As Easy as Waking Up/ Just For Me

On Saturday I went skate roller-skiing for the first time this season and I'm going to do the best I can to describe how amazing it was. First I should preface this by saying that I left my ski season on less than happy terms even after having the best summer of training of my life in Truckee, California. But for a number of reasons I couldn't get things to click when the race season arrived. And being a senior it wasn't as if I could simply shrug it off and think 'better luck next year' because this season was it for me. Sure I'll do an Eastern Cup or two but overall my ski racing career ended in a painful, splintering crash.

So needless to say I took a slight step back from skiing once the season was over. I went out a few times but didn't jump on every opportunity to ski like I would have normally. Basically I felt like if I didn't take a break my frustration with the season and its various hardships would transfer to the sport itself rather than remaining attached simply to the appropriate sources.

Despite this the time to start roller-skiing again came. I knew it was time because I was itching for the opportunity to go skiing again. I wanted to go. There wasn't a training plan telling me when, no coach saying I needed to get practicing, I simply wanted to go. So a plan was made and the night before I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve; I knew what to expect because I'd experienced it before but the anticipation for so much happiness and maybe a surprise or two kept me awake. 

***

After clipping into my Swenor skate skis and velcro-ing my pole straps I was off. The first five minutes was essentially a sprint as I lapsed into a hyper-excited mode. Once the initial excitement wore off I fell into a steadier rhythm and it was only then that  I swear I felt my muscles yawn. It was as if they had just woken up and were falling into what they know how to do naturally. I felt them elongate, stretching themselves out after a long hibernation, and a feeling of refreshment trickled throughout my body as every muscle fiber, tendon strand and blood cell became aware of what I was once more asking of them.

I skied around for a little over an hour, refreshing myself on technique and body positioning, remembering to shift my weight and thinking about how high to bring my arms. But even as I ran through my mental checklist of what I needed to be doing to make myself more efficient as a skier I realized I was already doing it. My muscles knew, my body remembered.

With everything in check I sought out the hills, discovered I was less afraid on downhills, and more daring on one foot. And I'd say that my relaxation now is mostly do to the fact that I no longer have anything to lose. If I fall and break my leg now (knock on wood) it's not going to impact my training or season because I'm no longer liable to anything or anyone. But if that were to happen a year ago the negative consequences would be devastating in the mind of a racer calculating training hours and would be a significant setback on fitness. 

While I loved many aspects of being on a team and following a training plan I'm also discovering that I love the freedom of being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't have to worry about how it will positively or negatively impact my race results. I've been able to get more into running again, a sport I sorely missed for the past four years. If it's raining out I can decide whether or not to even go outside let alone train for multiple hours. If it's zero degrees this winter I don't have to go out and do intervals. And best of all I can know now that every time I go for a ski it's just for me. 

The Beauty of Destruction: Part One

When I was 18 years old I fell in love. It wasn't the love at first sight, knock you over the head type of thing. More just a noticing. Curiosity over a name.  I knew nothing about him save for his physical appearance and his year in college. A senior. I know, I know, it sounds like the start to a bad rom-com. A clique. Just as writing that out is a clique. But it was more complicated than a movie could ever be.

I waited for over a year and a half before I finally got to be with him. And not in a just-for-sex kind of way but in a potentially real relationship-marriage-house-let's buy a dog way. In truth I was almost over him. Or at least I was at the point where I wanted to be and had taken the necessary steps. But that was before we spent a night together. We in a hotel room. Only we were in separate beds. It was chock full of nervous energy, in no way romantic other than scenarios that I was concocting in my own imagination. And despite being alone with the guy I wanted to be with and had pathetically pined over, throughout that night I laid fidgeting alone in my bed half wishing for the time when we would no longer be stuck in the same room together.

From my first noticing of him we spent large clumps of time together because we were on the same sports team. Every day we spent hours at practice and in the dining hall together. Only he didn't really talk to me because I was an impossibly quiet freshman and I didn't dare speak to him. Instead I learned about him, through overheard conversations and actions. This pushed my initial noticing to gradually shift into 'like.' I liked him. He was attractive, mysterious, funny in a self-deprecating way, serious, quiet but most of all kind. And as I said, it was a slow falling, the way a petal floats down onto a lakes surface, contingent on the shift of wind, the flow of events. 

But as surely as the petal falls you know that as soon as it hits the surface it's going under, immediately becoming sodden and absorbed into the water. Drowning is a certainty, that the fibers of the component will disintegrate and all that will remain are dissolving parts of what it once was. The whole will cease to exist. Yet as it gently wafts down towards the water it doesn't know any better. Blame can't be placed. Destruction at the hands of an element it's very life depends upon and thirsts for isn't predicted in advance. At least not until the moment right before you hit the surface to shatter do you know that you're about to be destroyed.   

What Would it Look like If...

Something that I have often wondered about is how Nordic skiers of the olden days, big names like America's Bill Koch, Sweden's Thomas Wassberg or Gunde Svan, Norway's Bjorn Daehlie or Thomas Alsgaard (to consider some of the great men) would fare against today's top competitors. Considering every little change that has taken place with technique, the ever-evolving artillery of wax, the lighter, faster, more aerodynamic equipment and race suits, all of the ways that heart rates, VO2-Max, and every other physiological component can be tested and analyzed for higher performing athletes, the athletes of yore are seemingly at a disadvantage. And yet I watch clips like THIS ONE.

http://tinyurl.com/qzc9gzr

and wonder, all things being equal, who would really come out on top? What if Bjorn Daehlie was to race Petter Northug on a pair of Fischer Speedmax? What if Thomas Alsgaard were to face off against Martin Sundby equipped  with a pair of triac 2.0 Carbon Composite poles? Could Koch win a sprint against Hamilton or Newell if he traded up for a pair of Rossignol X-ium's? What if a World Cup race were simulated like the above clip? How much can we account for wax, snow conditions, lightness of equipment, improvements in general course conditions like track setting? That would be another simulation I'd like to see happen and will work on figuring out! 

(American Bill Koch. Check out the size of those tips!)

If anyone else has thoughts or some sort of elaborate equation made up to calculate or account for any of these variables a comment would be cool.