Jeff’s Last Ski Season or
“How I learned to love a Big Race” or “Marathons Aren’t Scary Anymore”
This here is the war story of my Best Year. May it bring some good lessons and luck to you who are still out there doing battle!
My last XC racing season went too fast, but it was memorable just the same. I got a fistful of firsts, not first-places, but first-evers.
For starters, it was the first season I’ve ever been sponsored. I was ready to swear off race fever–but opportunity arose. A last hurrah. Nice new stuff. I went for it. I became the Blemange. –A bright purple custard from England celebrated in Montie Python skits. A name bestowed on my suit by my hyper British racing pal, Bruce. Team Rossignol leaped into the season’s fray with purple & orange suits, skis, poles… gloves… bindings…boots. The Blemange! –Not that I minded dropping the ten-year-old knicker-and-holey-sweater line-up I’d been racing in.
I learned a few more ski tricks and skied three marathons well, finally. Plenty of troubles, but no bonking! My previous half dozen 50 km races were all hilarious parodies of races. I bonked every time. Took naps in the trail.
Marathons Aren’t Scary Anymore
My marathons used to just disappear, taking me with them. No pain. Just an early visit to the rest-home.
They also made me swear off ever doing them again. My pal Swimmer says the same thing; he’s sworn he’d never do a marathon again some 30 times now! I asked him if he ever bonks. “Every time!” he said with a laugh. But, alas, my own vow hasn’t stopped me from occasionally deluding myself with peer-pressure reasoning like “You pay the same to do the short race–why waste the day? Ski the marathon!”
But I’ve finally figured out how not to bonk. Last year I watched a video of the Vasa leaders flying along in a pack. In the video I noticed the leaders stopping at every feed station. They drank 3, 4 cups of go-potion before heading off in unison. –I drank only one or two. That was it.
Another trick was to only go at 75% max power up hills instead of 85%. –When facing peak loads situations, I learned to not dip into reserves, to avoid overdrive. To never hustle or panic. Just work and be smooth and efficient instead. I was amazed to find that this let me keep the dial turned darn high over an entire long course. It also played its big part in saving me from the bonk.
So this year I gobbled food and went steady. And my power held. All the way! In every big race. –Of course efforts, trials and tribulations kept pace. The suffering of racing at a steady high level was bigger and clearer now…and, of course, consistent: eyes bulging throughout the race instead of just for 20 minutes. –But at least I could feel the race now beneath all the work, instead of just feebleness.
It was exhilirating. I finally got the chance to push to my limit and past. Previously it was just like getting my plug pulled when I bonked.
The White Pine Stampede
First came the White Pine Stampede. I meant this to be my first successful marathon. Every time I thought I had marathons licked, now I was nervous because I knew I found my answer, but had yet to try it. I’d never skied a second half outside the haze. What would I find?
Well, I found that it was more interesting to be fully active. More ebb and flow and strategy. I could make decisions to stay with or part company. An odd blurring of thought, however, still warmed the day.
At 33 km I’m skiing with Matt Viadja silently–he’d chat, not me–in the midst of nowhere and no one, both of us working, working. Unbelievably, a short, muscley guy suddenly comes steaming up. We could hear him gaining. He passed us, we said Hi. He was fired up. “Where’s the next group?” he asks. I was stunned. “Uh…there’s no one in sight. There’s some guys a ways ahead. Good luck!” The guy sprints away from us with much thrashing. It bent our minds. We’re really moving ourselves…aren’t we? And we’re a long ways from anywhere. Weird.
At 42 km suddenly an open field. Hills. Time to go, I think; I’m running up on the churning guy and Matt is slowing me down. I realize why our fiesty guy is slowing just as I top the hill before the fields. There’s a strong headwind. But I’ve dropped my buddy and sometime wind-shelter Matt. And it’s 3 km to the finish. Close enough! Might as well go! I start really linking up my moves. Squeezing out speed. Ducking low. Glance back. Matt’s 80 feet back. But he’s a marathoner. I do not care to have him beat me now. I return to the wind.
Now there’s something new. Huge pain. Rats. Huger than any bonk pain ever was. 1 km to go. A few more minutes. My God! Matt is still just back there, hunched into the wind. He’s not quitting! If I stumble even slightly I’ll come unglued…damn, we’re flying…he’ll nail me! Why didn’t I just draft him?
