fill the shoes of a runner at college level. The race in Portland was a rainy 5ks through a park. It fit my image of a cross country race to a tee, the trail was covered in leaves, it was a cool 50 degrees cloudy with rain drizzling all around us. The team did alright, I believe the boys finished 5th and the girls 6th...not as well as they had hoped but they've moved forward. I finished 7th on the team which gave me a spot on the regional team to compete in Fort Collins, CO in the NCAA mountain regionals today. However I didn't end up going and instead stayed home in Bozeman to get ready for snow. I enjoyed getting to race a little bit, I love running races, but it was very clear that I wasn't training or peaking for championship season like the rest of the spandex clad harriers.

Our biggest intensity period of the year finished up this past monday with bounding intervals, and never have I been more excited about having a rest day. My intensity week started with the race in portland and was followed with classic team sprints on Sunday, ski walking/bounding intervals monday, a 20 min running time trial on wednesday, natural intervals on friday, classic intervals on saturday, skate sprint intervals on sunday, and finally bounding with the cows on monday. It's awesome to have such a supportive team to push you through each and every interval, and it was incredible to watch everyone make it through what I would say is one of the hardest weeks of training I have ever completed in my life. Most importantly I was really happy to see that I made it through the entire week with out falling apart.

This past thursday I got to VO2 max test in the motion science lab on campus. VO2 max tests are painful, verging on brutal, and require an athlete to bound, run, or rollerski until absolute exhaustion. The real catch that gets me is that during this 10-20 minutes of pain you have a tube/mask/head gear contraption shoved in your mouth and attached to your head, your nose plugged and your finger pricked every three minutes...not exactly the most natural of activities. But as a skier I thrive on this kind of stuff. This is my fourth VO2 max test and although they never get easier (both physically and mentally) I've begun to really look forward to my next opportunity to test. The test can give us some important information which will help me evaluate my training to see if what I am doing is effective or not. This past summer when I last tested I had just come off a fairly draining track season and my numbers showed it's effect on my fitness levels. But after being attached to my heart rate monitor and listening to my body the last four months I'm glad to say I am on the up and up. This time last year I was faced with a potentially season ending surgery, and I'm really feeling the benefits of actually completing a dry land training period. I'm excited to be going into the winter racing season with a base and months and hours of training behind me, rather than the fear of trying to rebuild myself. West Yellowstone is a week away and have been dreaming about snow every night.

Am I ready to go? Yes. Are you?

A Little Taste of Winter

A bit more than a lot has happened since the last time I updated you all. Now where to start?

One: It snowed!!! (twice actually) It snowed so much we got in three days on snow, that's right the first college in the lower 48 on groomed ski trails. Bohart Ranch, which is about 18 miles out of Bozeman just past the Bridger ski area, received almost two feet of snow. I don't think I've ever been on snow this early, and that was October 12th. Eileen and I went out skiing with Sarah Willis for a solid three hours and then monday and thursday we had ski practice on snow. The transition from rollerskis to the real deal is always a little tricky but it gets easier and easier every year, plus it was a nice taste of winter. Rumor has it takes three snows for the white stuff to stick and we've already made our way through number one and two.

Two: I was recruited onto the women's cross country running team. That's right me, a division one college runner, what? That rather close to my reaction as well. After running well at the Homestake Lodge race near Butte the running coach (coach Kennedy) talked to Grethe and I about running a few of the meets for the team, and it truly is few as we are now well into the last part of the cross country season. I ran a race on the 18th of October for MSU in Pocatello, Idaho, and it went better than I expected. It was very strange dusting off the old racing flats and pulling them out of retirement, and of course it was hard to convince my legs that going fast was truly ideal, but it was fun. The course was an horridly hilly 4kms, to say the least I was relieved to cross the finish line. I think I ended up finishing as the 5th or 6th girl for MSU, and I'm ready to race harder and more aggressively next time around. This friday (yes Halloween) I will fly out at 7am from Bozeman for Portland, Oregon for the Big Sky Conference Champions on Saturday. It's been quite the ride, but I'm enjoying myself, hopefully my race this weekend will be even better than the last one.

Three: We just finished up our second intensity week as a team and I'm incredibly happy with how it went. My week started a little early than the rest of my team mates with the race in idaho, but I was still able to hold my own through out the rest of the hard work outs and time trials as the week wore on. Monday greeted us with classic rollerski intervals up Hyalite Canyon, I did one less set than the girls team but I still felt strong throughout my three sets. Wednesday brought us our Jackson Creek skate rollerski time trial, and lets just say it was a little bit colder than the last time we were there. We might have been able to ski in the fields along the rode we were barreling down, I could see my breath, and everyone walked away with the early forming-s of skiers hack (yum). My time trial went alright, I was a little disappointed with my time but it seems that everyone's times were slower this time around, perhaps it was the 30 degree drop in temperature...who knows. I really have to pull it together and focus on my technique because when I get tired it really does fall to shambles. We finished up the time trials with the run to the "M" on saturday morning, the weather wasn't exactly ideal, windy as all get out, but we managed to pull through. Bernhard led the entire men's team, and I brought it in for the women's team followed by Mellie and Claire. We finished off the time trial with 3x3min L4 which were surprisingly pleasant after the up hill effort we had just finished. Yesterday I finished off my week with a run up Bear Canyon with Ryan and Eileen, it is one of the last trial heads we haven't run yet and it was cold and beautiful. We made it up to this ridge that looked out over the valley to another mountain ridge and lake, supposedly you can run from Bear Canyon all the way to Bozeman Creek so we've put it on the lists of early season runs for next fall.

