Lake Placid world cup

Not much time to write here, this morning it started to snow which is not a good thing for race day. I had a very dissapointing run, half a second slower than the training runs I did yesterday, and finished 22nd, Kelly finished 24th and Liz finished 19th, I did however have a very good push, it was a personal best by one tenth of a second, but I wasn't driving very well in the snowy conditions, oh well that is the way it goes. Ben had a rough run and finished 24th and Russ got a PB by half a second and finished 30th. We are off to calgary now for the americas cup.

Moose lasagne for dinner last night...mmmmmmm.

Lake Placid World Cup training

We finally got on the track yesterday morning, since NZL was in the first group we had an early start and arrived at the track at 7:30. It was cold and snowing, about -15, and the ice was the coldest I have ever slid, it was -13. When the ice is cold, our runners (blades) do not dig in as much and we can loose a bit of control, well I have been carrying around a pair of "cold ice runners" which have a sharper knife/spine/blade (the back half of a runner has a knife/spine which gives us control while the front half is polished and rounded), I have taken them on tour for 3 seasons now, but have never taken more than one run on them. I decided to give them a go during my first run, but I had my trusty other runners with me just in case. I was also wearing my downhill mountain biking body armor since my bruises from the last race have not healed yet. Well the run was totally out of control, I did not feel my blades grip once, which meant that in the straight aways and transitions I was heading anywhere but straight. In the break between runs I switched my runners back to my lubas ones, and took a second out of control run. AHHHH. Very frustrating. Thankfully Lake Placid is a very forgiving track; you can have a horrendous run and not hurt your self.

Yesterday evening, Kelly, Peter, Jim and Judy Shea and I watched a documentary of the 2002 Winter Olympics, it had the opening and closing ceremonies and told the stories of some of the most successful gold medalists, including Jim and Judy's son Jimmy, it was a fantastic documentary, Kelly and I hope to bring a copy home, great for a bit of motivation for when you don't want to go to the gym.

2nd day of training, the two groups are in are in reverse order, so we got an hour sleep in. I cant work on fixing the track and getting good runs if I cant even steer the sled in any direction, so I decided to crank up my rock by 3mm to a setting that I have never ridden before and see what happens , I was very nervous, the sled becomes more reactive with the higher rock (bow in runners) and that is only good if you have the skill to control a more reactive sled, but the surface area you are sliding on becomes smaller and there fore there is more pressure, and hopefully you dig into the ice a bit more. I was so nervous that I couldn't eat breakfast! On my first run, on the exit of corner one I steered off and entered the long straight away between one and two and went dead straight, put my heat to the right just a little and drifted to the right... I have control. I am sure a lot of athletes would think that upping your rock is the logical thing to do, but us kiwis dont get time to train on tracks, and play around with our settings on our sleds, we just get to race, and if there is only 6 runs before a race you too busy learning the track. My time was alot better than day one, but still not good, so in run two I took off my body armor and pushed a little harder, I concentrated on my form and keeping my feet off the ice and together, as I entered the last bend I dropped my head right down, and WHAM, just after the last timing eye there is a 20th corner and I hit the right wall with my head and ankle, it serves me right, I wasn't looking were I was going, I was just thinking about getting over the finish line, but here in L.P. there is an extra corner after the finish just waiting to get ya..... The German physio, Rudy, has put a bunch of ointment on my ankle and bandaged it up, it is bruised, and very sore to touch, but not broken or twisted... while I was busy cursing at my stupidity at not looking where I was going, Kelly was looking very excited, I had taken 1.5 seconds off my first run. Very Nice. Only 20-40 hundredths of a second off a bunch of Americans and Canadian. Got to be happy with that. Just got to go faster tomorrow.

Kellys first run was real good, but she lost a lot of time in the top section in her second run. Liz hurt her hand during the first run and did not do the second (but should be all right tomorrow). Russ had a smoking second run and Ben an awesome first run after forgetting his helmet and running back in to find it seconds before he was due to start.

If your wondering why the guys tend to go faster, alot of it has to do with weight, a lot of the guys sleds are 10kg more than mine and then the guys are heavier too, when your on ice, the heavier you are, the faster you go (providing you don't hit too many walls ;-)

Times

Day one of training
Lou 62.33 and 62.80
Liz 61.24 and 62.91
Kelly 63.01 and 62.79
Ben 60.12 and 59.93
Russ 61.15 and 60.37

Day two of training

Russ 60.03 and 59.62
Ben 58.11 and 58.79
Kelly 61.48 and 61.94
Liz 61.23 and DNS
Lou 61.59 and 60.25

Sliding has been cancelled

It sucks when the officials can cancell paid training (training which is not part of the world cup, that we have to pay for and is arranged for us by the nation hosting the race). We were supposed to train this morning, 2 runs at $US18 per run, But the truck carrying a lot of the sleds from Calgary has not arrived in time, which is not a surprise because the same thing happened last year and we missed out on 2 days of training. All the Kiwis carried our own sleds with us on the flights so we have our sleds here but we still cant slide. But still it was worth going to the track because we had a huge snow ball fight instead.

