Cesana ICC - 2009 Race #1

I have very mixed feelings about today. I'm super tired and about to take a nap, so I'll have to upload the few photos later.

First, I couldn't sleep last night. Our room is just over the bar, so people kept coming and going and smoking in the street jabbering super loudly (one memorable incident at 3:18am); the heater in the room doesn't adjust and is so hot that we had the window open (in mid-winter) and I still only slept under my flannel travel blanket; I was nervous about racing; and finally, I didn't take a sleeping pill since I hoped to be acclimated to the time zone and didn't want to be groggy for the race. In total, I might have gotten 3 hours of sleep.

But I'm not trying to make any excuses here...just to apologize for the numerous typos you'll probably find due to my exhaustion. :)

The short short version is that I pushed out of the groove on the start of my first run, and my runners made snowcones down the inrun of the track. (Um, in case you aren't sure what that means, it means that my runners were sideways and shaving the ice, which is SLOW.) Heh. I recovered and had a great run, but it still wasn't enough to qualify for a second run (top 20).

So, my mixed feelings:

• I'm disappointed, of course
• that I didn't get a second run. I would have liked the chance to improve my results, but was stuck with my first finish, no chance to move up.
• I'm - somewhat - angry at myself
  
• for doing something so stupid as pushing out of a perfectly fine (well, it was just ok) groove.
  
• What happened: I accidentally ran 2 steps farther than I was used to, and was then over the crest, and my mind just blanked.
  
• I literally couldn't figure out how to load my sled; it was weird. So I landed knees first. Sigh. Knee hit the sled, sled bounced out and sideways.
  
• TOTALLY my own fault.
  
• Skidded sideways along the wall, and finally got it straightened out enough to bounce off the wall and into curve 1...my entrance to 1 was good though!
  
• I'm happy
• with how well I recovered. Tristan was watching my splits, and the lost time at the start and first splits should have been a 1:03, but my lower splits kept improving and improving, enough to power to a mid-low 1:02.
• I'm relieved
  
• that it wasn't worse! Today one of the Swiss sliders (a really good sometimes World Cup slider) flipped out of curve 18 and broke his nose; earlier in the week one of the Slovenian sliders crashed and bent his sled; today one of the Canadians crashed and finished the run on her shoulder; today one of the US men slammed out of curve 14 and banged up his ribs. And so on.
• I'm humbled
  
• by how much more I have to train and improve.
  

Anyway, all in all I really can't be too disappointed. It's my first international race season, and most of these sliders have either a) been to this track before or b) been sliding years more than I have, or more commonly c) both. I have to remember that I'm really doing quite well for my level of experience, but will need years more to reach the level of many of these women. It's inspiring!

As for team USA as a whole, we struggled in general. I haven't seen the official results yet, so don't know the actual results, but it went pretty much like this: one of the men didn't get a second run either, another man barely made the cut when he finished in 20th his first run, and our best male finish was an 11th. For the women, I didn't have a second run, one was 14th, and the best finish was 12th or so.

The frustrating thing is that we don't have a coach with us. All the other teams have coaches and funding and staff, and we have one guy with very little sliding experience, to do things like attend team captain meetings and video us on the track. It's more than frustrating - it's embarassing! We are part of team USA, and we don't have a coach? We hear it all the time from the other teams - "you'd do better if you had a coach, don't you think?" or "where's your coach?"

Ok, that was wordier than I planned! I'm off to hit the hot tub and then nap.