All,
Here we are, heading into the penultimate weekend of our program! If you were kids, we would be busy polishing up your new Step level pins and finalizing your report cards. As it is, I guess the GDHL results are something of a proxy.
SCHEDULE
MORE CH-CH-CH-CHANGES! The Interclub finals have been moved from Saturday morning to their traditional Saturday 1 PM start. Therefore, our training will move back to 0930. We will also be training at 0930 on Sunday. Both days are GS, and both are on Birches. We expect to have timing set both days. There was no Friday training.
GDHL / INTERCLUB
Last Saturday's SL took place on a challenging, scraped surface on Vortex. Allan LaChance (6th), Ian Latimer (8th from 27th seed), Peter Rockandel (9th) and Doug Jarvis (10th) were the leaders among our members. Craig Shibley was 11th with an asterisk, as the scorekeepers seem to have credited him with his first run time despite gleefully pointing out that he missed the final gate. (Get a friend to whack you in the head a few times a day with a breakaway gate and you'll eventually learn not to lose concentration when it happens in a race!) Rob Burnes was 14th, tied with JF Courville. It was a day to forget for Randy and Trent, but a good day for Bill Bigelow in 24th from 46th seed, Elspeth Gaukrodger, who jumped 37 spots from her seeding, and David Arthur, who jumped 35 spots.
Sunday's GS was on the same run, but after snow making overnight it was a very different surface. Allan LaChance led the way with a season's best 3rd, while Randy, Craig (aiming to make the dynamic duo a threesome?) and Trent rebounded to finish 5, 6 and 7, separated by 0.05 seconds and followed by Ross Kappele in 8th. Glenn Blaylock recorded his second mid-teens finish of the weekend in 17th, which is becoming almost routine in his high volume comeback season. Jerry Patten rounded out the top 20 from his 41st seed, continuing his steep learning curve, while Ray Murakami cashed in on his bib 1 investment to finish T21 from 48th seed. Mark Reidl didn't quite match his Super G exploits but rounded out the top 30 and beat Kat Zoricic (which is becoming more and more of a challenge week by week). Meanwhile, Ron Statler, Byron Darlison, Will Andrews, Steve Gailits, Tiana Boyman and Alan Shaw all picked up big points by skiing two strong races on days when the numbers were a bit lower than usual.
TSB has announced that the team for Saturday’s interclub final will be drawn from (in bib order) Margaret Isberg, Tiana Boyman, Sharon Munday, Greg Grinter, Al LaChance, Steve Gailits, Bill Bigelow, Leslie Morgan, Kate Veer, Glenn Blaylock, James Mathers, Paul Woodhouse, Randy Dalton, Jeff Craig, Craig Shibley, Ian Latimer, Trent Winstone, Jeff Sutherland, Bebe Zoricic, Robert Burnes, Kat Zoricic, Doug Deeks, Chris Shipton, Greg Cavers, Scott McLorie and Justin Kowal. The team has been stacked with a view to repeating the earlier feat of sweeping 7 of 8 top places in a big 50 to 54 age group field. Two of these 26 will have to be DNS, based on strategic selection after a review of our opponents’ lineups.
SELF IMPROVEMENT / LIVE IN HOPE
Here is an article about assessing your performance improvement over time. It’s written for bike racers, but many of the thoughts are applicable to ski racing. (Sadly, skiers can’t assess their improvement by timing themselves over a fixed route week by week.) Ignore the Daily Distractions feature that is adjacent to the article. Some of the women are not exceptionally attractive.
This is the time of year when some of us assess, or perhaps obsess about, our race results. It’s easy to identify those who have made great leaps from the back of the field to the middle and a few who have managed to move from the middle to the upper middle or above. Often there’s an explanation based on some pre-existing talent that has been capitalized upon. Usually that talent has been developed by pretty dedicated effort. Hopefully those who are able to advance can identify the reason, and remember it, as sometimes what goes up comes down. Sometimes there are one or more outstanding results along with some not so ones. Others of us are more consistent, sometimes discouragingly so. Hopefully, dedication is rewarded by small but consistent improvements over time, and enough glimmers of hope to keep us coming back.
FASHION NEWS
Attached is Carrie in the one-piece Eternity suit on Saturday. This created an unprecedented sensation so that she had to wear it Sunday and Monday too, in order to accommodate all of the interest. This is from the 2014 collection. In addition to the black shown, it will be available in “Vampire” (red) at selected retail outlets. (See Carrie for details.) The suit has been shipped off for use in some photo shoots, but remember you saw it here first!
DIVERSIONS
I was standing in a bar yesterday when a little guy came in. He stood next to me and started drinking a beer, so I asked him, "Do you know any martial arts, like Kung-Fu, Karate or Ju-Jitsu?"
He answered "No, why did you ask me that? Is it because I'm Chinese?"
"No!" I said, "That’s my beer you’re drinking, and I’m assessing my options."
JWM