Among my close circle of friends, which consists of one other former varsity nordic skier, one category two cyclist, and one extremely snide non-endurance athlete, a constant source of amusement and pleasure is making fun of triathlons, and triathletes.

There are a lot of reasons that triathletes are the butt of our jokes. $5,000 bikes. Hundred dollar race entry fees. Weenie shoelaces. Level-four group rides with aero bars. Sleeveless jerseys. Triangular water bottles. The list goes on and on and on. 

While my friends’ sport-centric jokes was originally centered on triathletes, their circle of consideration was broadened after I started getting neurotic about my training last summer–one might call it “No Obnoxiously Self Centered Athlete Left Behind.” Whenever I started to get too anal about recovery, fret over the duration of my threshold intervals, or generally take myself at all seriously, my friends–particularly the non-endurance athlete one–would instantly seize upon the opportunity to put me in my place, warning me about how they could easily see me becoming “weenie-triathlete” as I aged.

Now that I am no longer a member of a division one, varsity NCAA ski team, I may not immediately be at risk to become a “weenie-triathlete,” but I certainly see within myself the potential to become a “master blaster”–master blaster being defined as someone who takes their athletic pursuits extremely seriously and spends a lot of money on their equipment. Every time I get on my bicycle, I start thinking about what kind of ride I should be doing.  Overdistance? Intervals? Hard riding? Recovery? Once I’m riding, I usually don’t worry too much about how fast I’m going or how high my heart rate is, but these are definitely things that are on my mind.

Recently, in response to a previous blog post, one of my old assistant coaches, Adam St. Pierre, offered to give me some coaching advice and put me on a plan to make me a huge baller of a biker or skier. Adam is highly qualified, with a masters in something-ology that has to do with training and exercise physiology (if you need a coach, you can write Adam at st.pierre.adam.d@gmail.com), and initially, I was very intrigued. I’d love to upgrade to Cat. 2, or even to Cat. 1 and get a pro cycling contract, or get top 50 in the Birkie, or even qualify for the Olympics, so Adam’s offer was enticing.

After thinking about it a little bit, though, I realized that I wasn’t sure that I really wanted a coach. In fact, paying for a coach is actually one of the tri-attributes that my friends and I dislike.

Oh, dear. I’m about to get into Patrick Stinson-introspective territory. But bear with me.

The reason that I’m skeptical about having a professional coach is that I think that physiology and exercise and athletics is simple enough that for someone at my level (and for someone at the level of most middle-aged triathletes),  I should be able to figure out my own training plan. One of the things that my former coach Marty Hall always said was that a large part of my college athletics experience was preparation for the rest of my life as an athlete. To me, what was implied in that statement was that by the time I graduated, I should know enough about the sport and about my body so that I didn’t need a coach any more. I mean, for goodness sakes, my roommate Nick Crawford IS a coach now, and he’s certainly not any smarter than me, so I should be able to do it myself. (Okay, Nick does know more about some things. Mainly rocks [he was a geology major].)

Furthermore, since the ski season finished, I’ve very much enjoyed the opportunity to go outside and use my mind and body however I want, without concern for the ultimate consequences of sprinting for a town line. Today I went rollerskiing and spent a large portion of the time contemplating slugs (major questions that arose: how many slugs are there in total on top of the 6-mile stretch of road that I skied out and back on today? how many slugs are there in maine, total? the world? has anyone ever done research into slug populations? are slugs carnivores or herbivores? where do slugs go when it gets hot outside? don’t they dry up? all of these questions could be easily answered by google and wikipedia, by the way, but I chose not to look them up so that I could ask them in earnest in this blog entry). Last week I rode 85 miles and rode just about as hard as I could up every single hill, and instead of using Cytomax or Gatorade, I just drank an entire liter of Coke.

In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say here is that there’s a time and place for sport to be serious, and for me, it seems like I should probably be concentrating more on finding a reporting job and doing other things, given that I just spent the last four years of my life taking skiing very seriously. And when it’s time for me to start taking things seriously again–whether that’s in 20 years when I’m trying to win the 45+ age category in the Putney Cyclocross race, or in five years when I’m trying to kick butt in the Birkie–my feeling is that I should be able to rely on my own accumulated knowledge and expertise to improve, rather than hiring a coach to figure it out for me or spending my money on equipment that will shave a quarter of a second off my 40-kilometer time trial. And, from this perspective, anyone who does spend money on a coach or on sweet equipment is overly serious, a big weenie, and unable to think for themselves.

