(Late) Race Update (Skeleton)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....

Ok, not really. But it's been a week or two and I still haven't posted!

Sunday 3/25/2007
My sister flew through Salt Lake City on her way home from visiting her non-approved boyfriend (wink), and had a 4+ hour layover. So, we picked her up and had dinner together, finished packing, and headed down to the airport to both drop her off for her flight, and check us in for our flight to Lake Placid.

Get checked in without a problem - the peeps at the SLC ticket counter are familiar with skeleton and don't charge us oversize fees (just the overweight fees). Yay!

Fly all night. Crying baby keeps me awake, while I would normally sleep like, well, not THAT baby but you know how the saying goes.

Monday 3/26/2007
Nap in the JKF airport. Hop plane to Albany. Arrive in Albany, pick up our rental car and get upgraded to the new luxury Ford SUV. Sweet! Hop in the car for a nice short (2.25 hour) drive to Lake Placid.

We arrive in Lake Placid at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) around 1:00pm. Our schedule says sliding is at 5:30pm, so we think we've got plenty of time. Start assembling our sleds - feeling rushed 'cause we still need to figure out how things work and how to get to the track and all that.

I find my room, and say hey to my roommate, one of the World Cup skeleton ladies, who was in Lake Placid to train for bobsled since she may switch over.

By now it's 2:20pm. She and I chat for a moment, then she looks alarmed and says "Hey, aren't you supposed to be sliding right now?" I, confused, pick up the schedule the staff had kindly left on my bed, and say "No, it's been moved from 5:30pm to 4:30pm, so we've got time." My roommate shakes her head and replies, "No, I think they just moved it to 2:00!"

I've gone, in an instant, from excited to be there straight to completely pissed.

Luckily, my roommate had the number of the coach, and called up to the track. "Hey, are you at the track? ..... The Park City people are here and they didn't know the session was at 2:00pm..... Can they still slide?.....Ok......mmmhmm.....ok.....I'll send them right over."

B and I grab our sleds, chuck our gear in the car, and speed over to the track. When we get there, they send us back to the bottom to sign waivers. We of course get lost due to poor directions, finally sign our waivers, get back to the top, throw on our gear, and head to the line, all in about 5 minutes. No trackwalk, no map, no preparation, no warmup, nothing. I'm fuming, trying to relax and let my anger go, so I can focus on the run and learn the track.

Let me tell you, it's FREAKY to go down a track when you have NO IDEA about it. Oh, sure we'd looked at maps, and memorized track notes, but still, freaky. Down we go, and that was a crapshoot!

Funny thing was, neither of us were in last place that day, but it had more to do with not steering I think, and trying only to relax. Our placement went progressively down as the week went on, as we started trying to steer and getting ourselves in trouble! Funny.

Sigh. Overall, the day ended up being good, and Ben (the FIBT official there) was AWEsome in getting us our runs. By the time we got to the track, we were so late we'd missed the first AND second heats. So, he dropped us in at the end of the second heat, held things up and had us slide at the beginning of the third heat, AND the end of the third heat. He's my hero.

There were a couple other things that really got my goat (hee hee, funny phrase).

• First, we were told that we weren't allowed to slide the week prior, during an FIBT school. When we got there, Ben was asking us why we weren't there, and was surprised, telling us it was open to us. Yay. Another gold star for USBSF communication!!!
  
• Second, we were explicitly told that there was no training for us on Sunday; official training started Monday. Thus, we flew in Monday morning. Upon arrival, we found that official training had started SUNDAY. Yay, ANOTHER gold star.
  
• Finally, the week before our arrival, the race had been moved from Th/Fri, one race a day, to Wed only, two races in one day. Now, that was the FIBT's responsibility, so no stars to the USBSF for that one. I ended up spending $50 to change my flight, yay again.

We originally thought the lack of information might have been on purpose, due to my grievance, i.e. retaliation from the USBSF. Since then, we've come to the likely conclusion that it's probably just confusion and poor organization. There are too many people making decisions, and too many people not being managed appropriately. The people making decisions tell other people to pass out the information, and the ball gets dropped. Shrug, who knows. I'm not wanting heads to roll anymore, especially with how Ben fixed things so we could slide and not miss a day. (One day out of three is a lot to miss!)


Tuesday 3/27/07
This was the most enjoyable day of my 3 days. We didn't slide until late afternoon, so we spent the morning at the gym working with the coaches on improving our olympic lifting and squats, most importantly our form. Killer workout, just with the empty bar! Learned that we really didn't know anything about olympic lifts.......

Eating was also enjoyable. There is a full service cafeteria, with quite a few delicious selections. Of course, I'm sure it would get really old after a while, but for the few days I was there, it was great.

We also spent a lot of time in the clinic. My knees were bothering me, and they had the ultrasound that I was getting at PT in Park City. Plus, my left knee (the one I fell on during Friends and Family day, while pushing people down the track) was inflamed from my sled. The bursa rested right on my steer bar, so every time I went into a corner, it got more and more irritated. By the time my first day was over, my left knee was burning to the touch and very swollen. Yummy.

Finally, we went to the track to slide. We did get a quick track walk in (outside of the track, but still beneficial). Amanda was great, very informative and thorough and helpful. :)

Sliding was hysterical! It was raining, so the track was like a slip'n'slide. Normal times on the track are in the 56-58 second range, and we were getting 1:08 - 1:15 times! Kind of nice though, gave us the chance to see the track in slow motion. Fun!

Wednesday 3/38/2007
Race day. Exhausting! Never ever ever should there be two races in one day!

First race: third place for me, 11th? for B. Like I said, we had worse times trying to drive than when we went down blind! Ironic. It was kind of rough, and my knee was killing me, but it was still fun. The track was spritzed and MUCH faster, i.e. 10-15 seconds faster. My times were all in the 1:01 range, B in the 59s.

Second race: 5th place for me, 11th again? for B. My first run was decent, but kind of OC, but my second run just exploded. I skidded everywhere, hit everywhere, got lost, and anything else that could go wrong, without actually crashing, went wrong. Oh well, it was still pretty ok.

Since everyone was so tired from the first race, there were more scratches and injuries in the second race. A couple guys just straight up scratched before the second race, not competing at all. A couple others scratched after the first run, since they were so tired they got hurt. Fantastic.

Overall, it was a blast and we met heaps of development athletes from all over the world. The UK, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Turkey, New Zealand, Austria, USA, etc. Good times! I really like the people at this level. They are super friendly and fun, even hanging out together. As people move up the ladder, it seems they get more and more standoffish and competitive, due to the intense competition they face. That's sad I think.

Thursday 3/29/2007
Quick breakfast, drove B to the track to forerun for the bobsled races, and drove myself to Albany for my flight home. Such a whirlwind trip! At least I met my goal of familiarizing myself with the track, in preparation for the races there next fall.

B
B intended to stay in Placid for 2 more weeks, but ended up coming home early. His heel (see previous post, eek) got infected and had to be reopened. It literally looks like a piranha took a chunk out of his heel! He wasn't able to slide all week, and ended up coming home last night. I'm glad he's home early.....the dogger and I missed him!

And that's all I've got for now. Time to retire the skeleton info and start thinking about bikes.....