UNSW Athlete of the Year

The University of New South Wales has been my primary personal supporter ever since I commenced studying Environmental Engineering back in 2009. The UNSW Elite athlete program offers huge support which helps me to work my way around fitting in part time study into a busy training and racing schedule. In addition to this they are currently my largest  financial supporter which goes directly towards my European racing season expenses and therefore has had a huge impact on my level of progression to date.

Upon returning to Australia in late March, the University held its annual Blues and Sporting Awards Dinner. This year I was honored to receive my first Sporting Blue, however was also privileged enough to make the response to the toast on behalf of all blues winners. That night I also received one of my proudest awards of my career by becoming UNSW male athlete of the Year. The University has a very large number of very high profile athletes and consequently this has always been an award that I have aspired towards for a long while which makes it a special achievement for me.

So thanks UNSW for another amazing year!

Atomic Support

Atomic are the latest company to show their support to my sporting career as an elite Cross Country Skier. Now I finally have a range of skis that will work very well in any snow condition and for me this is hugely important. In just the short time I have been using them, they are performed amazingly well, outperforming my old skis by a long shot. Thanks Atomic! See there website at www.atomic.com

Rybinsk 15km Skate World Cup

So on the Friday before the race, after a night on the bus which was so rough it would make riding a cow feel comfortable, we were rewarded somewhat by a completely blue sky which showed the race course overlooking a very scenic frozen lake. This small reward was slightly diminished by just how cold it was again. -26°C over night and not warming up terribly much over the day it was certainly another day of discomfort when skiing, particularly on the downhills. For those not in the know, when the temperature is so cold it makes skating very slow as the snow is so dry and abrasive that not even a ski base slides smoothly across it. At these temps it is more like sand, where it even crunches and squeaks under foot just the same as the dry hot sand on an Aussie beach.  Testing skis is more about which provides the least resistance, but the harsh fact is that nothing runs very well in these conditions making skiing a hard slog.

A hard slog is actually a good way to sum up how Saturday’s 15km Mass Start felt. The cold symptoms had cleared up a lot, with just the unpleasant cough and splutter ever now and then with my lungs clearly were not appreciating the high volume flow of super cold and dry air. The temperature had warmed up to -18°C which is just enough for the race not to be cancelled (-20°C limit) but even at -18°C it still hurts your lungs on a good day, not to mention other parts of your body! With the aim of holding onto the main pack for a good part of the race disappearing before my eyes early on, I had absolutely nothing in me to alter the outcome. After being sick I just felt lethargic and not able to reach that top gear that I had the weekend before in Austria. I was still hurting, but I have definitely been able to put myself much deeper in what is now so commonly known as ‘The Hurt Box’. I was completely aware that I should be able to punish myself that little bit more but it was as though the muscles would not respond and this I can tell you is one of the most frustrating feelings I have had to deal with as an athlete.

The result therefore was disappointing. Last weekend I had felt like I was right on form and then this weekend I felt as though I could

Moscow World Cup City Sprint

Getting off the plane in Moscow you can straight away notice that you are in a place completely different to the rest of the world. With the outside air temperature so dropping below -22°C, you think to yourself how could anyone bear to live in such a place where it is so cold for such a long winter, but then leaving the airport you find it is quite the opposite. Moscow is huge and the roads are pretty well 4 lanes wide for all major roads but this seems to have little effect. Congestion was what was going on inside my head, there should be another word to explain the mess of cars out there! So yes, I had come down with a bit of a cold after leaving Bad Ischl but it seemed to be pretty light but let’s hope it doesn’t get too much worse after racing 3min30s Flat Chat in air so cold you have to tape up your face to prevent frost bite (see some of the video below).

Hopefully this pic (above) from outside our hotel room window can show give an idea of what sort of view we had of the city. On the 26^th floor with a full sized window easily bigger than a man which simply opened fully out over the edge, anyone scared of heights should not go near this open window! An ironic feature of our room however is that it could have doubled as a sauna, so despite it being -20°C outside, the window was opened full all night! This will also explain the following half-naked pre-race clip which team mate Vandy (Mark Van Der Ploeg)insisted I included in this post:

With a World Cup City Sprint being placed in the middle of a massive city in a country where Cross Country Skiing is a heavily followed sport, you would expect huge spectator numbers. The opposite also happened here as there would have definitely been less than 400 people watching in total. Can’t blame them really with such cold temps.