Except, I’ve realized, that there’s a slight problem with this philosophy, and that’s that I’ve just spent the last 4 ski seasons shelling out $40,000 a year for a coach, for ski wax, and for equipment. Yes, I guess I also got a degree and learned some academic mumbo-jumbo as well, but that’s secondary–kind of like the triangular water bottle that you get when you spend $5,000 on your Cervelo P3. Which means that I’ve actually already had four years of being a weenie-triathlete (a cross-country ski version), just within the sheltered environment of a college where I can blend in because the majority of the rest of the people also happen to be weenies about about something, too. I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think that the large majority of weenie-triathletes are people who discover athletics in the middle of their lives, and who haven’t yet had the opportunity to take their athletic selves extremely seriously, build up a stockpile of sweet equipment, or learn enough about their own bodies and about the basics of physiology to coach themselves. I know my mom, for instance, never had the luxury of being able to compete in an endurance sport at a young age, and I don’t think I could begrudge her if she decided to take up triathloning and get a coach. Although I still sincerely hope that she doesn’t. 

So I guess that I’ve carved out a (very small) place in my heart for triathletes, even if they are weenies about the sport. And, yes, it should be acknowledged that there are plenty of triathletes who approach the sport in an entirely healthy manner. However, this whole thought experiment still hasn’t gotten me very far in determining what my own athletic approach should be for the immediate future. Should I be training to be a cyclist? Skier? Weenie triathlete? Who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in six months, so it seems pointless to follow a long-term plan. I guess I’ll just keep rollerskiing and contemplating the slugs…

2 comments

One thing that I’ve discovered, through my years and years of accumulated training wisdom, is that there’s absolutely and unequivocally no such thing as an easy group bike ride.

Let’s back up. Yes, it’s June now, and I probably should be rollerskiing. But: NEWS FLASH!! I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE! This means no more enforced boredom or misery in the form of OD classic skis with Walt, rollerboarding to exhaustion, or time spent with the baseball players in the weight room. Not that I would have been doing too much of that anyways in the last few weeks, what with the end of the semester, senior week (read: college-sanctioned and enforced drinking), and a slow-to-heal knee injury. But what this means is that my training for April and May  largely consisted of short, easy bike rides.

Over the last couple of weeks, however, my knee has finally been feeling good enough to start riding hard again. Two Sundays ago I got to jump in a fun little training criterium, and then this last Saturday I did the storied “Saturday Morning Ride” in Portland. If you’ve never heard of the SMR before, it’s the real deal–anywhere from 40 to 70 guys (and the occasional intrepid girl) hammering around Portland at about 25 mph, using up the entire lane, sprinting at regular intervals, and generally making mayhem. It’s totally awesome, and I recommend it to anyone who has the constitution for that kind of thing (which is probably anyone who’s reading this blog to begin with…).

In any case, with the Auburn races this coming weekend (more on those later), I’ve been ramping up my training from 3 hours a week to more like 6 or 8 hours a week. This means I’m serious, legit, and that the Freeman brothers should probably watch their collective back (on a who-does-the-most-badass-training basis, rather than actually having to be worried about losing to me in a ski race), because my hours are going up, and my splits on the track have been going down.

Thus, yesterday, after the SMR and another good ride on Sunday, I opted to go on the thrice-weekly pedal with “the old men of Augusta.” Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, these 10 crusty older (over-50) dudes meet up in the parking lot of the Augusta Career Center and ride their $5,000, Zipp-404-equipped bikes on a 30-mile out-and-back loop on Route 27. In and of itself, riding on Rt. 27 makes little to no sense, given that it’s dominated by semi trucks on their way to Farmington and tourists on their way to Belgrade Lakes. But then again, most of the things athletes do make little to no sense, so I just enjoy it for what it is–usually a low-key, moderate-paced excursion with a bunch of friends.

