The beginning...again...

US Team Trials, 2011-2012 season
October 12-30, 2011
Lake Placid, NY

It was after a long summer of training, on a new training schedule that was more intense than last year:

• Get up at 5:30
• Work out in Salt Lake (or the local gym or a local track) from 6:30-8am
• Drive to work
• Work from 9am-5pm (or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9pm, if there were work meetings)
• Go the the gym or a local track, and work out again
• Go home
• Go to sleep

With that schedule, all we did was train and work, and by the time October rolled around, we were ready to be on the ice and done with training!!! Sorry to all our friends that we didn't see at all!


We flew out to Burlington Vermont, and arrived on a nice day which made for a nice trip - it was snowing in Park City when we left so yeah, it was a little strange, but hey, we'd take it!


As the sun set, we took the ferry across to Plattsburgh, an hour's drive from Lake Placid.








We were to be in Lake Placid for three weeks...

WEEK 1
The first day, we talked with the US coach, Tuffy, about our sleds and the shipment coming in from Germany. Brad and I were both getting new sleds, and the USBSF had also ordered two, and they were arriving together. Due to customs and shipping, the sleds hadn't yet arrived...

...but thankfully the weather was too warm, and sliding was canceled the first two days anyway!

We did get some trackwalks in, and it was nice to be back on the ice!




Finally, on Wednesday the sleds arrived! It was like Christmas as we pulled the crate apart.




The new sleds are sweet. They are the thinnest in the world, and super fast, and I'll post about how we got them in a later post. (Many thanks to several people that deserve their own post!) Here's a comparison with my old sled.

Side by side:


Thinness of the old sled:


Thinness of the new sled:


Thinness comparison:


They are also really really hard to drive! We've both tried a lot of different sleds over the last couple years, and the differences between them were like going from one make of car to another. "Hmm, this one has a stiffer suspension; this one has looser steering" and etc. I was able to jump on a borrowed sled at Nationals in March and finish 3rd after only a couple days, but....

...but these sleds are like going from a car to a helicopter! Literally, it's that different. In fact, we are often steering up where other people are steering down, or vice versa, or doing things where other sleds do nothing, or doing nothing where other sleds have to do things. It's crazy!

Not only that but:

• Days 1-2-3, sliding canceled (4 of the first 5 days canceled) so we missed a lot of training
  
• Day 4, day 1 on the sled: I couldn't fit in the saddle. Spent 3 hours that night having it cut apart and rewelded by a genius named Cheech.
• Day 5 of sliding, canceled
  
• Day 6, day 2 on the sled: fit in the saddle, but I was so out of control that I wanted to get off partyway down! My first time feeling that...terrifying.
  
• Day 7, no sliding, but plenty of recovery (ice tub)

They were in Daly's space...


WEEK 2
While unloading the sleds, I had stubbed my toe, and ripped the end off. After the second day of sliding, from how painful it was to push and tap my toes to steer, the Dr. cut the rest of it back along the tear to aid in healing. To save the squeamish from the following graphic photos, I'll just post links to the images instead of embedding them:

• Overall injury
• Toe close up
• The toenail

So I had to borrow larger skeleton spikes in order to fit over my huge toe. This didn't make it any more difficult, I'm sure.


We also took an evening and drove to Plattburgh, where Brad's brother Wes had a layover. (He's a pilot, and was on a US Airways flight that night.) It was perfect timing and super since I hadn't seen him in over a year!

• Day 3 on the sled: started to get the feeling, but struggled with the different steering.
• Day 4 on the sled: same as above.
• Day 5 on the sled: RACE 1!!!
• Day 6 on the sled: RACE 2!!!
  

As a result, the first couple races weren't the best, and Brad and I both struggled. To add insult to injury, I'd had a nerve block done in my low back just before going to Placid, and by the time I got there realized it wasn't even the right area! So, I spent hours in Sports Medicine being treated to fix the right problem, which meant my pushes weren't as fast as I wanted. Gah!


WEEK 3
Here we spent more time trying to figure things out. We only had 3 more days on ice before the final 2 races, and I was tied with Rachelle for the 3rd spot on World Cup!

The last day of training, I was still TWO SECONDS off the pace of the top girls, and was devastated. I was so upset that (thanks Katie for letting me use it!) I got off my sled and took one of the USA prototype sleds down instead, basically giving up on the new sled. In the meantime, Brad took a piece from my sled and put it in his to see if it made a difference on his sled.

The run on the prototype sled felt amazing, smooth and fast, BUT WAS THE SAME FINISH TIME! And the swapped piece helped Brad have a better run.

Ok, so that meant back to the drawing board. What did we learn there?

• The new sled appeared to be just as fast as the prototype sled.
• Being that far off the pace for both sleds when I was fast on the second sled last season, it appeared to be the runners that were slow.
• The changed part in Brad's sled helped him.
  

So we decided to take some risks, without any time to test them:

• Swapped out runners for a pair that I hadn't been on since March
• Swapped out runners for Brad that he'd never been on, ever
• Swapped out the piece from my sled to Brad's
• Put a different piece in my sled

(BTW, yes, this was stressful and I was a mess, and ended up talking to the USOC sports psychologist to get through it, and he helped A LOT!)

RACE 3 dawned:

• First run, still awful! I was in 4th place, but needed a 3rd place. Gah!
  
• But I realized something about how the sled felt on the way down, and made a single adjustment on my sled. Just one.
• Brad made the same adjustment.
  
• Run 2, the adjustment worked and I was more than 7 tenths of a second faster!
• It wasn't enough to take 3rd place, but was enough to feel more confident going into the final race.

RACE 4:

• The whole season came down to this race. I was sitting in 4th place, but if I finished in third place, could overtake the position.
• Not only that, but I couldn't just take third - I had to finish ahead of Rachelle by several tenths of a second, otherwise we would be tied in points.
  
• A tie is broken by the fastest single run.
• The first run, we tied to the hundredth of a second!

And so it continued...

• The whole season was now down to a single run!
  
• Everyone around was stressing for us, but we were totally calm. The calmest two people at the track.
• Rachelle took her second run first, but I had my music turned up so as not to hear her time or any commentary, so had no idea how she had done.
  
• I get to the line, breathe, and power off. (I was one of the few people to push faster on the second run than the first run, showing how hard I went at it.)
• The run wasn't perfect, but as I came across the finish line the number "1" was shining next to my name, meaning I'd come out ahead.
  
• I burst into tears.
  
• And laughed!

Brad
Brad followed the same arc as I did: rough first two races; better 3rd race; best 4th race. Unfortunately, the first two races cost him a bit more so even though he finished Trials well, he missed the Intercontinental Cup tour by one place. (Meaning if he'd finished 7th instead of 8th in that second race, or 6th instead of 7th in the third race, his total points would have been high enough and he would have made it.) Ouch! So he will race the first part of the season on the Europa Cup tour, starting in our favorite place: Königssee, Germany.

Going forward
So there you have it, the stressful 3 weeks leading up to the announcement of the 2011-2012 National Team. When I say by the skin of my teeth, I mean it!

Now we are packing and prepping for the season - Brad leaves for the first Europa Cup race in Königssee next Sunday (November 20) and I leave the following Saturday (November 26th) for the first World Cup in Igls, Austria.