Natron Bomb

That's a wrap

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:36:00 GMT

The US Season has pretty much officially ended. Now what?

Pterodactyls in Boulder and Dopers Suck

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:25:00 GMT

Winter returned to Boulder today and that meant skiing in North Boulder Park. It is best to go after 8:30AM to avoid the huge pre-work crowd that jams the 1.2km loop. I dropped my daughter off at school and headed over to ski at 9AM, which is perfect. Only professional athletes, housewives and househusbands (it is Boulder) at that time of day.

I have been working pretty hard on our kitchen remodel - lifting sheets of plywood, cabinets and things like that - and my arms felt like they were going to fall off. It is amazing how weak I become after a season of ski racing without doing any strength. Bad planning; I need to harrass my coach about that. (I read something on Fasterskier about training 850 hours, so I need to talk to my coach anyway...)

I was struggling to ski with any sort of reasonable technique and I was getting pretty frustrated with myself when a group of cyclists I know showed up. I was able to relieve the boredom and self-loathing for a while by catching up with them and teasing them about their technique. It must have something to do with the cyclists teaching each other to ski, but they all have the same "pterodactyl" technique. Skate skiing is big in the cycling crowd, though, so everyone does it and they all employ the identical technique, perhaps intentionally trying to simulate their position on the bike. I don't know.

As I stopped for a drink, Tyler Hamilton showed up with some friends. I have known Tyler for a long time as we travel in the same circle of friends. Since he was busted for blood transfusions (more info) a few years ago I get really uncomfortable around him. Like a few other convicted dopers I have known, he is a really nice guy. He's a super person: friendly, generous and just one of the guys. He is also an Olympic Gold Medalist (although that is under suspicion as his A sample was positive after that race but his B sample was accidentally destroyed) and very wealthy due to his athletic success.

The first time I saw him was at the University of Colorado Ski Ball a month after he tested positive. I was in a group of people chatting and all of a sudden he was there shaking everyone's hands, saying hello. He was signing a bike for the auction and the emcee was hyping the fact that Tyler Hamilton was signing the bike. I shook his hand and looked him in the eye, but was silent. Brain churning, but unable to produce anything. The announcer kept saying "Tyler Hamilton..." and I wanted to grab the mic and say, "um, excuse me, but Tyler Hamilton is a DOPER. Is anyone else in here with me thinking that perhaps we should not be promoting him as a cool guy at an event that is supposed to be about supporting amateur athletics?"

I didn't of course. The same thing happened today.

Tyler: "Hi Nathan, it's Tyler"
Nathan's Head: "I know who you are, DOPER"
Nathan's Mouth: "Hi Tyler."

Separating the person from the deed is always tough when you know someone. Johann Muehlegg was funny, friendly, entertaining and just an all-around nice guy. Probably doped to the gills for many years, but it was hard to hold it against him because he was so jolly. In 2001 when he had made the switch from Germany to Spain, he came over for the pre-Olympic World Cup at Soldier Hollow and destroyed everyone. I was sitting on the bus that was taking us to the venue and pretty much the entire men's field was there and the mood was pretty serious. Muehlegg walks on the bus, looks straight at the Germans and with this gigantic, goofy grin on his face he thunders in his deep voice, "Buenos dias!" The whole bus broke up laughing. He was like that every time I was around him.

Jerome Chiotti, a French mountain bike racer who won the 1995 World Championship on EPO was one of the coolest people you could meet. He actually turned himself in after he realized that, at that time, dope was not part of the mountain bike scene like it was in road cycling. When he made the transition from road to MTB, he just assumed that everyone was using EPO, so he kept on doing it. Years later when he found out that everyone else was racing clean, he felt guilty and gave his medal to Thomas Frischknecht, who came in second in that race.

Doping is strange in that we see it as a victimless crime, even though it has dramatic effects - both direct and indirect. Certainly, those clean athletes who get pushed off the podium are direct victims. The sport, participants and fans are indirectly affected by the dopers as well. We lose faith in heroes and lose interest in the sport when we can no longer naively assume that someone is "just racing well".

The good thing is that sport is cleaning up. It will never be clean and I hope that this wave of anti-doping energy that has emerged in the last five years will continue to fight the entrenched culture of doping. The big problem is the old-school people who believe that doping is not cheating, it's just another thing you do to win. It scares me to see things like the Austrian coach Mayer showing up on official team photos and secretly coming to the Olympics with a car full of drugs. Things like this seem so outrageous that they just don't seem possible. It underscores that the doping culture has a completely different world view and that they are not going to clean up - they need to be removed from the sport.