However, at this point, I’m pretty sure that the Old Men of Augusta Ride (henceforth OMAR) only exists as a “low-key, moderate-paced excursion” in my mind, along with unicorns, jackalopes, and me winning the Tour de France (both the overall and the final stage on the Champs-Elysees [has that been done before? b/c if so, that would be awesome]). Though yesterday before heading out I recalled that the OMAR was usually nice and slow and relaxed, upon further reflection I’m pretty sure that of the 20 or so times I’ve done this ride, that has only actually been truly easy like once or twice, if that. In fact, I’ve had similar experiences numerous times on the Brunswick Tuesday Night Ride (BTNR). The BTNR is–in my mind–a marked contrast of the Portland Tuesday Night Ride (PTNR), a preposterous 50-mile epic undertaking that seemingly tries to conquer every single vertical foot within a 20-mile radius of Portland. The Brunswick ride is–again, only in my mind–much easier: only 30 or 40 miles, with a lot less people and much more limited firepower.

In most of my BTNR experiences, as well as with last night’s OMAR, this is what happens. First, I arrive at the designated meeting place thinking mostly about how much better a rider I am than all of the other silly fools assembled around me: I’m a Cat. 3, these guys are all old and tired and don’t deserve their $5,000 bikes, my legs are totally jacked, etc. Then I sit quietly in the cool cyclist-pose on my bike (one foot on the ground, the other foot clipped in and resting my thigh on that side on the top tube) as all the old dudes or Brunswick regulars make small talk, and, depending on my mood,  I either plot out how I will utterly humiliate and embarrass these individuals, or relax into a Zen-like state in preparation for the calming, soothing experience of a pleasant, easy ride that will not at all tax my well-developed calves.

What inevitably happens is this: one of the old guys on his $5,000 bike actually turns out to somehow be ridiculously strong. Yesterday, this old guy was the dude rocking the sweet Garmin-Chipotle bike with carbon wheels, and whose nickname, I discovered at the end of the ride, is “F—— Jeff,” with the “F——” pertaining to the intensity at which he pedals. In addition, also present yesterday was another old guy with a foot-long beard, a fanny pack, and a mirror on his handlebars, as well as a pudgy-looking triathlete–complete with aero bars–on his first-ever group ride. For the first half of the ride, I spent about 75% of the time suffering on F—— Jeff’s wheel, periodically checking behind me to confirm that yes, in fact, beard-dude and triathlon guy are still there.

This lunacy continued on the way back. We did ultimately manage to drop beard-dude and triathlon guy, but I had to dig disturbingly deep to make it up the one big hill and not get dropped by F—— Jeff.

Humbled and only slightly disappointed, I returned home last night and drowned my sorrows in a delicious dinner of baked penne with 5 cheeses, prepared by my sister. The only thing that makes me feel marginally better is that on Saturday I get to race in the Pro-1-2-3 race with Mark McCormack and Ted King. I’m pretty sure that cycling is the only sport in the world that can offer this degree of ego inflation and reduction: you can ride shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s best one day, then struggle to to keep up with bearded-dude the next.

No comments

It has been with interest that I have been reading the accounts of professional skiers, elite juniors, and master blasters as they resumed their lives of toil over the past few weeks, because my life has been decidedly toil-free.

I really have nothing interesting to report. My major accomplishments since March have been primarily academic, but unfortunately, even these major accomplishments have been inconsequential. While the rest of the state has been concerned about swine flu (we have at least five confirmed cases), at least one case of senioritis is currently raging at Bowdoin, and shows no signs of abatement until May 23rd (graduation). I spend most of my time sitting in class staring at the wall, ignoring my professors, and thinking about skiing and the Olympics.

My knee still does not work correctly, although it does seem to be very slowly improving. Most disturbing are the small explosions that sometimes occur when I straighten my leg or stand up. I am hoping very much to be able to begin bicycling normally very soon.

Okay, enough of this drivel. I have a selection of pictures from a recent training session with Walt and my roommates. I would like to point out that although my aerobic fitness leaves much to be desired at this point, my Wii skills are still sufficient to soundly defeat an Olympic biathlon hopeful. And there’s also one more shot of an average day in the life of a huge baller… Important things to keep in mind are that on the scoresheet, I am Tiger Woods, and also that I did not drink all of the beers that were once in the PBR box. At least, not all at once.

One more thing–Bowdoin got a few solid recruits from this year’s applicant pool, and Nathan was talking a whole lot of smack yesterday about how his team is going to embarrass everyone else on the circuit. I think his exact words were, “Ruff, Tracy, and all you other EISA coaches, prepare for TOTAL BOWDOIN DOMINATION! Resistance…is…futile. Purple is the color of sexual frustration!” He said a few more things, but unfortunately they cannot be reprinted here, as this blog is a family publication. 

