"There is a difference between you and I -- we both stared into the abyss -- but when the abyss stared back...you blinked."
~Batman
Skeleton is less than a game of inches. It is a game of millimeters; a game of literally hundredths of a second. Today I find myself consumed by thoughts of how such seemingly infinitesimal measurements could create such yawning depths of divergent possibility. This day is characterized by reminders of just how close to the edge I am and how precise I must be at finding that edge without going over it if I hope to have a real future in this sport.
Today one of the bobsleds went up into the roof of curve 12 so hard that they actually tore the roof off of the track. Yes, you read that correctly, they actually hit the protective roofing of the curve so hard that they broke it off. To the best of my knowledge this is the only time that this has ever happened. The two bobsledders are still alive, but I hear they are concussed and just shaken up pretty bad in general. I want to send out my best wishes to them and let them know that we all hope they get well quickly and that we see them back out on the ice soon.
You may wonder how on Earth someone could hit the roof so hard that they actually break it off. When you go sledding downhill you build speed. When you build speed you build pressure. When you get into a curve, this pressure is what holds you on the ice essentially parallel with the Earth. Learning to control these pressures is the key to going fast in any sliding sport. If you do not control these pressures correctly, they can push you up so high that they would shoot you into the air. This is why there is a protective wall -- if you really screw up controlling the pressures, you can hit the wall and come crashing down. And apparently, after today I now know that you can hit the wall with so much force that you can break it off. Yikes.
The thing about this track is that it is so much faster than the one that I am used to training on in Lake Placid. Here in Utah there are what are known as "double oscillation" curves. That is a fancy way of saying that when you get into the curve the pressure will do four things to you : 1) Send you up; 2) Send you down; 3) Send you up again; 4) Send you down again. The problems occur when you don't start the "up" portion of the sequence until you are in the curve at the point where the "down" sequence begins. If this happens then when you finally do get on the "up" portion you go WAY UP and become more perpendicular with the curve than parallel with the Earth.
At that point you are pretty helpless. You can try to bring yourself back down with hard steering, but that will only get you through the first oscillation. When you have to contend with the second one, it will be even worse than the first. And then to top it off, when you start to come down again the curve will already be over (because you started the oscillations too late) and you will literally just FALL to the floor of the track (as opposed to gliding off the curve). On a Skeleton sled, it means you will crash into the wall and bruise your arm badly, or, fall on your hip (and that's usually when you lose your sled, which has happened to me now twice). In a Bobsled though, it means you are going to flip over, come down hard, and then ride the rest of the track on your head and/or back.
I did not witness the crash (nor did I see the aftermath) but this is without a doubt what happened today. The Bobsled began the first "up" oscillation late, came "down" hard, and then shot up again like a rocket. They never had a chance. It's still incredible that they hit the lip so hard that they broke the damn thing off. I can't even imagine how fast they were going or how frightening that must have been.
Bobsledders are insane.
What is so incredible about this, and what I can relate to my own Sliding, is that the difference between getting onto the "up" portion correctly or at a point that you will almost kill yourself is no more than a few millimeters of position left or right on the track. Combine that with the less than one tenth of a second you have to make the decision about whether to take your sled 2mm this way or that and you have recepie for something truly mind-boggling. And while the first 2mm and tenth of a second may be the difference between a bumpy ride and a catastrophic crash, the second 2mm and tenth of a second are the difference between victory and defeat.
I think to succeed in this sport, you can't think about the first 2mm. You gotta be consumed by that second 2mm and one-tenth second. It has to become your world and nothing else can matter.
I currently feel like I am struggling with that second 2mm and tenth of a second. I don't know if it is because of my sled, or because I'm still not perfectly in form because I haven't taken that many runs down the track, but it's not happening for me yet this year. Everyone who knows me knows that the depths of my lack of patience with myself are endless and without mercy. So I'm frustrated. I feel the track so much better this year -- but it's not translating into fast times. And although I won't go off the top until tomorrow, I'm already getting annoyed with myself.
My biggest problem is still that I keep my head up too much. I have gotten MUCH better about this but it's still not good enough. I lift my head too much when I come out of curves (so that I can see the next one right away) and amazingly, at the end of the run (I keep looking for the finish line, which is absolutely asinine because I'm only going straight then). My number one priority for tomorrow is to just keep my friggin' head DOWN. I do not want to see the sign that says "finish" tomorrow, it's just a rookie mistake and there is no excuse for it.
So today someone missed the first 2mm and one-tenth second and damn near killed themselves, and all I can think about is how I'm going to attack that second 2mm and one-tenth second tomorrow.
I guess that means I'm becoming a racer.
Catch you at the bottom of the hill --
Bradley
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