Race Day Cesana / ’’Family Reunion’’

Well today is race day here in Cesana. The training runs went very well and I finished yesterdays session with 2 fairly decent runs, a few spots that need to be polished up a little but each run I figure a little more out. An added bonus to today is Roo and his girlfriend Mel found their way to Torino and have found a very easy way to get up to Sestriere. Roo and Mel have been touring Europe for the last 3 months and it will be great to run into him and hear some of their stories and in sence see him for Christmas. He has also never seen skeleton live, and to see it in the latest Olympic venue should be quite a unique experience. The Italians have been really advertising the race here and have been putting a lot of effort into the race prep, so hopefully all turns out well.

First day of training

Today was our first day back on the track. It has been a long time and several different tracks since we were last on Cesana and I was really looking forward to sliding it again and applying all the new tools I have learned. Each track has had its own personality and its own quirks. Altenberg was dealing with the stigma of the infamous track and keeping the light turned on for every moment of each run. Konigssee was a lot shorter and only one real problem area, however, to find the speed is a different story. La Plagne.... well that was a lesson in pressure and patience. So coming back to what is essentially my ’’first’’ track and by default my ’’home track’’, I was excited to apply everything. Both runs went real well, not 100% by far but I am now able to identify where I have gone wrong and partialy correct it or compensate for it. But all in all, for the first day, not bad. Tommarrow it is another training day as well as Saturday then Sunday we race.

The area is a lot more ski resortish now that they finally got their snow... make note of the pictures.

Cesana..... Again.

Well, the Konigsse race is over and after 14 hours of driving (some getting lost in there) we are back at the first stop... Cesana. The race went great. Our girls finished 1st and 8th, Sara Ried, who won the race beat 2 top German girls.... at their home track. The men raced well to. Mike finished 4th (1st, 2nd and 3rd were all world cup guys who stayed home for the first half), Steve was 10th, Kieth and Jovan both raced well and made the top 25. So all of our sliders made the cut in which only half of everyone did. I got to forerun, which is the first one down the track before each heat, kind of a warning that the race is about to begin and to see how the start is acting. My runs were my best ones all week, except my start was a little less explosive than usual which could be due to training hard all week and not really pacing my self.
Our trip from Konigsse to Cesana was not exactly to plan. We usually travel in a convoy of 3 vehicles and stay all in a row. Well, Austria was in the mood for serious road work and sprinkle a few accidents in there and you have a much more difficult situation. Long and short of it, we got separated from the other 2 vehicles and decided that we are all adults, we can go at it alone. It all turned out fine in the end and I got to spend many hours driving at 160+ km/hr with porches and Audi’s as my company. It was a lot of fun, and we made great time. So, we are here now, a day of rest and recovery, possibly sliding tommarrow and then on to race training Thursday - Saturday and race on Sunday.

Tour De France

Our time in La Plagne was fantastic. The people were great, food was unbelievable and we were staying litteraly 40 meters from the track. Aside from the sliding, the day off was one hell of an adventure. In a nut shell the 3 of us who decided to go saw 3 Olympic cities, the most famous stage of the Tour De France, stormed a castle at 10 pm in Briancon, hit 2 countries and did a total of 15,000 meters / 45,000 feet of climbing in our vehicle over mountain passes. Too much to really get into details, but a long day all around.

It is now race week here in Konigssee, and we got our new race suits. Not bad, but I will not be racing, we were only alowed to enter 4 men and I was the 5th, but I am the forerunner which means I still get to do all my sliding and the first run of each run of the race. Tommarrow is another day of training runs and then Sunday we race. Monday it is another 10-12 hours back to Cesana for our last race and then a mad rush to Frankfurt for our flight...... The flight. I am still waiting to hear word on when we are actually heading home, for that has been tossed in the air as of late. May be the 18th or anywhere to the 21st. To many variables to accurately predict, at least it isnt 5 days notice to get 7 weeks off work.

Back In Konigssee

Well after a little break I am back in the modern world. La Plagne was absolutely great. The track was crammed in a valley at the top of a mountain and it had high speeds and multiply massive G corners. No crashes, in fact did quite well. The last day, however, caught up to me and in typical me style I kind of pushed too hard (overtrained) and the constant pounding resulted in a concusion (aparently). So on a "day off", we went to see some sights and take in as much as possible.



La Plagne was the track used in the ’92 Albertville Olympics, and since then really has not been used all that much. It was a welcomed break going to France, it almost felt like being back home, and even though my French really sucks, I can still understand key points and get the basics of conversations, so it was quite a bit of fun.

The Top picture is not of La Plagne, but rather of Konigssee taken from The Eagals Nest. At the top of the track you can make out a more distinct white ’’S’’ section and those are called the s-curves.A real fun and crutial part of the track. Make your way down and about half way you can notice a circle, or Kriesel. A difficult part and the site of my little ’’collisions’’. The bottom picture is of La Plagne, or the bottom half at least. On the right side there are the corners 15 and 16. 15 is the high G corner and 16 is its follow-up. Both great tracks and a lot of fun.

