CRASHES and Races

::Exhales::

So my first race week is in the books.  What a week it was.  There is so much more that goes into racing than just going down the mountain.  I have learned more about Skeleton in the last two weeks than I think I had learned in the previous 4 years combined.  Not only am I learning more and more each day about what I am doing on the track, but I am also learning what goes into being able to compete at your best.  It is a lot.     There is a litany of things that need to be addressed each and every day like nutrition, workouts, equipment, admin, organization, travel, warmups, track walks, logistics and sleep, just to name a few.  Keeping all of them in order is just as big a challenge as doing any one of them individually or collectively.  When I get home to Lake Placid I'm going to make a list of things that I need to work on and do better next time.  This trip has definitely been a real learning experience into competition as a whole in general and competition while on the road especially.

All in all I was happy with my first race week.  I wasn't as nervous as I had thought I would be because I'm not really expecting too much form myself right now.  I've been using the term "throw away year" a lot, but that's a little bit of an overstatement.  I still want to do well, of course.  However, I'm paying more attention to keeping my eyes and ears open to things that I can learn than I am with being obsessed about where I finish in the standings.  I'm trying to remember that this is the first step in a long journey; it's more important to learn for the future than it is to make myself so sick in the moment that I'm not absorbing anything else that is going on around me.  That's the attitude that I'm taking and I think it's the right one.

That said, my sliding is definitely improving every day.  I didn't really get a chance to get into a rhythm before I started competing this year and that has definitely been difficult.  Last year being my first real season I would have liked to get a little sliding in under my belt at home before I started going down new tracks with 6 practice runs.  But, that's what I have to do so that's what I am doing.  It has definitely not been helping the cause though that I'm not even completely comfortable with my new sled yet when I'm out competing.   My arms and hands were taking a really good beating the last few weeks because they weren't entirely inside my sled, and so I had to do something to correct that to better protect myself.  Chad and I ripped the entire top off of my sled and rebuilt it in order to give me better protection.  It worked great and I'm really excited that I'm not hitting the wall so much anymore, but it is going to take some getting used to since my body is in an entirely new position on the sled.  All of these little things make a huge difference when they start to add up as you go down the track.

As for the track here itself, the really hard portion of the track is Curves 7-8-9.  Curve 9 is a circle, or a Curve with three oscillations.  I had never experienced anything like that before and so I was really nervous for it going into today.  Also, Curve 8 is known for flipping people at the end.  This is a crash reel video from the USA Development team during one of their training trips here.  The filming is at the exit of Curve 8 going into Curve 9:

My first two runs were OK.  There weren't very fast, but I was happy to just get down.  I did almost flip both times out of 8.  The first time down I was tipped onto my side with only one blade left on the ice and the second time I got on my hip and almost went over but pushed my sled down hard and so I managed to come back down on top of my blades.  Personally, I'm considering it a victory because I didn't flip, and so my story is that I managed to stay on my blades the whole way through and I'm sticking to it.  Go me.

I find this track to be very odd, honestly.  It is seriously just in the middle of a park and is not steep at all.  You could literally say that this track is on a HILL, not a mountain.  The whole thing is just weird.  Also, the track is really boring and slow (about 15mph slower than Park City) and easy with the exception of 7-8-9 (which are quite challenging).  Overall, I find the track to be pretty lame.  It doesn't have the quick transitions of Lake Placid or the huge speed and curves of Park City.  It's just kinda on this hill in a park and has 3 difficult curves with no speed.  Today was snowing so I'm told it will speed up a tiny bit, but overall I find the track design lacking for inspiration.

Honestly the hardest part of the whole track is going to be not skidding in the first three turns.  Because the course doesn't go downhill that much it's hard to pick up any speed at the top.  When we don't have a lot of speed, our blades don't dig into the ice and we can skid pretty easy.  I definitely went sliding sideways into the first turn today.  Being able to keep on your blades in this type of situation is definitely part of the challenge of being a good slider -- it's just not nearly as fun.  It's actually kinda annoying, because you can screw up your whole run before you even get into the first curve.  That's seriously frustrating.

So day one here in Calgary went well.  I am only going to get 4 more training runs before the race on Friday.  I'm again not expecting too much from myself but I'm hoping to go a little bit faster than today.  Overall, I think the plan is going to focus on being quieter on my sled and doing less overall except in 7-8-9.  I definitely have more to give on this track.  It's such a stark contrast from the speed of Utah though that I'm going to have to change gears pretty quickly.

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

Catch you at the bottom of the hill-

Bradley