The team and I headed to Seiser Alm after the tour. We are staying at the Panorama hotel which sits on a snowfield with a 12k loop of perfect hard track skiing. I had zero energy the first few days I was here but now I am feeling like myself for the first time all season. Yesterday morning I skied 40 minutes at threshold which was the first intensity I have done since the tour. I felt strong and rested which gives me a good feeling going into next week’s races in Otepaa.

I think the title says a lot.  This summer when Zach and I mapped out the season and the tour de ski we were confident that I could hold my own in every stage except the marathon skate from Toblach to Cortina. Given how subpar my form has been in the races leading up to yesterday’s stage we were not optimistic. When I asked Zach for strategy advice he gave me one word “survive.”

The race had a pursuit style start based on overall positioning from the previous six stages. I was 42nd, 6:33 behind the leader Dario Cologna. Skiing with Ivan Babikov and Robin Duvilard I moved up to 29th place and posted the 10th fastest time of the day. My shape has been off all season but this has been the best indicator of a return to form. As someone wrote me in a text “don’t stop believing.”

My first two weekends of skiing have not gone as planned. In fact they have been downright embarassing.
My largest impediment has been myself. I was hit with a major change in my personal life just before traveling to Sweden which left me with so much anxiety that I barely slept the first week I was here. Combined with jetlag I was basically worthless in the opening Norway world cup.
I was able to calm myself down when I arrived in Finland and felt much better. As I was warming up for the sprint I actually thought qualifying could be possible. Then two minutes before the start my pole broke in the starting pen and I had to use Newell’s poles for the race. The unfamiliar strap and height threw my timing off and I was a massive 6 seconds from qualifying. Not what I needed for a confidence boost.
The next day was the 10k skate which has been my only respectable finish thus far. I raced strong and controlled for the first six ks and then Lukas Bauer passed me on his first lap while I was on my second. He was moving well and I knew that if I could stay with him he would pull me to a top ten finish. I also knew that the effort it would take could also make me blow up. I abandoned my top 20 pace and went for broke. My pockets were empty 2k later which left me with an additional 2k to struggle to the finish. I more or less kept my composure until the finishing stretch where I was so full of lactate that I nearly fell over. I finished 24th having dropped about 7 places in the final kilometer.
I had been excited for the 15k classic pursuit since it was announced on the schedule last spring. The morning of the race the tracks were hard and a thin klister cover was working very well. The course was a very difficult 2.5k loop that was to be completed 6 times. Last summer the wax tech that I had worked with for the past three seasons quit the US team to work with Sweden. I was very disappointed to lose him because we had finally learned to work well together last year. I never had bad skis last season when he was working. His replacement Oleg is just as talented but we have not had any time to learn how one another works. This led me to be make a very poor decision. Instead of listening to Oleg and taking the pair he had found the fastest, I chose a pair that had a lower pocket and was extremely easy to kick. I had also placed 4th on this ski in Kuusamo before, which unfortunately affected my decision. The skis were slow on the first lap of the race but extremely grippy. Then the skis of the 100 men going around the course brought up significant moisture and before I knew it the low pocket of the ski was sunctioned into the snow and I knew why Oleg had reccommended a different ski. I was able to hang with a group that was moving up through the field quickly but with the slower skis I was getting no recovery on flats or dowhills. I blew hard at 10k and my race was over. There was no one to be mad at but myself. I made an amature decision and I paid for it. I know better than to pick a ski on a pre-conceived notion but with everything havng gone wrong so far this season I wanted a magic day to bring me out of it. I blew it.

The men’s team and I have been down in New Zealand for the past two and a half weeks. Up until yesterday the weather has been phenomenal which has made for a great camp. For the past two seasons I have structured my training into three day blocks. The format allows me to train really big for a few days and then get a feeling for how I am absorbing the load on the easy day. Block one was 12.5 hours and included a 6×10 min L3 skate intensity. Block two was 12.5 hours with a 4.5 hours classic OD as the focus. Block three was 14.25 hours with a five hour (2.5 classic, 2.5 skate) OD as the primary session. Block four was only 9.5 hours but it included two races.