Konigssee

Well, today is our last day here in Konigssee. This place is amazing. Konigssee is right next to a town called Berchtesgaden. It might sound familiar because it was in the TV show Band of Brothers and is home to Hitler’s Eagals Nest. The track is on the side of a mountain and it criss-crosses a stream heading down to a lake at the finish area. The track is in peoples back yards.... literaly and in some corners there are no inside walls, so you can actually walk into the track.
As for sliding, I had my first crash here this week. In fact there was 3 of them (3 consecutive runs) all in the same place and the last one I was dragging behind my sled with one finger hooked in, going through 3 corners. I burned through my suit and scrubbed a lot of time, however, I managed to pull my self back on and finish. I finally got the part figured out and the problem was due to a misunderstanding of the amont of steering input....... and maybe direction. It may not sound like much, but in skeleton when we go through corners we experience osillations. We go to the roof, back down, back up, back down.... The amount and number of oscillations are affected by the g-force, duration of the corner and speed. If you steer corectly you minimize the up-down, if not.... well. So I was steering up when I should have been steering down and the end result was a t-bone into the inside wall and then followed by a roll-over. But all is good, now we just have to do it better....
Today is an off day and it is into the city of Salzburg.... Tommarrow off to La Plagne, France. It is a very rare opportunity to get to slide there and even our coach has never been there.... so well see how she goes.

Race Day... Sort Of

Today we held a fake race among the 8 of us. All in all, I did alright. I had personal best times and am starting to feel much more comfortable on my sled. My coach has me not going 100% off the start, for in the past there have been a few "speed freaks" who have had potential but they concentrated only on their starts and failed to develop as a driver, and in the end never really materialized into much. With that in mind, today was good. I pushed a 5:13 and a 5:07, the next fastest was a 5:28 and the average was a 5:60. The track start record is a 5:01, and today, even feeling run down I know I could have given it a good run. But as the saying goes..... "Drive for Show, Put for dough" the only time that matters is your down time and start records dont equal winning or medals. However, my form is getting better and with each run I feel more at home on the sled and on the ice. I am learning tons, not just from my coach though. We have some great sliders here, some are beating other countries world cuppers in trainning and in Cesana we got to slide with and assess the womens Olympic Gold medalist. It is them who I am looking up to, to learn their approach to the sport, to driving and to planning their runs.

Day off tommarrow, we are heading into Dresden. It is a welcome break, a chance to let the brain slow down and the body recover. Then on Sunday it is off to Konigssee and Monday back to sliding.

Hope all is well back home. Like prommised, pictures to come, stay tuned.

Secret Track

Well, long time since last post..... We left Cesana and traveled to Munich then up through Dresden and finally on to a little place in the Forest called Altenberg. Altenberg is billed as being the most difficult and dangerous track around. However, it has a facinating history. It was built in the 1980s as a top secret East German training track for the 1988 Calgary Olympics. It has the most difficut parts of all the tracks to its date and is modeled kind of like Calgary´s, the track lies entierly below the tree line so no one could discover it.

The town itself is... well depressing yet interesting. Some parts have not been changed since WWII, and that goes for the people as well. A big change from Cesana. Everyday after sliding we head to the "sport prison". A 1950`s sport training facility \ dorm to do our dryland training. It is a real unique experience. The most interesting training equipment around, however, developed in the 1950\60´s, still just like something out of a cold war era sports movie. Internet and phones are very difficult to get,hopefully Konigssee (Salzberg) is better. An interesting side note, our next track, Konigssee, is in the German\Austrian Alps and from the start house you can see Hitlers Eagles Nest on the next mountain. Photos to come as soon as we find wireless access.

Oh yeah, what a great time driving the Autobahn, going 150 or more and having Porches blow your doors off going 220. We thing the Deerfoot is Bad!!!

Ouch

Well, it is the end of our 2nd day of sliding and I now have more runs under my belt at Cesana that Calgary. So I guess this is now my ’’Home’’ track. My new name will now be.... Camio Macleodio, being this is Italy. It has been a lot of fun, extreamly tiring. We are up at 6:30, then at the track for 8, slide, lunch, back to the track, and slide again, back around 5-6, video, dinner and bed. I have cuts, bruises, and scrapes EVERYWHERE! However, it is a blast and there will be time for rest on our trip to Altenberg on Saturday. Cesana, a town 1 hour outside Torino, is a great little place. There are 5-6 little town all around the area, all conected by gondolas and sking chair lifts, the place is one gigantic ski resort. The weather has been about 15-20 degrees during the day, sunny and just great. Nights, are around 1-5 degrees, anda little crisp. Tommarrow is another day of sliding, so.....

Torino

Well it was a long trip but we made it Torino. Due to some issues with drivers, I was chosen to drive one of the 3 vans from Frankfurt to Insbruck then the next day on to Cesana, most on the Autobahn. It took us through Verona and Milan during rush hour and turned out to be quite a drive. Today was spent doing track walks and watching the lines of several other sliders. We are being fed well, except the damn bobsleders are eating most of it, just jokes. Tommarrow we slide.

I Got A Blog

Well, the some of the guys at 16 station wanted me to set up a site for my latest trip. Being not the first choice for I.T. computer wizz of the year I had no idea how to do such a thing. But, thanks to Linda's blog I think I have it figured.
I want to say thanks to everyone who helped make it possible to do this trip. Everyone who took shifts for me and Chief Elvey for making sure it is ok to go and giving me permission to do so. I know it was VERY short notice so thank you all again.
We fly out of Calgary on Saturday for Frankfurt, then it is off to Torino, Italy for a week of training runs. I am bringing my camera and a laptop so hopefully I can keep ithis thing reasonably up to date, who knows?