Anyway to the actual race; the race prep session the day before felt absolutely horrible. The cold symptoms had worsened and the cold air (-22°C now) which normally burns the lungs meant I struggled to breathe properly in the efforts. With race day temperatures slightly better (-18°C) and the cold symptoms clearing up somewhat, it was a huge relief to find breathing much easier. In the end I felt as though I skied reasonably solidly, but just lacked the spark required to do well. I held onto my rank (63^rd) and was around 12% off the pace.

Bad Ischl Austrian Champs

The road down from Bad Ischl race track

So as a brief catch up on events, last weekend I raced in the Austrian Champs in Bad Ischl with the rest of the Australian Team. As I have mentioned many times before, it is always fun racing at a level where you are more competitive and fighting for positions and this is exactly what these championships offered. The Sprint Qualifier on Friday went exceptionally well for me with by gaining personal best FIS points of 82 (24pts better than my previous best!) and with a solid rank of 9^th overall. With a reasonably fast and flat course that had plenty of overtaking opportunities with such a wide track I was slightly concerned about my lack of finishing speed and the risk of being pushed out of the top 2 in the heats. With a fast start in my quarter, I found myself at the very back heading into the first downhill. Not loving my position at the back meant I pushed hard over the top of the hill and went all the way through into second by the bottom of the first hill – now that’s the place to be and where I should have stayed. But no, the guy in front didn’t want to be there and slowed the pace right down which doesn’t work well for me as it allows all of the skiers to stay together giving everyone the opportunity  to have a crack at the finish. So I went for the break with the aim of trying to break some people off which worked on 3 people, but unfortunately not on the remaining three who held on till the finish straight then burned right on past leaving me quite frustrated with my choice of strategy. A good lot of fun as a whole though and a good learning experience.

Otepaa World Cup

From a very young age I knew that I couldn’t sprint. Every school running carnival started off very badly with the 100m. I would lose, and badly too. I would be back with some of the worst of the un-athletic sorts, it was just lucky I could regain some respect by running very close to the same pace for the 1500m.

Skiing sprinting is much different as it is a much longer work time, however you still need to be able to move very quick. Over the past 2 years I have managed to learn how to  ski faster and more efficiently in skate sprints, however have not managed to find the same improvements in classic sprints.

The Milano World Cup City Sprint Experience

Any World Cup has a heightened level of excitement and the atmosphere always gives me the same feeling – there are very few other places I’d rather be. City Sprints have the exact same effect but due to the larger crowds in a more confined area combined with being situated in the middle of a city where a race track realistically isn’t supposed to be, the atmosphere is twice as strong. Milano City sprint certainly lived up to its expectations with the race course situated right out the front of Sforza Castle, which as you can see from the photos can only be described as incredible!  The race track was in very decent condition for a city sprint and not completely flat with a very slight uphill section to create a bit of variation. The only difference really was the immense pollution. The air was so thick it almost had to be chewed before full inhalation!

Saturday was the individual sprint. With the race time for the men starting at 1pm, the snow was already getting quite soft. Due to a block start format being used due to the consisting of two laps, I started almost a full 30min behind the first male which turned out to be quite the disadvantage. The course softened further and due to 63 men going before me it was quite cut up by the time I got to it. These however are the general disadvantages you are constantly dealt when ranked towards the back of the field, however with such warm conditions you just suffer that little bit more. As I have mentioned many times before, a flat course is definitely not to my advantage so with this in mind, I was very happy with my result. I came in 63^rd which was one better than my ranking, something that I rarely achieve in sprint races. In addition I was also ahead of a Russian skier which is always a positive feeling to be ahead of a major skiing nation skier.