No comments

The last time I updated this blog, I think I mentioned something about how my knee was slightly messed up, due to an excess of riding and hiking in California. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten much better, so I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around.

Some of you might wonder what kinds of things injured, retired skiers do. Allow me to enlighten you:

1. Get my wisdom teeth out. The best part of this activity was when my roommate took me to the grocery store to get ice cream while I was still messed up on anesthesia. I saw my independent study advisor with his kid, and excitedly told him through 4 bloody wads of cotton that “I feel like I just drank 10 beers.”  He seemed to appreciate it.

2. Focus on growing out my facial hair. Before I shaved today I had achieved previously inconceivable levels of manginess.

3. Read everything in existence on the internet related to skiing, cycling, and everything else, especially things related to Somali pirates and my friend’s high school basketball coach (yes, the ship captain was my friend’s AAU coach). And watch youtube videos.  Recent highlights include some witty repartee between Zach Caldwell and Andrew Gardner on twitter (would this be “twitty repartee?”); cat vs. printer; and ECCC cycling results.

4. Swim. If you could come to the pool and watch, this would probably be the funniest part of this blog post, since I am a comically bad swimmer. It looks something like this, but with more coughing and water going up my nose. I usually swim for half an hour at a time and make it like ten laps.

5. Sit around and pick my nose and feel sorry for myself for not being able to bike race. And complain about it.

6. Skip class. Okay, I’ve actually only done this once (I think it was the first time all year), and it was today, but it was pretty sweet. First, I walked all the way from the dining hall on one side of campus to Sills Hall on the other. Then, when I got there, it was really sunny, and the voices in my head told me that I had to turn around and walk to the Quad instead. There was honestly nothing I could do to resist (parents, if you’re reading this…uhh…sorry). On the way to the Quad, I walked by my professor on her way to the classroom. Oops. Well, even though she is elderly now, I sure she was young once and probably understands.

Aside from doing homework, I honestly can only think of a couple of other things that I’ve actually done over the last few weeks. The one actual disappointing part about my predicament is that I’m going to end the year at like 490 hours of training, which is tantalizingly close to the much more rad number of 500. Or maybe sometime next week I’ll go out for a ten-hour double pole…

No comments

Northug to Enroll at Bowdoin, Join Nordic Ski Team

April 1st, 2008

BRUNSWICK, ME–In a surprising development, Bowdoin College President Barry Mills announced today that Norwegian superstar Petter Northug Jr. will be enrolling at the College starting next year.

“After seeing the unfair advantages of the Western schools at NCAA’s with their imported talent, I decided to do something about it,” Mills said. “Given that our college has an obscenely large endowment, I would like to apply it to something useful, for once.”

In order to entice Northug to Bowdoin, Mills said that the school had put together a $20,000,000 scholarship package, which also includes incentives for both academic and athletic performance. In addition, Mills said that the College will be purchasing Casio Eyewear for all students working in laboratories.

Northug will be allowed to race in the EISA circuit due to a rule known as the “Shepard exemption,” which allows old people to participate in NCAA competition if they have previously been on a national team.

In an interview, Northug said that he didn’t expect to have very much trouble with eastern collegiate skiers.

“In the Tour de Ski this year, I made Axel Teichmann my b—-. What makes you think that I’ll have any trouble with Dartmouth?” he said through a translator.

Northug added that he would be double majoring in gender and womens’ studies and art history at Bowdoin. With uncharacteristic humility, he also said that he was glad to have the opportunity to tap into the rich history of nordic skiing at the school.

“To have the chance to learn and ski at the same institution as the great Nat Herz–this is a true honor,” he said. “Nat is known far and wide in my native country as one of the hugest ballers, ever.”

No comments

The day after I made the spring break post, I got an e-mail from Chris Hall, director of nordic racing for Fischer Sports USA. I was very hopeful that I was finally about to be sponsored, but this was not the case. Chris had apparently been reading my blog, and was concerned that I’d been having some serious problems with Fischer skis (I’d complained that I noticed that Fischer bases sometimes don’t stay flat).

I explained my problem to Chris, and he wrote back with an informative e-mail that explains why this happens, and why it’s probably worth the minor inconvenience when waxing. I figure most people would be interested in reading it, so the relevant portion is below (don’t worry–I got his permission…).