It snowed all night and it is supposed to do it all week, which makes for a bit of a pot luck race. It should be interesting, we are going down to the track in an hour to do a track walk again and watch the womens bobsledders who are here for a world cup, there should be a lot of crashes, since Lake Placid is hard for bobsledders, it is more of a skeleton track.

Lake Placid is a beautiful place, and from the track you can see the Adirondak mountains and the lakes, it is really wonderful, a big change from Calagary which is in the city.

Well I'll let you know how sliding goes tomorrow.

Oh my God, we missed our flight...

I travel around the world a lot, in fact, I was clocking at least 8 flights a year when I was at primary school, and never ever did I miss a flight, but yesterday morning when Kelly and I arrived at the airport at 8am to check in the smiling chirpy check in staff told me my flight left ten minutes ago, I was speechless.

Kelly had told me the time we needed to be at the airport and arranged us a lift there, I should have checked my own itinerary, I always have in the past, but I didn't, and we missed our flight. AAAAHHHHH. So my seriously small budget that I am trying to spread over the whole season has not only diminished by the size of a new down jacket but also a one way air ticket to Montreal. The bonus was that we were not charged excess baggage for our sleds like a lot of other athletes.

We arrived in Montreal at 6pm last night, on the same flight as Liz and Peter (Dutch athlete who we spend a lot of time with). Since Kelly, Ben Russ and me are all under 25 it is very expensive for us to hire cars, so Kel, me and Stu (Scottish slider) are sharing a car with Peter as driver and Russ, Ben and Liz are sharing with Liz driving. Peter hasn't got a credit card so I booked the car with mine, but when we came to pick it up they were not too happy with having my credit card and Peter driving, we got around that one with Peter signing up as "Mr Corcoran" and eventually got on our way. It is a 3ish hour drive to Lake Placid.

Kelly and I have arranged to stay with Jim and Judy Shea, they are Jimmy Shea's parents, Jimmy won the Gold Medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake. They have a wonderful house in the woods just up the road from the lake and walking distance to town, and tonight Judy cooked us........MOOSE! It was delicious; we are having moose meat patties later on this week.

We went for a track walk today, the track looks very bumpy and rough, hopefully I dont add to my bruises. The temperature was -5 today but it is forecast to drop to about -25 this week so I am lucky I got my self a new down jacket, I am going to need it.

We slide at 9 tomorrow, I'll let you all know how it goes.

Calgary World Cup.... 17 place!

I finished 17th, that is an excellent placing. I was up to 12.30 last night preparing my sled. When the alarm went off at 5am this morning I did not want to get up, but I hauled my tired body out of bed, and Kelly and I were picked up by Ben and Russ at 615am. We arrived at the track at 6.20am and I set my rock (which is the amount of shape or sliding surface I have in my runners/blades) and headed off for a track walk, a track Walk is when we walk in the track prior to sliding or racing and just see what the ice condition is, visualize what we are going to do in each corner and see if the track workers have changed anything during the night, there is an hour set aside before each training and race day for track walks. The track looked fast and clean. It was very foggy this morning and about -8 degrees (so I am glad I purchased a replacement down jacket).

At the team captains meeting last night our start order was drawn, Kel got 12th, I got 15th and Liz got 23rd. My training runs have been pretty rough this week and I was covered in bruises going into the race. In all my training runs I fixed what I was focusing on but the other sections of the track that I wasn't focusing on were pretty poor so today I had to put them together, which I pretty much did. Nice. All except the exit of 13 on the first run, I dropped out of the corner and hit the right wall sooooo hard that going around 14 all I could think about was whether or not I had a broken arm.... No just the biggest bruise you have ever seen, about 20cm by 8cm down my arm. I usually go Skin to Win, which in part mean not wearing any protective padding on race day, but in my second run I wasn't brave enough and tapped a shin guard to my arm, but my second run was fantastic, and I made sure I did not hit my sore arm. I don't usually get so bruised, I think it is because this season I haven't had much training prior to the races starting.

Kel had an awesome run, she finished 21st with a time of 61.93, she only just missed out on a second run, which is only for the top 20, Liz finished 20th in the first heat and 19th in the second heat with an overall placing of 19th (61.79,61.55) I finally pushed under 6 seconds, in my first heat my push was a 6.00 and in the second it was a 5.99, a personal best.

