I was hanging out at Nationals, feeling all important and professional, when I ran into UVM Coach Paul Stone. Paul is a very friendly dude, and last year he was very complementary about my blog, despite the fact that I called his entire team a bunch of hippies.

“Your blog has lost its edge now that you’ve gotten all professional,” he said.

A lot of other people I’ve talked to feel the same way. And I do too. It sucks. It’s true: ever since I started being serious, my blog has sucked.

In all fairness, I think that there are good reasons for seriousness. As much as the internet is sweet, I don’t think that anyone is actually going to pay me real money after I show them blog posts on how purple is the color of sexual frustration, or about how I am the fastest Jewish skier in the EISA. Or maybe they will, but I’m not sure that those are the kinds of jobs that I want. Okay, actually, given the state of the economy, if anyone reads this and does want to offer me a job, you should probably let me know. But you get my drift.

Also, now that I’m trying to actually be a “legit” ski reporter, there are other reasons to be serious. It probably would not make people want to talk to me if I started making jokes about, like, Mike Sinnott smoking crack on the side of the trail, or who would win in a coach’s cage match between Pepa and Eli Brown (predictions?). If I did stuff like that, I’d end up like Stinson (just kidding Patrick!).

But then again, Patrick writes some pretty contentious stuff on his blog on a regular basis, and he’s still a FasterSkier employee, which makes me think that there’s plenty of funny s— that happens all the time that I can write about without losing my job, or even seriously damaging my ability to do it. I mean, for one, I do stupid things on a regular basis that most people would probably find pretty hilarious, and as one of my friends says, you can always make fun of yourself. And then, when you consider the number of happening places I’m going this winter (Canmore, the Olympics) and the number of hilarious clueless tourists that will be in attendance, it seems like it would be a pretty big waste not to bring the blog back to full force. Not to mention the fact that it really sucks when people tell you that you have lost your edge.

So, starting today, I bring you the revitalized Nat Herz blog, complete with (hopefully close to the) original levels of inanity and irreverence. And requests for sponsorship: I’m still skiing around on two different kinds of poles, two different kinds of boots, and two different kinds of skis-it’s a travesty. At least I have a sweet new FasterSkier jacket.

For this first post on my born-again blog, I’ve got a report from Alaska.

After a few weeks hanging out in Anchorage covering Nationals, I caught a ride in a rad Suburban up to Fairbanks, where I’m chilling (literally) with my friend Nick (who coaches for FXC) for a week before heading down to Canmore via Seattle.

Throughout the 8-hour drive, I experienced a full spectrum of emotion as I observed the fluctuations of the dashboard thermometer: impatience, as the temperature refused to budge from the high teens; excitement, as it finally began its downward fall; anxiety, as it approached the -16 “Steinbock/Johnny Klister threshold”; and finally awe, as it plunged below -20, ultimately reaching its nadir at -30.

See…I'm not making it up.

My first full day in Fairbanks was pretty cold, even by Alaska standards. It was -30 outside Nick’s A-frame when we got up (making for a 90+-degree differential between inside and out), and even by the time we rolled out to Birch Hill around 2, it was -25. I lasted just over 30 minutes outside, wearing a lot of clothes.

After breaking the seal on the race season in late December in Minneapolis, I had been able to put in a pretty solid training block while in Anchorage to rebuild my base after a fall of sitting around in an office in New York City. I did a couple of overdistance workouts (skis for longer than half an hour), a bunch of specific strength (working on developing my thumb and ring-finger muscles by doing a lot of note-taking), and a few hard interval sessions (running around in snowboots and full winter apparel to watch the mass start and sprint races at different points along the course), as well as some pace workouts (trying to keep up with Rob Whitney as he skis at level one pace).

Serendipitously, my visit to Fairbanks coincided with the storied “Town Race Series #2,” a 10k classic competition around the trails at Birch Hill, and I figured that my solid base-building efforts of the past few weeks had put me in a position to have some success here. And, if all else failed, racing at -20 would leave me with a good blog post, even if it also meant a trip to the emergency room or diminished reproductive capacity.