I note that the short guy ahead catches a guy. I see this thru a haze. I don’t realize I’m catching both skiers. I look back. I’m sprinting. I’m in utter agony. Matt is now way back. There’s a steep, short hill to the finish. God!!! I’m gaining rapidly on the other skiers but could care less. I suddenly quit and just limp up the hill and cross the line. Exhausted profanities. I slump. Matt crosses. “Christ” I blurt to him, “What fucking pointless pain.” I can’t believe I pushed it like that to the finish. And I was having such a nice time. I’m never doing this again–so stupid….
14th overall, five minutes off winning time. –After all those k’s of nobody, it would’ve been nice to have caught those two guys ten feet from the line–boy, they would’ve been pissed! As it was, what was the difference? I should’ve just skied in with Matt and been grinning at the end. Too bad I have a little psychosis wedged in there somewhere that made me want to beat him hard when I could’ve beat him easy. What a price to pay!
My Last Vasa
The next big test, the Vasa, was a slush-fest. I traded a dinner for a small dose of expensive, exotic wax–my first time really partaking of crazy ski-tech. But I gotta do this right. –No such luck; the skis were dog slow. I musta applied it wrong. Cheap Swix Orange was one of the winning waxes anyway–I love it when that happens. So, I worked like hell forcing those suckers along. But I poured the coal to the fire the whole time. Another 1st for me. Got 28th. Not bad. –I beat the race and the skis. –Coulda easily quit. Shoulda. Didn’t. Source of pride.
I’m learning something new about skiing hard. It doesn’t get easier. You just go faster. Greg Lemond said that, now I know what he meant. With my new race-beating tricks, all I get to do is scoop up and consume more pain without it breaking me. …As my next race showed me.
My Only Birkie
Welcome to the Birkie. The Big One. The last and penultimate event of the season. A fest. 6,000 good skiers. Many languages. A new rule has first-timers seeded no higher than Wave 3. My qualifying time of 2:13 gets me nowhere; nets me Wave 2 where 4:20 gets you in. I’m behind 2000 skiers at the start.
Anyway, I was decked out with great ski gear. Special Birkie stuff on loan from my fave shop, Dick Fultz’s in Grayling. Ultra-soft Peltonens and ultra-light “the-only-guy-with-’em” Alfa Magic boots with cantelevered self-adjusting high cuffs for a bit of the Star Wars look. The day before the race bodes ill for my Pelts. Trails are iced as hard as rock. Guys with the new super-edged Atomics are laughing. I can kind of ski, and get a bit concerned. But Birkie Principle #1 keeps me calm: by the time hundreds of skiers beat that trail I’ll be skiing in ankle-deep sugar–perfect Pelt snow.
And that’s exactly what happens. It also snows 6 inches during the race. And my skis fly. They feel so good. Twice as fast as any around me. Utterly miraculous. And it’s 5° F. What a race! I had a kick zig-zagging my way down the trail through the horde. And was inspired that I was the first skier from my wave for the first half of the race–enthusiastic skiers I pass tell me so. Thrilling–even so far back.
Nice, too, how friendly everyone was, even as I nearly diced them. I wasn’t used to skiing with the just-plain-folks. But I’m looking forward to skiing more with these people as soon as I quit this racing madness. For instance, I want to start classical skiing in freestyle events so even when I’m going well I’ll be back a ways with more normal skiers.
For the first half of the race, I’m often in the woods, passing people by the hundreds. I have to double pole up almost every hill! I’m in a full-on sprint for almost an hour, but my body shows no sign of disliking it. Huge breathing, froth, drool and slime. Loud grunts as I blast past everyone on the uphills. I’m ecstatic, but it occurs to me that I ought to ease up on the 10-km-pace. A few k after the Kortaloppet, things thin out and I can skate.
Now I’m blasting through clusters of skaters *all the time*. I yell a long ways back, they do nothing as they crab up a hill. —I plow right into them, and through them, scaring them to death, but not knocking anyone down! What a trick! What I did was zoom up to two side-by-siders, skate between the tails of one, step forward, twist my torso and through and skate between the tips of the other, plant a pole in front of the previous guy and I’m past them both in three moves. In three seconds. And they thought they were skiing as close as possible! And were going to make me wait til they reached the top. The snow was pulverized and slippery enough that even skiing over their skis didn’t pin them down. Going three times as fast helped, too. Only twice did people fall. Out of over a dozen such encounters.