For Sunday’s Team Sprint, Phil Bellingham and I teamed up to take on skiers ranked far higher than us. The ranking system used combines the averages of both athletes in the team and to give you an idea of how poorly we were ranked, our combined average was approximately 100FIS points worse than the 2^nd last ranked team. With Phil making his World Cup debut the day before (congratulations to the big man!) and me not really being known for my sprinting capabilities, we were not expecting much and hence are still incredibly shocked and happy with what we managed to achieve. Team sprints for those not in the know consist of 3 Legs of the sprint course for each of the two skiers, and tagging off between legs. With a very intense pace and very short rest (1:1), it is renowned to be an incredibly painful event, but probably more renowned for the carnage that can occur. I started first and with the carnage factor in mind, I was happy to just sit on the back of the back with the aim of just relaxing as much as possible. To our advantage on the fastest corner on the 2^nd lap, GermanyII went down taking at least 4 teams with them. I managed to avoid the pile of skis and bodies scattering across the track with minimal trouble, until I hit a rock embedded in the track, stopping my right ski instantlywhich very nearly saw me embarrassingly adding to the mess with no contact from anyone else! Feeling shocked that I hadn’t also crashed I looked up to find myself in 4^th place! Most of the teams caught back on very quickly however both myself and Phil skied very efficiently with the pack for almost the entire race and managed to hold off both ItalyIV and GermanyII and finished around 14s off the winners of the Semi. This in its self has never been done by an Aussie team on World Cup, but in addition we also came in ahead of EstoniaII and ItalyIII who also consisted of some highly respected names placing us 20^th out of the 24 teams.

Back to Seefeld for another week to prepare for Estonia this weekend.

Black Forest German Cup

The largest racing block of the season has commenced! From the positive results in the recent Swiss Cup races and more good training after these races I have been feeling even better about my shape and this has left me in a very positive frame of mind. Also helping this is the complete disappearance of my chest issues and also the move from Campra to our new base here in Seefeld, Austria. As you can see by the above pic, Campra is a very isolated, slow and backwards place. It is as though you have moved to a place that is stuck in the 70’s. The complete non-existence of sun shine in this narrow valley also really begins to hit hard after a solid 10days. All I can say is that the place is a cool place to visit with awesome trails, but 10days is really pushing the limits of cabin fever tolerance!

With record snow falls in the Austrian Alps, we were lucky enough to start off our journey to the German Cup races at the very beginning of this epic snow storm. You know it’s going to be a long trip when an autobahn has its speed limit reduced by a full 100km/h (130 down to 30) for a good portion of the trip. For a trip that was supposed to take around 3hrs 30min from Seefeld to the Black Forest, we nearly doubled the travel time. Once there it was all quite smooth rolling, with Notschrei being the race venue which was where I competed in the 2010 World U23 Championships 2 years earlier. Having a good understanding of these demanding courses helps a lot, but also liking the courses is probably even more beneficial.

The Sprint was relatively short, with a winner’s time just over 2min40s, however with 2 major climbs and a tough flat, fast and technical finish it was a real leg burner. I am really happy with how I skied. I qualified 11^th and made it through the quarters despite nearly throwing it all away by poling my boot on the start straight. For anyone who has ever done this, you will know just how much it trips you up, and whilst sprinting, the effect is 10 fold, so as a result my face was probably within about 10cm of becoming a snow plough! Somehow I managed to regather myself and found myself shocked that I was still upright! I then managed to come back through the pack, finished in 2nd and made it through to the semi’s. The Semi felt really quite good, all the way until the final straight where my legs just overflowed with lactic acid and frustratingly I was outsprinted for 4^th in that heat. Despite that, I was still ahead of one which meant I ended up placing 10^th in the overall final standings. A top 10 in a German Cup Sprint is a huge improvement compared with the German Cup I competed in at the same venue 2 years prior which were held the week before the U23 champs. FIS points for the Sprint were a complete misrepresentation of the result with many Juniors making top 5 creating a ridiculously large penalty. To give a good indication of the result, I was 5.25% off the winners time and just over 2s behind Len Valjas’s time who is a Canadian World Cup skier who placed 5^th in the Finnish World Cup earlier in the season.