Ben Sandford had a brilliant first ever world cup race finishing 12th overall (58.08, 57.75), but Russ had bad luck with his visor fogging up half way down the track, which left him sliding blind, he finished 33rd with a 61.39, you can check out all the times and placing of different nations at www.fibt.com

The Kiwis and the South Africans are off to dinner tonight and then every one is meeting up at Cowboys a night club down town, it wont be too much of a late night, because Kel and I fly out to Montreal at 9 am tomorrow morning.

I will write again when I am in Lake Placid. If any one want to contact me my email is lou@nzskeletonracer.com (I am still looking for a sponsor)

Race tomorrow

We have had a couple of very hectic days, here is a run down

Yesterday morning Kel was told her runners were illegal! AAAHHHHH, they are 1988 runners (blades) and had just been worn out with all the sanding they have had over the years, luckily a dutch slider had a spare set that she is able to use, then after training we all had to go and have our sleds inspected, this is the first time that every one has had an inspection and it took a while to get through the 60 sleds, Ben and Russ's sleds failed and at 5pm 2 days before the race we had to find somewhere to get .5 of a mm of steel welded onto their bumpers! AAAAAHHHH, luckily again with the help of Peter a Dutch slider the problem was fixed. Oh yeah and before the sled inspection I was given 4 licences back and told that Ben, Kelly, Russ and Liz all had invalid licences because their doctor had not put a stamp next to their signatures. AAAAHHHHH. After about 1.5 hours of searching for a doctor with a stamp who would stamp their licences with out charging the earth, Uli (FIBT race official) changed his mind and let them use their race licences as they are. Then after all this when we got home I realized at about 10pm that my jacket was still at the track, and in the morning it was gone, and it hasn't been returned, life in a very cold climate like this with out my Mountain Hardwear down jacket is rather numbing... Oh yeah we slid as well... I have been having trouble with the bottom half of the track, losing a lot of time there, and I have about 20 different sized bruises all over my body from exiting Kriesel and hitting the left wall, the good new is that today I fixed it and got two good, painless exits of Kriesel corner, so I just need to put it all together tomorrow for the race... Wish me luck

(I have replaced my jacket, cant live with out it, I just hope my travel insurance will repay me, I also lost my sunglasses and my 10 pass ticket to the local gym :-( - they were in the pocket)

Well must go to bed, I have just finished sanding my runners, and cleaning my sled, as the race is at 8 am Saturday morning Canadian time, ( about 5 am sunday in NZ) I better go and get some sleep.

Well the world cup has started

We have had two days of sliding so far, and well, yesterday was a kick in the pants, I thought that since I had such good, nice, friendly, painless runs last week when I was here that they would continue that way so I put up my rock a little... Oh no, the track has been changed a little, and my first run yesterday was a shocker, I was not in control and I hit the wall entering corner 8, which sent me into 8 late and on the exit I was pushed out into another wall, the impact made my hips twist on my sled and I spent the 80m strait away trying to wriggle my way back into position, which meant I entered corner 9 late and hit real hard on the exit of 9 and did the twisting thing again.... My time was pretty poor so before the second run I lowered my rock again, and had a slightly safer but still bumpy run, my left hip bone is nicely bruised thanks to exit 9. Last night I padded up my sled so I wouldn't hurt my hip again, and today my runs were a lot better. Kelly and I got to the track early and watched the first half of the athletes (there are 60 here) going through the first 6 corners, my goal was to get the first 5 corners clean with out any huge time consuming skids or hits. Well my times and my split show that I did exactly that, my first 3 splits are only about 2/10th of a second off some of the top girls, in the bottom splits I am 5/10th off, so tomorrow I will be concentrating on the bottom half of the track.

Today was not injury free though, on my last run, I hit sooo hard out of Kriesel (corner 9 is a 360 degrees corner) and I now have a very sore, tender, hot and bruised left arm, right the way down my upper arm and my fore arm, I am glad I came stocked with a roll of Chinese bruise tape, it works wonders.

Kelly first run of the season yesterday was "a bit of a blur" as most first runs are, but today, she felt much more comfortable being back on her sled.