The first race was a 15k classic mass start on a perfect sunny hard track day. The field included Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey, Ivan Babikov, Lenny Valjas, Brian Mckeever, Andy Newell, Noah Hoffman, Tad Elliot, several Japanese, a few Koreans, and the top Australian and New Zealand racers. Based on the speed of the tracks it was clear that leading or attempting an early break away was ill-advised. The course 5k course loop meandered downhill for 2.5 k followed by .5k of gradual incline and 2k of varying terrain including two steep uphills.

It became clear after a few ks of racing that the pace was not going to be high and that the race would be decided over the last few minutes. As I was racing I debated whether to attack on the first uphill with 2k to go or at the second uphill with 1.25k to go. Last year I attacked with 2k remaining and broke the field up quickly. But I exploded with .5k to go and Devon passed me easily to take the win. I didn’t want that to happen again but I also didn’t want to have a footrace with Alex and Andy for 1k either. I decided to make the same move as last year. It was so predictable that Devon shouted “Here it comes” to his teammates as I accelerated at the 13k mark. My move broke the pack of eight down to a pack of four quickly. For the next few minutes Alex, Devon and Andy  “Yo Yoed” off and onto my tails. On the final uphill I was able to secure enough of a gap to ensure the win. Andy was also able to sprint by both Canadians to take second.

The next day was a freestyle sprint race with the entire Russian sprint team, Lenny Valjas, Andy, Simi Hamilton, and Tad Elliot competing. I qualified 4th and earned 53 sprint points, my second best FIS sprint ever. Sixteen skiers advanced to the heats with 2 skiers advancing from each round. The Russians were struggling all day which resulted in an all North American final. Andy, Simi, Lenny and myself battled for the win. After coming out of the start in last I found a gap to get to the front of the race. I knew that my best chance of winning was to set as fast a pace as possible in order to tire the guys out. My strategy worked to a point. Simi and Lenny both got tired but Andy still had enough legs left to pass me in the home stretch. Simi took 3rd and the men’s team got to enjoy a podium sweep.

The weather was terrible yesterday with near white out conditions and vicious winds. I had an off day scheduled so I wasn’t too disturbed by it. However today the weather is still bad. A 10k skate race was supposed to take place today but it was canceled.  Up on the snow farm you have to go big on the nice days and go with the flow on the bad ones.

Going home in the middle of the season does not work for me. I had five weeks of no world cup racing in the middle of my season. I also got sick during the third and fourth week which made me miss the Craftsbury marathon; my only planned race during my stay at home. Staying in Europe for the entire season will make it easier to stay healthy by avoiding the unnecessary travel home. It will also enable me to always stay in touch with high level racing. I finished the tour with a seventh place stage finish. I came back to the world cup with a fifty-seventh place finish in my best event. Going home does not work.

Oslo was a great opportunity and it has passed me by. I am just getting into shape as it is ending. Unfortunately I am also tired now so I will skip the 50k tomorrow and turn my focus to the remaining world cups.

Racing with diabetes presents many challenges but simply living on the road can be difficult as well. It is well documented that I had some severe low blood sugar while I was racing last year but to compound that I was also having low sugar while at rest. It was not uncommon for me to have sugars falling into the 50′s during travel or while sleeping. Having low blood sugar wastes adrenaline and leads to long term fatigue.

I started using a new tool called the Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor this Spring.

Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor

I insert a small wire into the subcutaneous fat in my abdomen. The wire has a transmitter attached to it that sends data to a hand-held receiver. Every five minutes it sends my glucose level to the device and graphs it. Each dot on the picture above represents a glucose reading. The dotted lines going across the graph represent glucose levels of 180 and 60. If my blood sugar is not between those two data points my receiver will vibrate and beep. This is a very important feature for sleeping.