I had missed the pre-registration deadline, but it turns out that being a ski journalist can come in handy sometimes. I e-mailed my Fairbanks connection to request a start position, and since he also happened to be the race organizer here, I received an e-mail stating that “I think there’s a bib reserved for a huge baller. Maybe #666.” Finally-someone treating me with the respect I deserve. I mean, every race should keep a bib open for a huge baller, just in case I decide to show up. (American Birkebeiner organizers-I know you’re reading this. I’ll be at the Olympics this year, but I just read how you are offering free lifetime entries for Olympians. You didn’t specify that they had to be Olympic athletes…and I do really like #666.)

My excitement over getting into the race quickly diminished when I looked over at the thermometer again. Nick told me that the middle school races are cancelled if the temperatures are below -10, but that the rest of the field would still go as long as it stayed above -20. Fortunately an inversion appeared to be setting up for the evening, which would most likely leave Birch Hill above the Fairbanks-legal racing limit for the next day. (For those of you not from Alaska, an inversion is a psychological disorder afflicting residents of this state that causes denial of preposterously cold temperatures. Symptoms include training and racing at temperatures below -10 degrees F.)

When we woke up yesterday morning, I don’t remember what the temperature was, but it was definitely still cold. The inversion had set in at full force up at Birch Hill, however, and when we arrived around 10:00, coaches were already there prepping skis and volunteers were outside setting up the course as if it were 45 degrees warmer. I threw a coat of CH4 on my race skis and went upstairs to ponder my clothing options.

The middle school race was indeed cancelled, but the high school and senior women’s race went off as scheduled, with temperatures around -15. This left me with very few options. If high school girls were outside racing, I didn’t have much of a choice left myself.

By the time I went outside to “warm up” (not sure that you can really go outside and warm up in these kinds of conditions, but whatever), I think the temperature was up to -10. Balmy. I skied about two k, put in about 60 seconds of level three, and called it good. I went to the line, took off my jacket, and put on my poles. I was ready to go. My warm-up pants? Those were staying on-I only brought one pair of windbriefs with me to the venue, and trust me: there are some things that are more important than aerodynamics.

I stepped up to the line. In addition to the fact that I was still wearing my warm-up pants, I was also sporting a buff over my nose (but not my mouth), and my bib was definitely not on correctly (it was one of those annoying paper bibs with those stupid elasticky holder-onners-I may have a bachelor’s degree from an excellent college, but I’m still too dumb to figure those things out). I don’t have a good metaphor to use to describe what I looked like, but I’m pretty confident that I did not look like a legit athlete, and especially not someone whose job it is to write about and judge the performances of elite athletes.

While looking good is the most important part of skiing, fortunately having fun comes in a close second. Despite the fact that I was going the same pace as Nick’s high school athletes who were skiing behind me at a talking pace, it was still pretty sweet to get out and hammer a little bit. Everything hurt, including my self esteem. But racing is always rad, even at -10.

In the end, I finished 12^th. I can take pride in the fact that I would have been the fourth high-schooler. And I also did not get girled. Boo-ya. However, I did get beat by about five minutes in a 7k, so I compiled a list of excuses:

1. I was wearing my warm-up pants. This definitely added a minute to my time due to loss of aerodynamics.

2. My bib was all funky and flapping around. This cost me another minute.

3. I didn’t have a cold-air mask. One more minute, and also permanent lung damage, unfortunately.

4. Somehow, my skis were slippery. 30 seconds.

5. The rest of the field was from Fairbanks, and they know the trails. 30 more seconds.

6. I didn’t have any rub-ons. Yes, it was -10 degrees and nobody else had any rub-ons, but I sure could have used the psychological benefit. One more minute.

This leaves me just about tied with Tyson Flaharty, the eventual winner. But unfortunately for Tyson, the race organizers forgot to subtract the “huge baller bonus” from my time. In New England, they have the “Freeman rule,” which keeps really really fast people from coming to Junior Olympic qualifiers and screwing up the points for everyone else. The “huge baller bonus” is just like this, except I’m not really really fast (or even really fast, or even fast), this race wasn’t a Junior Olympic qualifier, and I definitely did not go fast enough to screw up the points. Basically what it does is just subtract however much time from my result is required for me to be declared the victor of the race, which in this case was one second. So, yeah, pretty much I would have won if things hadn’t gotten all screwed up.

A few more days in Fairbanks, then heading down to scenic Homer to help wax skis for a big race. Hopefully I will not have to inhale too many fluoros to come up with another good story.

As the original huge baller once said, keep ‘em pointed straight ahead….

One more picture:

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner engages in some huge baller journalism…