“From your comments, it seems that this is not affecting the overall performance of the skis. I may be able to shed some light on to why this may occur occasionally in our skis.  As you move out toward the tips and the tails of the ski, the height of the ski is smaller, as compared toward the middle section, where the height of the ski is larger.  So, there is more core material in the center of the ski as opposed to the ends.  Because of this, there is sometimes a tendency for the tips and tails to move out of “flat” and become slightly convex.

This can be considered a trade off for many reasons.  One, it is important to use less material in the tip and tail so the swing weight of the ski can be as light as possible.  Two, the camber of the ski is created by the carbon fibre layers and the core material in the center of the ski, so again, less or no core material is needed in the tips and tails.  Three, the actual running surface of the ski, meaning the area of the base that is actually in contact with the snow and receiving the skiers body weight when gliding or kicking is typically further back from the ends of the tip and tail, so these extremities are rarely in contact with the snow, if at all.  It would be possible to insure that the ski base remained perfectly flat throughout the ski for the life time of the ski, but would the trade off be worth it?  It would probably mean increasing the weight of the ski and increasing the swing weight of the ski.  In the end, this trade off would not increase the gliding characteristics of the ski.”

1 comment

It has taken me a while to assemble all the necessary components, but I’m finally ready. Here it is–the long-awaited spring break post!

Spring Break Cali ‘09 actually started last year, on the way back from Spring Break Colorado ‘08, when I obtained a free plane ticket from Northwest Airlines in exchange for spending a pleasant night in a Detroit Hotel. This allowed me to purchase a plane ticket from Portland to San Francisco for the low low price of $60. Sweet.

Last Thursday, Nick and I awoke bright (well, actually dark) and early at the hour of 3:30 AM (well, actually, I awoke at the hour of 3:30 AM–Nick would have slept until 3:30 PM if I hadn’t been around) in order to catch our 5:45 flight. Things started out really well when I slammed the bumper of my roommate’s parents’ van into the curb in the parking lot, but fortunately no harm appeared to be done. Two flights later (with my head exceptionally well protected by my helmet [see previous post]), we were pleasantly awaiting our baggage in the Portland airport. Oh yeah–I forgot that I had managed to acquire a miserable cold the day before (the first since Thanksgiving!), which didn’t really bother me, but I’m quite sure infected everyone within a 10 foot radius.

Upon arriving in San Francisco, Nick and I waited for a pretty long time for Morgan (another roommate) and Leah (former ski teammate). This would have been boring, except for the fact that directly adjacent to our bench in “loading zone” appeared a large contingent from the Colavita Women’s Cycling Team, fresh off their planes for a training camp in Napa Valley. Needless to say, this was a morale booster.

Leah and Morgan picked us up accompanied by In ‘n Out Burger, which instantly restored my respect for them. We piled our skis and gear into Leah’s rad station wagon, and set off for Tahoe. We passed such exciting landmarks as the Bay Bridge and Marine World. I’ve always wanted to go to Marine World, but everyone else was seriously lame, so we kept driving.

After a long time, and a very large hill, we arrived in the Tahoe-Truckee-Junior Nationals area. Unfortunately, we didn’t really know any specifics of where we were going beyond that, so we drove around in circles for a while before we decided that it might make a little more sense to drive up to the Auburn Ski Club, where we finally rendez-voused with our hosts, the Mid-Atlantic team. Leah skied for the Mid-A JN team for like 16 years, so we were welcomed very warmly by the coaching staff of Brooker, Marge, and Jason. We helped finish up the waxing for the next day’s race, then headed down the hill to Donner Lake for the night.

I cannot envision any possible scenario in which any team would have better food than the Mid-A team. In addition to a coaching staff, Mid-A had another two people along whose main purpose was cooking, so when we arrived at the place we were staying, dinner (make-you-own burritos with some pretty delicious ingredients, including guacamole and steak) was ready to be eaten. We ate it.

 

Then we went to bed. Ostensibly, we were there to help out with waxing for the two classic races on Friday and Saturday, so the team was putting us up in a hotel room. I don’t have any pictures, but the first night was pretty amusing (we moved into a different building for the second night). Leah and Morgan on each bed and Nick and I were on the floor, and as soon as we turned off the lights around 10, a family of 600 rolled into the adjacent room, which I’m pretty sure was actually the same room separated by a little balsa wood.

The next morning, this same family of 600 had to get up at 5:45 in order to have time for someone to shower AND BLOW-DRY THEIR HAIR (are you kidding me? I challenge anyone reading this to come up with an activity that requires you to get up at 5:45 that also requires blow-dried hair). After this pleasant wake-up, we went over to breakfast.