So, while Tyler and his friends did the Pterodactyl around North Boulder Park, I once again felt lame avoiding the issue when I had the chance to publicly acknowledge that I knew he is a doper and that I thought it was despicable. Tyler, you're a great guy, and I'm sorry to have to say this, but you made a mistake and cheated. Own up to it, acknowledge that you cheated, give up your gold medal and maybe that will change the culture just a little bit more and show younger athletes that doping sucks.

Good, now that I've done the really manly thing and trashed someone on the Internet, I feel much better.

www.doperssuck.com

As the Ski World Turns

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:04:00 GMT

Where to begin. While my season is winding down, things are going crazy on and off the trail.

Snow Mountain Stampede

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:14:00 GMT

Ski racing is a hard sport.

Birkie Nine

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 04:01:00 GMT

Well, Birkie 2006 is now in the books and the Fever is subsiding. I wish the turkey gizzard heartburn would go away, too. It was a beautiful day with great conditions, and FSx had a solid showing. We had a great support crew with Zach Caldwell and Mike Wynn (?) nailing the wax and ski selection, and all of the Swix and Fischer crew chipping in after 3 exhausting days of expos, demos and standing all day. A very special thanks goes out to the many people who have helped us out this season. They are appreciated and we certainly wouldn't be able to compete at this level without them.

The Italians have taken ownership of this race and they once again executed perfectly to get the job done. The pace went out perhaps the slowest I have ever seen, but they moved into position by 8km or so, pulled off the gloves and went to work. Because of the slow pace, there was a huge lead group and a lot of pressure from behind up every hill. I was trying to hold a smart position close enough to the front to avoid getting gapped when the move went (and we all knew it was coming), but I was wasting a lot of energy and decided to relax a bit and get into a good rhythym.

I was sitting in about 9th or 10th staring down at the person in front of me so I wouldn't ride up in his grille when the first pressure came. It was on one of those early long, steep hills, and a group of 5 was together and strung out the 4 guys in front of me. Once I noticed that gaps had opened up, I put it into panic mode, skied through the gaps and worked with Chad Giese to catch back up to the lead pack. I had great skis, which helped close the gap on the downhills, but we had to work very hard to get up there because the Italians were not fooling around.

We latched on just in time for another acceleration at around 14km and I was already starting to feel it in my legs. I was faced with the choice of hanging on to the lead group with what seemed like an inevitable explosion within 5km, or try to back off and ski steady to the finish. This is not a fun choice to make. Usually at the Birkie, I will try everything to stay on that group and that is how the race is made. I have to say it was disappointing to chicken out and resign myself to just holding on until the finish. I've always battled until I get dropped, but I just didn't have it in me this year.

So, I was shelled out of the lead group somewhere around 15km. Next popped Chad Giese, then Silvio Fauner and Eli Enman. I chased Chad down because I knew that I needed someone to work with for the next 35k, and then I put my head down and chased Fauner and Enman for about 10km until I finally reeled them in. We had crossed the halfway point about 40 seconds down to the leaders.

As we rolled through the halfway mark, I realized that all that chasing had definitely taken some energy and stupidly, I had only taken two small sips off of my bottle. The legs were starting to feel crampy and I was getting a little hazy. I was not very excited about the next 25km or my prospects for reaching Hayward in any sort of decent shape. So I started pounding the feeds. I took feeds from everyone standing by the side of the trail - people from competing teams were handing me drinks, which was great, and I drank until my stomach hurt. Our group worked really well together and everyone was sharing the work, trying to keep the pace high enough to avoid getting caught by the great train that was certainly not very far behind us.

I remember counting the meters until 38.5km when I knew I would be getting a feed. Andy Canniff had made a cannonball run to get me a Red Bull at the gas station on the rally between feeds and I drank it straight out of the can, took a gel and then grabbed a drink of some really sweet orange stuff and downed that too. Somewhere between there and 44km, I took two more feeds from random strangers. One more Red Bull at 44km and a full gel. I almost ate the wrapper.

As we rolled down to the lake, I could see bodies moving in on us from behind. I kept going to the front when the pace slowed, but I was pretty much incapable of anything more than a steady, grinding pace. There was a huge headwind across the lake and the wind and bonk left me kind of fuzzy with dreams of bratwurst floating around in there.

Off the lake, through ankle deep sugar and a pathetic anti-sprint up Main Street. The cheering people usually give me a rush of adrenaline to fire it up a bit, but there was nothing left in the tank and I watched helplessly as Chad duked it out with Fauner (an Olympic Gold Medalist). I flailed my way in and was thankful that I didn't get passed from behind. Ninth Place for me in my ninth Birkie.

