The first 10 days
· Mar 5, 11:43 AM
I admit, aside from the pictures (which may be more interesting than my writing, and I’m okay with that), I’ve been pretty lazy about posting from over here. Granted, I have posted more pictures of Switzerland than I have for quite some time, so I’m going to give myself a pat on the back for actually using my camera. But enough apologizing and excuse making, time to write something a little more.
I’ve been lucky to take pictures on the perfect days, which were plentiful last week, but have been missing for the last few days. Marshall and I skied most of the way up Val Roseg to the Roseg Glacier last week, but turned around because we didn’t know how much further we had to go. It turns out we were actually pretty close, so we went back on Tuesday with Zack and Tony. Of course, by Tuesday the fresh snow had started, so what should have been a little over an hour up was actually an hour forty-five. And the clouds and snow didn’t clear out up top, so no pictures of the Roseg. On the adventure side though, we did have to cross a small avalanche that had slid across the trail between grooming (that morning or the night before) and when we got there.
Speaking of avalanches, apparently Switzerland has been on the receiving end of more than normal this winter. Last weekend in Campra we had to race on some different than normal courses, because the standard course was covered by slides in a few spots. As it was, we skied through some fields where there were a lot of recently dead branches mixed in with the snow.
The races themselves were not anything for me to be excited about. Saturday was a 10k mass start classic. The start was fast and I was slow, hopefully it was mostly the jet-lag and not an indication of how I’ll be skiing for the rest of the year. Before I’m done though, I’ll add a little more to the list of excuses. We definitely missed the wax. Well sort of. There was a deep snow pack that was going from about -3 to +5. It had been doing that for a few days, but most of it wasn’t transformed. The day before I’d had pretty good kick on VR 65 with 70 under the foot. It was also a lot faster than zeros. On race day we (Marshall and I) got a bit intimidated by all the torches and klister in the wax tent and went that route. We ended up on straight K21n, which was pretty good warming up, but once the hills got chopped up by a lot of herringboning it started to ice pretty badly (I ended up flat on my face on top of the first real downhill at 2.5k when my skis didn’t slide – that wasn’t fast). But really, wax aside, the story of the first race is that I was just flat. Super flat. It’s been more of a problem this year than in the past. I did sort of wake up on the second lap and caught back up to some people who I’d lost on the first lap, so that was a good way to finish.
Day two was definitely an improvement. Marshall and I were seeded last in the sprint relay (apparently they used OPA points), but he did a good job moving up straight away into the middle of the pack. We stayed in the mix for the first two laps each, and then started to drift back on the third. By the time I headed out on my 4th (and last) lap I was absolutely fried. My legs weren’t really working and there was no way to close the gap in front of me. Fortunately we’d built up enough of a buffer on the chase pack that I didn’t get caught. 8th out of 16, much more respectable, and last time we did one of these over here we didn’t make the 10 team final, so that was at least an improvement. As an aside, the sprint relay had by far the craziest tag zone I’ve ever seen. We came whipping around a downhill U-turn at pretty much terminal velocity and then went right into the tag zone (after swinging left to avoid the finish straight). The tag zone itself was barely two skiers wide and the first couple of tags had poles breaking all over the place. We didn’t lose any equipment, and the worst I had to do was snowplow in front of a guy who’d just gotten tagged so I could cross over and get to Marshall. Really, I need video footage of the first couple exchanges.
This week has been doing some recon on the Engadin course after Tuesday’s accidental OD. Yesterday we skied to 3k to go and then caught the train back to Celerina (sweet), and today I checked out from 5k to back to here. So now I’ve seen it all but the first 5 (lake) and last 3 (rolling I think). I did some short intervals today and actually felt good. I think the best I’ve felt since Dartmouth Carnival probably. It’s not too late to ski fast!
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Best of luck Brayt. Go fast, don’t fall, do good.
— William Heller Mar 5, 05:58 PM #
Does FIS have a rule against pushing your partner in the tag zone? I’ve been told that EISA has such a rule.
Were you there when I plowed a furrow in Garripay with Sue Cloek’s face during such a tag?
— tom Mar 9, 06:15 AM #
Hey Brayt,
Have a great Europe.
Be sure to visit the birthplaces of Gauss, Leibniz, and Euler.
I’m looking for places in North America to take kids skiing in the summer. Got any suggestions?
-Joe
— Joe Holland Mar 9, 06:23 AM #