Anchorage: Day Three

Today alternated between mildly irritating and incredibly frustrating. The mildly irritation part was the jury vacillating between canceling and holding the race. If I had been one of the womens racers I would have been pretty pissed, because there were three times when the first women were warming up and were told that the race had been pushed back anywhere from a half to two full hours. Irritating. In the end, the race was rescheduled for tomorrow, which is supposed to be just as cold. so, I can imagine tomorrow will be just about as irritating. 

The incredibly frustrating part however, was just personal. My mounting frustration about my skiing came to a peak today when I was trying (and "trying" was definitely the operative word) to ski up the steepest hill on the sprint course. Hard. Well, as I was struggling as hard as I could, some rather fit but decidedly middle aged women passed me, in the tracks, gliding nicely. I was going flat out, as hard as I could, and she passed me. Now, I really don't have a problem getting my ass kicked by women, it's a natural part of life, and I think all men should have it happen to them. However, she didn't pass me because she was going fast. She passed me, because I was going slow, and simply could not kick, bogged down, and nearly fell back down the hill. I was actually embarrassed to be skiing that badly. I mean seriously, what the hell? I've made skiing my priority for over 5 years now. Why am I still such a terrible skier? I was so pissed I just took off my skis and walked to the car and sat there until the guys were done skiing (plus the requisite Howdy Tantrum of throwing my skis half way through). Once in the car I had a long hard think about what the hell I'm doing. I mean really, I've been a "skier" for 5 years, and I still can't make it up a hill that I saw at least 20 people (and not all pros, not even mostly pros) make it up EASILY. It's not that I'm to weak, it's not that I'm not fit enough, it's just that my technique SUCKS. And it got me to thinking about my other frustrations with skiing. I looked at my USSA points for the last couple years today, and I haven't gotten better. Sure, maybe an average of 4 points better per year, but that is about 5 seconds in a 15K. 5 seconds. I've worked three years for a third of a second a kilometer? It's time for me to figure out what the hell is going on, because I know I can be MUCH faster than this. I'm not sure exactly what I've been screwing up (many things I'm sure), but I'm going to spend some serious time thinking about things, and from now on I'm not going to accept any excuses from myself about poor performance. No more justifying slowness, no more saying, oh well, at least my technique was good (like that ever happens), or at least I finished hard, or at least I got a "good" year of training. No. From now on, it's about speed. If I'm not getting faster, it's a failure. Bottom line. 

Joe