After finally tracking down my clothes and changing, we went straight to the bratwurst and beer and all was good again. A lovely afternoon spent at the Moccasin having a few beers and listening to war stories as people trickled in as they finished. Kate kicked ass in her first ever 50km, finishing 5th and winning $625. Violett had a tough start when he got taken out by someone who stepped on his pole and spun him around at the worst possible place (2km, right before we sprinted up the first hill). He went from 3rd place to 80th and scratched his way forward only to have a spectacular bonk at 35km. Steve Poulin finished strongly and looked happy, yet dangerously haggard after finishing up 3 days of Expo at 11PM Friday night.

Next up: Colin and Zack Simons are in Europe for OPA Cup action, Kate goes home to prepare for Spring Series, Violett hits the Great Race in Truckee, Dave prepares for Spring Series at home in Bend, and I tackle the Snow Mountain Stampede in Colorado.

Skis/wax:
We found that our Fischer RCS 610's were running exceptionally well and all chose very similar skis. Medium stiff Cold Base skis with Caldwell's ZR1 grind. For wax, we had several layers of Swix LF4/LF3 with a final layer of Swix HFBD4/LF3 covered with pure fluoro powder. I would guess that it was FC7, but I'm not 100% sure. It may have been FC1.

Angry People and I like skiing snow fairy blog

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 05:58:00 GMT

Summarizing this one is tough, but here goes: Jerry Springer XC; I am an old snow fairy and I like skiing nature blog; Wallow in the Fever; Turkey Gizzards and French Owl Pasta

Boulder Mountain Tour Strikes Again

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 18:04:00 GMT

The Boulder Mountain Tour is a unique race. I have done it probably 8 or 10 times and every year it has come down to a sprint in the last 100 meters. It is 32km of mostly downhill with some small hills near the beginning. It is usually fast and turns out like a bike race - the people at the front work about 20% harder than the people in the back of the pack. So, it usually ends up with a gigantic pack of people, many who I don't even recognize because I've never seen them at the front of a race before.

Then in the last 5km, everyone battles for position through the narrow, windy lead in to the sprint. One S-turn and then down the straightaway, you sprint and are either ecstatic because you managed to stay out of trouble and sprint fast or frustrated for blowing something - getting shut out or making a tactical mistake.

Yesterday we had a strong team, good skis and everything worked out pretty well. Zack Simons was skiing fast and we worked together staying at the front of the group and trying to keep away from trouble. We made a couple of efforts near the beginning of the race to blow things open, but the pack was enormous and the hard-falling snow was making it even more difficult to try to move off the front..

With 1km to go, Patrick Weaver was leading out the finish with Simons in second and me in third. I was being the enforcer and shutting everyone behind us out as a lot of pressure came from behind. Casey Ward came around and Simons tripped. I held my breath as he stumbled and almost fell as I knew that I didn't have the gas to win. Luckily he regained his balance, I was able to keep anyone from moving up on us and Zack sprinted for the easy win.

Kate rallied to the front with Brooke Hovey (Baughman) but couldn't outsprint her at the end and took a strong second. Colin won the sprint at the Supertour in Minneapolis. A great day for FSx.

Colin kicked butt yesterday in the City of Lakes Sprint, so hopefully he will do the same today in the Loppet. Those COLL organizers should not be allowed to hold any more races. They cancelled last year's race the morning of the event, and this year they unofficially cancelled the race, then when many racers changed their travel plans, said they were going to hold "some sort of race". Many people who were gunning for overall Supertour points will get screwed because they changed their plans and were unable to compete in Minnepolis after traveling elsewhere.

I'm in the Boise airport right now. Luckily, this is the time I will be in airports for a while. Next weekend is a drive to Aspen, CO for the Owl Creek Chase, the hardest 23km race in the world, and then a week off before heading to the Birkie February 22nd.

They just posted results for the COLL. Looks like Brayton Osgood won it with "Colon Rodgers" in 8th.

Not a bad weekend for FSx.

Noquemanon melting away - wax report and more

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:04:00 GMT

Some comments on the wax, weather and life for tomorrow's Noquemanon 51k Classic

Soldier Hollow and the Russian Rocket strike again

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:19:00 GMT

Babikov, Juniors and wild weather make for a typically unusual day at Soldier Hollow for the 5km/10km Skate Race Jan 8, 2006.

30km Skate

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 06:47:00 GMT

Wow. An epic. Photos and story inside...