Friday dawned cold. Cold, cold, cold-cold cold cold cold. Did I mention it was cold? It was -25C, which wasn't all that bad when I lived in Fairbanks -- but now I live where it's warm, and the two weeks leading up to races had all been hovering around 0C. So that was a bit of a shock on the system.
I showed up at the venue on Friday at 8am and waxed and tested skis, nearly non-stop, until 11pm. We used the coldest stuff we had that tested the fastest -- LF Blue Toko with Extreme Cold powder. The race skis were good to very good -- definitely weren't losing time on the downhills. The qualifying ran at 5pm, and the heats started at 6pm. Of the guys, Alex and Reid made it on, while Jamie, Jenny, Rosie and Ase made the top-30 for girls. Skiers over there are FAST, and there are no tactics -- just get out fast, ski fast in the middle, finish fast. Impressive, but nothing we [the US] can't do.
During the qualifying round, some Finnish coach started freaking out on one of our skiers. Apparently, a Finnish racer and/or the US racer had mixed up their skis, and the coach was unhappy. It was an odd situation: Neither of us knew what we were getting yelled at for, and the guy was just not cooling off. A couple of course workers settled things down, and a protest was filed and the Finnish kid went on to the rounds -- so no harm -- but it definitely got my adrenaline going.
The next day was a classic event. They postponed the starts and shortened the races to 5/3km, which I think may have hurt us a little -- but again, it was so flipping cold that there weren't many complaints. Ben Fick was 11th -- best individual race of the weekend. The kids raced hard and fast, but the other kids went faster -- but we were close.
At some point before the races began, we met Anders, a Swedish-speaking Finn from Vasa, who was also the announcer. He was awesome -- switching between speaking English, Swedish and Finnish, all while trilling his r's and making nonsensical noises. Stuff like, "Ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh ooooh!!! A smashing time for Jennie Bender of the United States of America!!!" He did a great job, and he gave us coaches a new way of talking, which amused us to (literally) no end.
Finally, the last day of races -- relays. I offered $100 to any team that had someone sitting in first place at any point after two kilometers had been raced. I came very close to losing my money: Reid Pletcher made a ridiculous, super-aggressive-but-totally-legal start and was sitting in the front about 200m. before the 2km mark, and he didn't lose time from getting up there. That was cool for me to see, and something that all the kids (and everyone who races over in Europe in the future) should remember: a lot of what set the Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Estonians apart from the US was their ability/willingness to mix it up and make space for themselves.
I don't have results sitting in front of me, but I think we ended up 8th and 10th for the guys, maybe 7th and 9th for the girls. The boys were in a pack of four -- 4th through 8th -- with 300m. to go, but Alex just didn't have the last gear. He made a valiant effort though.
After the races, we milled around in the cold and traded some hats and stuff. My best score was a Finnish Nordic Combined team hat, which I got from a coach and is so cool that I probably will never wear it.
Monday we drove from Voyr to Turku, with one of the vans getting increasingly balky. It was a tough drive; everyone was tired and the scenery was boring. I drank a stupid amount of energy drinks; maybe like 10 Red Bulls, Tehos, Mad Crocs, Batterys and Red Devils over the day just to stay awake. That night we took an overnight ferry to Stockholm, which was less exciting than we had been lead to believe (no discos). In Stockholm, we had an hour or so to shop downtown -- which would have been great had anything been open -- before we went to the airport.
Travelling is pretty boring to write about, so I'll finish this up: I knew that we were back on American soil when I started getting hassled by TSA employees:
In Chicago:
TSA: Sir, you need to bring the special luggage to the special luggage area around the corner.
Me: OK. Which of these [gesturing at huge pile of wax boxes, benches, ski bags and duffles I'm pushing around on cart] needs to go there?
TSA: The special ones.
Me: They're all special ... to me.
TSA: [Blank stare]
In Denver, after we stayed in a hotel overnight to catch our flights this morning and waited in a huge line through security:
TSA: Where is your boarding pass?
Me: Right here.
TSA: This is not a boarding pass.
Me: Yes, it is. It says "boarding pass" right here [pointing to where is says "BOARDING PASS" in big letters].
TSA: Where did you get this pass? Upstairs?
Me: Stockholm. Sweden.
TSA: You need to go get a new one. I cannot accept this.
[Noah and Ase managed to get through just fine without new passes. And, for what it's worth, up at the United desk, we told them we needed to get new boarding passes and the lady working the desk said, "That's stupid."]
Many thanks to all of the coaches (Gary York and Matt Boobar) and the athletes (Jenny Bender, Ase Carlson, Ian Havlick, Noah Hoffman, Alex Howe, Elise Moody-Roberts, Rosie Brennan, Tad Elliott, Ben Fick, Patrick Johnson, Jamie Woelk, Kate Dolan and Reid Pletcher) for making this trip so great. It was a true pleasure to work.
Many thanks to the National Cross-Country Ski Education Foundation and Reid Lutter, Katie Gould, Michelle Mazzie, Chris Hall and the US Ski Team for their support.
-- Jason Cork