Normally, breakfast wouldn’t require a new paragraph, but in this case it does, because, since I wasn’t racing, I could eat whatever I wanted. This included bacon, eggs, oatmeal, sausage, more bacon, and maybe a pancake or two. At this point I was pretty psyched about beginning my coaching career.

Then we headed to the venue, the Auburn Ski Club. The trails were open for a bit when we got there, so we skied around a bit on the race course before it was closed. Given that we were at like 7000 feet, that I had a pretty miseable cold, and that I had been awake for 25 of the last 33 hours, skiing made me want to die. Nonetheless, I’m retired and there are no consequences to my actions, so we did some good hammering. I was trying to skate off to the side of the classic tracks, which is pretty amusing when you’ve got a lot of very serious (anal?) coaches and parents around.

The Auburn Ski trails are totally baller. Windy (as in twisty, not blustery), with a few good steep climbs and great views of the mountains.

After scoping the scene, we determined that our help was not actually needed in the wax shed, so we cruised back out onto the trails to check out the individual start classic races, which were very fun to watch. We spent some time with one of my old assistant coaches, Adam St. Pierre, who’s now out in Boulder and was coaching the Rocky Mountain team. He gave us some good advice on giving splits (“yeah, sometimes I just make stuff up…”).

We did some pretty good shouting at the Mid-A kids and at our New England buddies, then retreated back down to Donner Lake for lunch. Afterwards, just in time to prove that old saying (“there’s no such thing as a free lunch”), it was finally time for us to get to work:

Our job for the afternoon was to de-klister all 25 pairs of Mid-A skis, wax them with HF Moly, and scrape. Which we did. It took a while. Here are some observations from the waxing process:

1. The Midwest wax techs appeared to be living exclusively on a diet of Tecate (really, really bad California beer), Mountain Dew, cold pizza, and inhaled fluoros. Good work, guys.

2. There are a whole bunch of things you take for granted as an athlete that you really appreciate when being a wax-tech or a coach (speaking from my day’s worth of experience). Like well marked-out kick zones.

3. Aggravating thing #1: NIS plates do not work well with old-school forms that clamp from either side of the middle of the ski. 

4. Really aggravating thing #1: It turns out that it’s not just my Fischer skis that are concave (or convex, I can’t remember)–most of them are. Trying to wax the Mid-A team’s Fischer skis was probably the most annoying part of this whole process. I mean, seriously Mr. Fischer–Mr. Shus and Mr. Atomic have the whole flat ski business figured out–why can’t you do it?

Basically, I’m very impressed that my coaches aren’t regularly pulling out fistfuls of their hair in frustration. Perhaps most people are a little more patient than myself. Although maybe this explains why Nathan and Ollie can be so ornery sometimes…

A few hours and flouros later, we completed this task and headed back down to dinner (lasagna with roasted red peppers–booyeah!). As we settled in for a relaxing evening, Brooker gave us the instructions for the next coat of wax. Yeah–the next coat. Oh. Darn. We headed back up to the wax shed after dinner, blew through some sweet HFBW, and then headed over to the Sugar Bowl (a nearby alpine mountain) to join the rest of the coaching staff. We took a sweet gondola up to a weird, mid-mountain lodge, where there was a bar–although everyone seemed to just be drinking the Tecate that one of the coaches had brought up in a backpack. By the way, taking a gondola at night is absolutely terrifying–when we went flying out of the loading area I thought my life was over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we got up in time for another delicious coach’s breakfast, then drove up to catch the mass start relays. These were totally baller, and really fun to watch, especially given the thromping that New England dished out. I managed to snap a few pictures of the J1/OJ women before Morgan’s camera died.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race start

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leaders, from afar (I believe that’s Adele Espy getting ready to deliver the Maine knockout punch to an unsuspecting Intermountain girl)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of the field–I was going to get some sweet close-ups, but then the camera battery died…That’s why there are no men’s photos.

However, to make up for the lack of men’s photos, I decided to help out the Alaska J2 girls cheer on their guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the men’s race was over, we packed up and drove to Royal Gorge. We’d heard that they were uptight squares about trail fees, but as four attractive, fit former college racers, we figured we could probably talk our way into a student rate.