At 40 km several things happen. I start passing skiers less rapidly. Nobody talks anymore. It gets much harder to keep skiing. My face is frozen solid–I squinch my cheeks to keep them alive. My goggles ice in and I stop to break off the chunks. My hands start turning ‘claw-hand,’ as we say–I have to descend with them balled up in the glove, have to really wiggle them. Then, horrors, my thighs start leaping and clenching under my suit–cramps, I guess. I look down, aghast, wondering what they’re up to. Never cramped before–now both thighs are twitching and clenching on their own. –Never sprinted panic-stricken through 1700 skiers in the first 20 km of a marathon before, either, though.
Hold together! 8 km to go, last feed. Fumble. Eat, eat, drink, drink. Fifteen skiers I just passed, with all sorts of tricky moves, pass me back–Shit–don’t they need nice warm juice? Mostly downhill now, but who knows? I numbly ask spectators “Where’s home?” It’s funny how things get reduced.
Pop out into a resort clearing. Thousands of people. I can’t help it, I’m shaking my arms in the air and whooping and hollering as I finish. I made it! Ghost-wobble through the finish corrals. –Never yet have noticed my time on those big clocks they have going there at the end of races. I should start going slower a.s.a.p.
Wow. I’m utterly humbled. Blisters oozing on my cheeks. Happy. High fives with the pals who all have the glow of humility on their faces–the Birkie is very different from just another race. Nobody beats it. You are allowed by The Trail to do well…or not. I’m bewildered as to how I did after the wave gap handicaps. I know I gave it everything, that it was very tricky sailing, and that I hit empty precisely at the finish. Yes! But what a deep empty; kinda weird.
I got 243rd at the Birkie. Second finisher from Wave 2. Not bad for the first time. Very good in fact, nearly “Elite.” In the season-long Michigan points series, I finish up 9th.
At the awards ceremony a couple savvy oldtimers ask me how old I am. I say 29. They hmm and nod: “A few more years and you’ll be really moving.” Damn, so that’s what I was: a spring chicken waiting my turn to win. Weird. But I agree: you have to look at this sport in terms of decades, not single races or even single seasons. Here I was trying to win everything I entered. Time for the bigger picture…
What else did I learn? To do really well in marathons you have to eat and drink a lot during them–that I did. You have to have the best skis, poles and boots–got ’em, yessir. You need 2 sets of skis, soft and hard–too rich for me, though. You need plenty of skill, finance and luck in waxing–didn’t bat 1000 there, either, but oh well!
Also, you have to be really fit, and if you lack muscle, you have to power-train all summer–Bah humbug. You have to work on your weak spot–I try.
You should live where there’s snow and ski at least six hours a week–no can do for me. You need to use any ski move, at any instant, in any possible permutation, in your search for maximum speed–this I did, I did. I learned that Michigan trails require mainly the V-1 skate technique because they are rough, narrow, hilly and twisty. The V-1 is the most aggressive move and modern ski racing is very aggressive. You also have to draft other skiers.
My recipe for having fun in marathons: go on a few long skis and a couple 4-hour hikes beforehand. Ski slow and eat and drink at every station. If you don’t get excited and start dipping into your strength zone, you’ll be happy the whole way. If you’re just a cruiser and you make the mistake of actually chasing anyone during a marathon, you’ll wish you were peacefully lying in a hospital sometime shortly thereafter. Smooth and easy does it for the funsters!
That about wraps it up. I’m willing to improve my skiing–but I’m not willing to hit my wallet, or weight train, or even train. I had my big year and I’m content, a regular retiree, ready to join the legions of just-plain-fun skiers.
I learned that I like marathons.
My Silly Last Race
I did one more marathon after that last season of Big Races. Two years later. I was desparate for a Spring getaway and so went up to the U.P. for the last hurrah race…and watched my hand sign me up for the big one. It was warm and sunny and perfect. Fresh snow. Flat course. I was surprised how quickly I went off the back. Guess that’s what no skiing in two years does. (I’d moved to a snowfree/hillfree part of the state. Waaa.) Still, I was going fast. This end-of-season gang must be the die hards, and indeed they were. Even the last guys were moving! After the first loop of 25 km, I feel good, so I think I’ll try catch a few skiers for something to do. Wrong!! What an idiot. Within 5 km I was unglued. I didn’t let it get too bad, but the last part of the event was a blur, despite all my stops and feeds. Just like the bad old days. Dang, why’d I dip into my reserves? At the finish, I flopped onto some hay bales in a warming tent and slept for a half hour. I ended up second in my age group somehow. But all I want is to ski sanely. Next time. For once….
