travels: Nationals

Blog for Thursday March 28, 2013

Well it seems the blogging job has fallen into my corner, after the team has done such a fine job for the past week. I am writing this now from home without the advantage of being able to consult with everyone for their opinions so I hope this will represent well enough . . .

Thursday was a race day for Alex (junior men/senior men sprint) and a rest day for the remainder of the team. Corey, Megan and Alex headed out to Whistler Olympic Park bright and early. As usual, the snow was pretty icy first thing. Corey and I had been optimistic that we would not have to do as much klister testing this day, and be able to rely upon some of the combinations that worked on other days. This was not entirely the case, and we set about klistering once again, looking for the elusive magic combo.

the joys of klister

hermit's hideaway

one of the hermits

fantastic job done by these two.

A note here on grip testing the past few days: there were many challenges as the other posts have indicated. The course usually offered a combination of areas in sun and shade, some icy track and some more loosely packed. That would mean that a number of klisters were needed at any one time of day. The other challenge was trying to anticipate how quickly the snow would soften as the sun climbed over the mountains. The previous sprint day we had been the most successful nailing Levi’s wax at the time of day that he raced – this was the “Corey Mulitgrade” special consisting of a combination of 5 klisters. Levi had the best wax of the week for his race, giving the wax techs a 5/5. Corey and I were happy that nobody had worse than a 3.5/5 which given the difficulty of the waxing we had to be satisfied with.

Alex’s sprint course was a difficult 1.6 km with a couple of significant climbs. Remember, this was the Vancouver Olympic course. Alex gave all he could but was not able to crack the top 30 to advance to the heats.

Alex before his sprint

Meanwhile, the rest of the team had a relaxing morning of extra sleep, breakfast, stretching, and generally hanging out. Most of the team elected to join me in the afternoon to watch the open men’s semi-final and finals which was pretty awesome racing. We kept the spectating short, though, to ensure the day was mostly rest and recovery. The evening was nice down time as we did not have a coaches’ meeting to attend.