Here are the Kiwi's times from today, the first day of official training for the Calgary world cup...
Ben Sandford run one 5.60 20.01 27.04 36.19 48.72 58.72
two 5.64 20.07 27.07 69.21 48.71 58.61
Russ Ward 5.60 20.22 27.46 36.92 50.23 60.92
5.63 20.28 27.49 36.94 50.55 61.45
Louise Corcoran 6.02 20.81 27.98 37.46 50.63 61.25
6.31 21.23 28.43 38.05 51.18 61.69
Kelly Moffat 6.39 21.62 29.13 38.74 52.05 62.80
6.33 21.46 28.97 38.68 52.10 62.79
Liz Couch 5.95 20.86 28.12 37.61 50.71 61.28
5.95 20.75 28.01 37.49 50.56 61.10

Oh yeah, I tried out bobsled shoes which are allowed to be used this season, they have about 100 tiny little spikes rather than the 6 larger spikes that skeleton shoes usually use. I used them my first run and my push was a 6.02 which was a bit faster that it has been, on my second run I put my skeleton spikes on and slipped on the ice and got the much slower push of 6.31......I think I will be buying the bobsled shoes!

Time to go to bed, I am real tired after 2 full on days here at the track and I even managed to fit in a session at the ice house. I'll let you know how we all go in training tomorrow.

It got to -27!

Well, what have we been upto... on the Saturday morning Kelly and I headed off to the ice house (a sprint track on ice that is simalar to the tope 50m of the real track) with Turc, outside the air temperature was -27, that is seriously cold it feels like youve been slapped in the face and you cough if you take any deep gulps of air. Kel had only got about 2 hours sleep and was pretty wacked all day so she didn't slide, but I had a good session on the ice, I was 8 hundredths slower than the previous day but that would have been due to tired legs. I also gave the one handed push a go, I think I could probably get it but there isn't enough time to start changing things with the World Cup this week. Yesterday Kel and I headed off to Dave Grahams to get Kelly's sled adjusted, it now fits her properly. Thanks Dave.

This morning Kelly and I have been out to the gym, it is a little warmer about -8, so we didn't get too cold walking over there, the waterslide at the gym provided plenty of entertainment...

Tonight we are off to the World Cup reception, and tomorrow we are sliding at 11.30 Yaaaaayyyyyyy. AT LAST.

Ice house training

Kelly (who arrived late last night), Liz and I had a training session in the ice house this morning, it was really worth it, my push has improved since last year, but it is hard to tell how much by because the conditions in the ice house are very variable. Since Kelly and I have seriously tight budgets we have not rented a car and had to taxi to the track, but it was only $CA10 which wasn't too bad. After our 1/2 hour session Kelly and I had a track walk with a local slider who is helping us with our lines, it took us 2 hours to walk to the top of the track and walk slowly down though each corner, but the time wasn't the problem, it was about-22 degrees out there, so you can imagine how ridiculously cold we were when we finally made it back to the ice house the warm up. However we now have some good hints on how to find speed on the track. 6 hours out in the cold is really tiring, so we will both sleep well tonight. The temperature is not meant to change till next week so we are in for a real cold weekend.( the funniest thing in real cold weather is when your nose hairs freeze!)
We might get some more time in the ice house tomorrow, then two days with no ice, unofficial training on the track in on Tuesday at 11, with official training (2 runs) on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the Calgary World Cup on Saturday at 8am.

I will let you all know how our weekend goes.

Banff, Lake Louise, and lots of snow

There has been no sliding for the last couple of days, but I have kept my self busy with trips to the pools, the gym and a day out at Banff. On Tuesday, Tim Cassin took me on a tiki tour out to Banff, on the way we stopped off in Canmore at a welding work shop where skeleton sleds are made, it was interesting seeing the different jigs used to manufacture the different components of our sleds, quite a bit of work goes into it. After a mocha and a tuna melt at a laid back cafe in Canmore we headed onto Lake Louise, on the way we stopped on the side of the road to watch a huge elk that was happily sitting about a meter of the road, nestled into a deep patch of snow, this animal had no fear of cars or the people taking photos from him, when I get a chance I'll try to get the photos put up of him.

Lake Louise is beautiful, there is a HUGE hotel there, built in the late 1800's right on the edge of the lake with mountains towering around it. The lake was frozen with a layer of snow on top, and we passed a bunch of people heading out snow shoeing onto it.

We then headed out to Banff, which is similar to Queenstown but with no lake, we stopped in at the hot pools there, and Tim provided plenty of entertainment to all those in the pool with the "historical swim suit" he rented, covered from thigh to neck with a little skirt, blue and white stripes and buttons on the shoulder, I wish I had my camera.

It snowed all day yesterday and there is more due this weekend, it is a balmy -13 outside and a cold snap has been predicted for this weekend!

Kelly arrives tonight, and we have training in the icehouse booked for Friday and Monday, with training on the track (probably 2 runs) scheduled for Tuesday, World Cup training begins on Wednesday. I can’t wait.