More Photos Below!Gallery
Every year when I do my first ski outing I’m impressed and surprised all over again by the miracle of skiing. The rollerskiing that I do to get ready for snow really just isn’t anything like the real thing. The motions are similar, but each year when I hit real snow for the first time it’s a grin-making “a-ha!” experience.
With skiing the cool thing is that every part of your body can contribute to making glide happen. And it feels like each part is contributing every inch of the way. From pole-plant to pole-release the arms are in contact with the snow and working to send you gliding. Then with your feet, you reach forward with your foot, it stops, grips and as soon as I’m pushing on it, it’s working to send me down the trail. Then when pole and ski have released, my gliding foot is feeling the snow, finessing it, to both feel the glide and add to it.
From full extension forward, to compression and ‘gathering up’, then to full extension rearward, all my body parts are easily digging in and contributing to glide.
It’s a full-contact, total immersion experience like swimming, only the results are more pronounced. With swimming if I do everything right I enjoy a few inches of glide with each stroke. With skiing it means flying along, with feet of glide every time.
With roller skiing the sensation of rolling over pavement is so much less direct and also less subtle. And the poling is harsh: your arms don’t sink into and relish their contact with pavement. There’s no ‘give’. And if you’re not careful the darn poles bounce after hitting that rock-hard stuff. That’s why it’s such a surprising joy to get on snow again each season!
Bounding up hills also feels like I’m using my arms and legs in a skiing-like way. I can imitate it pretty good. But, again: in the end it’s nothing like the glide and efficiency of being on snow.
With downhill/alpine skiing there’s also a glide thrill and it stands out best when turning. You feel the gliding underfoot when you’re weighting your legs and pressing on the snow. People like mogul and powder skiing because the turning then is more total immersion and also because the arms and hands are more involved in the timing if not the propulsion. With that kind of skiing you’re working to get out of the way, to not let body parts impede the flow of gravity through you as you drop. Your work designed and timed to let the skis do the real work, giving you the pay-off in fun.
Biking is about glide-thrill, too, but the upper body isn’t involved — except in cyclocross, and then it’s not directly contributing to glide, it’s just aiding the flow of the turning so as to not impede the leg-power. Biking gives so much glide that the upper body doesn’t feel overly slighted by its minor role.
Eli Brown gets all dyno on the way to the win. (Tim Potter pic)
Skate turn! (Tim Potter pic)
Coiled up and ready to fly.