The device requires frequent calibrations from actual blood samples and displays information that it is about 10 minutes behind what my actual glucose is. This combined with its relatively large size (hopefully a watch will be developed soon) make it impractical for racing. However I may carry it on a triathlon race belt, in an ipod case, for 30k and 50k races.

Using the Dexcom device in conjunction with the Omnipod insulin pump means that I have two medical devices in my skin 24/7. My friends have joked that I am turning into a Cyborg. I embrace this, as I am grateful that the diabetes industry continues to innovate and make my life easier. In the picture below you will see the Omnipod on my chest and the Dexcom transmitter on my Oblique.

Cyborg Impression

The display on the Omnipod “Personal Diabetes Manager” shows the many program options on the device. The PDM communicates wire-lessly to the pump on my chest.

Maintaining a relatively normal glucose level is critical to the longevity and consistency of my season.  I look into every innovation that comes out in the diabetes world and decided that this combination was the best for me.  I will use it to tackle every race that comes my way this year.  I considered skipping longer races this season as well as the tour.  But I know I can perform well in those formats.  Living scared is no way to live.  I am going after the 30k.

I had a great start this weekend in Muonio. It feels awesome to be skiing fast and to beat a lot of the best guys in world. But this is just a warm-up and I won’t place to much stock in the results. If history is any lesson, there will be huge shifts in performance by many athletes next week in Sweden. Its impossible to say where the efforts I had here would place me in a full world cup field. What I can say is that I feel fit and my new strategy for controlling my glucose levels worked seamlessly this week. It feels so good to be skiing strong . I am looking forward to next weekend.

This summer I have spent a lot of time and effort dialing in the right insulin dose for 30k and 50k events with good success. I also revamped my strategy for 15k length races but have not had the opportunity to test it much. It was necessary to change this strategy because my glucose levels were dropping perilously low directly following my races. These low blood sugar episodes annihilated my immune system last season.

Briefly, the new strategy is to frontload my insulin dose before the race instead of during it. I take a 30 minute extended bolus 30 minutes prior to the start of the competition. An “extended bolus” means that the dose of insulin my pump gives me is spread out over a half hour instead of given all at once. In the past I would give myself this dose directly before the start of the race.

The strategy was changed because the synthetic insulin I use does not reach its full effectiveness or “peak” until 45 minutes after injection.

This is a simple timing change but still requires testing and trial and error to do properly. The first time I employed the new method was at New Zealand Nationals in a 15k classic with the Canadian National Team. I took three units 40 minutes prior to the start of the race. I finished with a blood sugar of 240. (Normal blood-sugar range is 70-120, high blood sugar increases lactate production)
I made a note that my sugar was high with this dose and that I should increase it to four units for my next max effort. I also decided to move the dose timing up by 5 minutes.

My next race effort in the 15k range. was the Whiteface Hill climb roller-ski race. I took 4 units 35 minutes prior to the start. I had a good race but my blood sugar control was terrible and very disconcerting. I was at 350 and had a lactate of 12 to go along with it. Clearly I had way under-dosed again.

Whiteface was supposed to be my last 15k max effort before going to Finland but I decided I needed to test the new dosing strategy one more time. Mt Moosilaukee is only 25 minutes from my house and Ruff Patterson was nice enough to add me to the start list when his team did their annual timetrial on Sunday. This time I upped the dose to 6 units and took it 30 minutes prior to start.

It was cold out and misting. The rocks on the bottom half of the course were slick. About half way up I hit the snowline and the footing actually improved. The trail was a nice firm snowy bootpack. My heartrate was bouncing between 175 and my max 181 the entire way. I finished up in the clouds to find that I had run a new course record 35:16. The previous record was 35:23 set in 1998 by Marc Gilbertson. That wasn’t the best news of the day though. My bloodsugar was 105 at the top. I have found the sweetspot so to say and just in time.