One thing that it’s easy to forget as a college racer (especially in Maine, skiing at Maine Winter Sports Center venues) is that most areas are actually businesses, and require you to pay. However, I’ve learned over time that there’s somewhat of a spectrum. There are some areas–Stump Sprouts, for example (Nick’s family’s ski area)–that are family-owned operations, and are therefore usually very sympathetic to students and are usually willing to make compromises on trail fees. Then there are the clearly business-oriented places like Great Glen and Bretton Woods, who are clearly in it for a profit, but at least try to act in the community interest by offering clearly-defined student rates, putting on fun races, etc.

Then, there’s Royal Gorge, which thus far in my experience is one of a kind. No student rate, no compromise from the person at the cash register, $25.00 for a half-day trail pass. We got there at 2:00, and after failing to sway the desk attendant opted to wait until 2:30 for the “twighlight pass,” in hopes that they might cave and let us start skiing at 2:15 or 2:20. No such luck–the cash register “wouldn’t punch in” the twilight pass until 2:30 on the button.

I could say more, but I think I’ll stop here. As much as it was a pain in the ass to get onto the Royal Gorge Trails, once we were in, it was totally kick-ass, and I could totally understand why they don’t need to offer student rates.

We opted for a sweet trail on a narrow ridge called Razorback. It was really, really painful, but also unbelievable, and I got the KOM points. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet cliffs–this part was a little dicey…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big snowbank, huh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rope tows are sweet!

We finished up our ski, then headed back down towards the San Francisco Bay Area, where Leah lives (she’s in Loma Mar, about an hour south of San Francisco). We made one stop each at In n’ Out Burger and at Trader Joe’s, and made it home for a solid night’s sleep.

Sunday morning we woke up and went for a four hour bike ride, which was totally sweet–I got to use Leah’s friend’s rad old-school Klein. We rode up Tunitas Creek Rd., which was on the Tour of California, and did a few other cool climbs, along with some roads with ocean views. Sorry, no pictures–there was a good bit of rain. We finished up, then drove down the hill into Pescadero for some INCREDIBLE burritos. Life was good.

The next day was pretty rainy again, so instead of riding, we opted for a hike in Big Basin Redwood State Park. The trees in this place create a whole definition for the phrase “huge baller”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really. Big. Trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not messing around. That’s a pretty big gall, too, huh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She turned me into a newt! (it got better)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mmm…banana slug. Delicious. (By the way, these are one of the most aptly named creatures out there. There’s no mistaking a banana slug when you find one…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet waterfall.

On the way back from the waterfall, my knee gradually got more and more sore. By the time we made it back to the car (11 miles later), I was not in great shape. Unfortunately, this meant the end of biking and hiking for me for the vacation–it was ice and Advil for the next couple of days.

Thus, that was about it for my spring break gnar shredding. We did manage to have one fun morning at the beach, along with a bunch of fun other activities that I’m too tired to recount.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll send a postcard to the first person who can tell me what this says…

Also, Leah, Nick and Morgan got to go for a few more sweet bike rides–Nick and Morgan had a pretty good one the morning we left:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golden Gate Bridge.

The flight back was pretty fun–we rearranged our seats so that we were all sitting together (Morgan flew in to California a few days early) on the last flight, and I continued my coach’s diet with a gigantic swiss melt cheeseburger with french fries at the Detroit Airport.

Unfortunately, the sore knee took me out of contention for the Sugarloaf Marathon. I saw the doctor on Friday, and she deemed it serious enough to make me get x-rays (I gave it a pretty good whack back in one of the Colby carnival races), which on one hand makes me feel like less of a wuss, but also puts a bit of a damper on the upcoming cycling season. Hopefully it’ll be okay soon. Look for some accounts of some bike racing once it’s better…

As a cantankerous individual once said, “keep ‘em pointed straight ahead.”

1 comment

Okay, so I don’t have all the pictures from California yet, and I don’t have time to make the full spring break post right now. However, I just got twitter, because it seems like everyone who’s important has twitter, and I want to be important. So check it out, early and often:

twitter.com/hugeballer

(please keep in mind, the views represented in this internet phenomenon of the twitter account do not represent the views of bowdoin college, my coach, or anyone else on fasterskier or the bowdoin ski team [and why on earth wasn't the name hugeballer already taken?])

And, the Detroit airport is sweet. Especially with my helmet (I didn’t want it to get crushed in my bag, so I wore it around…)

No comments