Whistler

We got down here after a surprisingly long travel day due to the 30 stoplights we got to hit coming thru Vancouver on our way from Seattle to Whistler. Once we got thru there it wasn't too much better since they are in the process of widening the road. I also heard they are putting in a train from Vancouver to Whistler which would be a sweet addition to the area. But driving has been the theme of the week. Almost 30 minutes each way and we are staying about as close as you can. Given that they had a blank slate I'm not too sure why they chose an area not too close to anywhere?

On to the racing... I had heard that the snow here is a little funky and waxing can be pretty tricky. I can confirm that it is. The sprint relay on the first day was a good introduction to some faster racing after 5 weeks with nothing under 30k and a good introduction to waxing here as well. It was gray and just over freezing most of the day until our prelim round when it started to snow. We had great skis in the first round and had no problems making it thru to the finals. By the time the finals started 30 minutes after the rounds the kick wax was completely different. Even though we were able to re-wax the skis just weren't that good and we did quite poorly but we figured that it was our least important race of the year, so we slept okay.

There is a bit of luck and guesswork here since the condition on the test track is totally different from the race course combined with the near constantly changing conditions. Also it seems the ski and application of the wax makes a huge difference. One of my teammates Jeff Ellis had sweet skis on the relay day with the same wax combination. That said, Erik and Casey have done a sweet job of testing many combinations and getting us some really good skis. Yesterday in the 10k my skis along with the rest of our guys were as good or better than anyone and the APU girls had the best skis in the field. It is just tricky.

Getting to yesterdays race was a little more complicated that I had planned. My ride to the race (Kevin) is staying with another team and his car was all of a sudden too full for both Annie and I to squeeze in so at 9:30 the night before the race I emailed one of the Canadian teams staying here and we were able to get a ride with them. I called Kevin in the morning and told him I was just going to go alpine skiing and I didn't need a ride, he believed me. He believed me so much that he tried to scratch me from the race and when I got down to the race most of the races thought I was going alpine skiing too.

Like the relay day, wax once again was changing all the time so we had to make a call on race wax about 10 minutes before the start, just enough time for a quick test and a little adjustment and off to the start. Out of the start on the first of 3 laps my skis rocked! I was skiing relaxed and smooth and quick and all those things that you want to do up to the top of the course (4 or 5 minutes) before dropping back down for the flat and s-turn sections of the course. I never heard it while I was out there but after the race I heard I was in 2nd on the first lap. After that I started to fade a bit. The skis got a little slicker and I started to feel the effects of the relay some soreness and stiffness started to creep in... and I ended up losing about 15 seconds on the last lap... Other than the lost time on the last lap pretty good classic race for me and it bodes well for today's 15k skate. Until then... Some venue photos...