That's about it from here. Bozeman is beautiful as always and I starting to really have to fight my lack of patience itch to get on snow, but I know winter is right around the corner...after all in a little less than a month we will be in West Yellowstone!

Life is good.

A Handful of Adventures

We finished up our medium volume week today with a two and a half hour run out on the Bozeman Creek trail this morning. Bozeman Creek trail is an old logging road that follows a creek eleven miles up to Mystic lake in the Sourdough Canyon, of course we didn't make it near the lake but it was none the less a beautiful run. It felt like fall today, cool, a little damp, with that crisp october breeze...excellent. The fall colors are in full swing, a whole lot of yellow that is (aspen I believe). It really makes me miss the red and orange maples we have at home. And since this in reality is just a facilitator or a "non-guilty form of procrastination" I won't say more and just post some pictures from a few of this last months adventures.

These first two are from the Yellowstone "lets go camp under the stars and make rice pasta" adventure the first weekend at school. We spent the day hiking in Yellowstone (Mt. Washburn) and geyser gazing, tarp-camping under the stars, and spent the following day smelling like camp fire and surprise middle of the night fall rain storm.
[photos courtesy of Ned Gall]


(From left to right: Ian, myself, Karina, Ned, David)


post script:
The police station had its annual bike auction yesterday and I managed to pick up my official college junker, she's a real beauty grey with black and white paint speckles for that ultra textured look and a pale purple fork. $20 of stunning power, quiet the catch, I'll try to get a picture of it soon! Eileen and I also ventured on the streamline bus service across town with the hopes of finding a new beta fish (xena warrior princess,RIP, passed away in her sleep this last week and so a replacement was necessary). And so the beautiful blue Kikkianimal came into our life, and fills xena's once empty bowl nicely. Not to mention the gator hunting warmth seeking mountain men we met as we waited in the rain to catch the bus back to campus...

Life is good.

Big Sky Country

I've been in Bozeman for just over one month and honestly (whole heartedly) there is no where else I would rather be. How's that for happy? In the past school was always much more closely related to treading cold water than retaining relevant knowledge, but I think school is definitely on up and up. If I can somehow now trick my brain into thinking chemistry is really has easy for me as biology my studies will be much less stressful. The key will be staying motivated, which is roughly 75% up to me and 25% up to my professors. I believe a good professor has the ability to ignite a passion in individuals for their studies and accumulating knowledge...even in math.

The plan is to ski for Montana State University this year, it should be quite the adventure, and we will just have to wait and see how it all plays out. I'm going into the season with open minded expectations, simply I want to train and race to the best of my abilities. I enjoy training just as much as I enjoy racing, even a summer of some long lonely training weeks can't change that. I love my new team, it would be awesome to get to travel around the west with them this winter. Although I'm a bit spoiled as far as having good rollerskiing at home is concerned I love training in and around the Bozeman area. I think my favorite part of the training week is still the weekends, because when the weekend rolls around that means adventure. We've already gone on some pretty spectacular runs! A few weeks ago we went on this epic (epic in the Midwest mindset) run up the Bridger ski area along the ridge to the "M", intense. Standing on top of the ridge with the ground falling away all around me I could begin to realize how inconceivably miniscule I truly am. Nature is pretty powerful like that.
More recently we went running in Cottenwood canyon, up the switch backs and across creeks we got our first taste of the fall colors and weather. On campus everything is still incredibly green, but up Hylite or in any of the surrounding canyons fall is definitely upon us.

Yesterday we went to Homestake Lodge, something like 80 miles away by Butte...I believe, and ran a 5 miler on the brand new ski trails they are constructed there. They've done an absolutely amazing job out there, the trails are beautiful and so is the lodge they've built over the past year or so. The owner used to be on the ski team at MSU and just two years ago purchased the land with her husband with the hopes of bringing cross country skiing to the Butte area, and from what I could see on Sunday they are doing an incredible job. The race reminded me of running my home cross country course on the Birkie trail, only 5,000 feet higher and two miles longer, my favorite type of terrain. I've never done a 5 mile running race before, so the concept of pacing never even crossed my mind, instead I simply went for it. It took me 36 minutes and some change, 5th or 6th women and first MSU girl, not too bad for my first official race at altitude. Our ski boys put up another dominating performance with Bernhard placing first and Ryan placing second. Instead of prize money they both accepted the molasses cookie/twizzler rope medals.

Winter seems to always be looming around the corner here, every time it rains the Bridgers and other surrounding mountain ranges' peaks are blanketed in snow. I keep dreaming about getting on the white stuff and my skis are sitting ready in my bag in the ski room, the only obstacle now is my lack of patience and the time it will take the weather to turn cold.
Now I must be off to warm up before hitting the weight room with the team and our strength coach Dallas. What a bad ass name.

Life is good.