6th Place - German Cup

The 10km Skate on Sunday gave us very tough conditions with fresh snow that seemed to compact and glaze creating a very unstable feel. I felt really good on the climbs and had great recovery on the downs, however struggled to relax on the flats were the unevenness of the snow was the worst. The result was quite decent and I finished in 6^th place overall, 1min 27s back off 1st (Len Valjas) giving me 99FIS pts. Skis were great again this weekend with Ben Sim (Simboss), Finn and Fabian Mauz producing the goods.

Seefeld

Now back to the land of too much snow here in Seefeld. As you can see by this photo taken today, there is an absolute ton of snow here. The trails are amazing today and couldn’t have asked for a nicer day to do the long 2h35min session. It was definitely one of my most enjoyable classic skis ever. Love the skiing, Love the Racing – Love being an Athlete!

Campra Swiss Cup and a Tobogganer

Arriving in Campra is always a bit of a culture shock and this year was no different. For the first 2 days it was only the three of us Aussie skiers here at the accommodation along with one other family. This meant a very quiet Christmas until about 4pm where Pk’s luck went from bad to abysmal. Just as Pk and myself are walking towards the rather shonky set of stairs, Pk begins complaining about the build quality and the inadequate head room he uncomfortably discovered earlier that day. With me in front, 4 stairs down and quite a lot to go, I hear a ‘Whoa’ followed by the distinctive stair crashing clutter and then the legs of the big man sliding either side of me to confirm the outcome. Things were not looking good with a rather massive hole in Pk’s elbow which looked as though some bone was sticking through. So yes this did mean our 4^th hospital visit for the trip (I think we have almost taken the new record previously held by KT Calder!) but with no major problems and just a stitch to seal it up, it was a major relief to see him still all set for the coming races.

Wednesday’s Freestyle sprint was held on a very tough 1.4km course with one very steep pinch, 2 major climbs and a very long uphill finish straight. This is a course designed to harvest Lactic acid and that’s exactly what it achieved. Probably not such a bad course for my slim body type and as a result I produced a career best sprint coming in 11^th with 106 FIS points. This was a huge confidence boost for me as my energy was great and the persistent chest pain was no longer there at all leaving me feeling very positive towards the next day’s 15km Classic.

With a positive mindset and skis which were probably some of the best that I have ever had in a ski race, I started well, maintained the pace well and finished strong which is a feeling I have been longing for a while now. I finished 6^th, 1min55 of the pace with 69FIS Points beating my rank and ahead of some rather successful skiers. This is probably my most successful international race in terms of FIS points and it felt awesome to be given splits during the race which had me right up there with the top guys. Huge thanks to Ben Sim and Fabian for the incredible skis and awesome race support.

Pk, even after his appalling preparation having been sick for more than 2.5weeks straight, then tobogganing a set of stone cut stairs also had a shredder of a race. Definitely his best ever distance race by a long shot and this hopefully shows he has a lot more to show for himself this season. Check out his blog for his race wrap up.

We will be here until the 3^rd of January before heading off to Seefeld, Austria for more training and racing before my next World Cup stint consisting of Milan, Moscow, Rybinsk, and hopefully Otepaa World Cups.

Slovenian WC Sprint and a ‘Beached As’ Blue-Box

My first World Cup meet running a one man show has definitely been a learning experience. There really is a lot behind the scenes that need to be organised and although I ended up handling it well, it was a bit nerve racking just hoping that I had done everything that is required. Luckily I was helped out greatly by the US Ski Team who took care of my skis and in both races they were awesome, so a huge thanks to Jeff Ellis and the US Wax Tech Crew.

Sunday’s Freestyle Sprint was probably nothing that I should be complaining about too much. I skied slightly better than in Davos in terms of percentage (with almost right on 10% behind) but once again due to the lack of the smaller teams competing in World Cup this year, my position was still disappointing. With the continuing breathing issues that I have been having during these races, it brings quite a lot of frustration as I am still unsure as to how I would have gone if these issues had not come about. So with this I hope it is understandable as to why I chose to withdraw from this year’s Tour de Ski. Sure. It is quite possible that I could get my body back into proper shape in time for the tour, but having weighed up the odds, it would not be worth the disappointment of going there and having to pull out after a few stages if things didn’t go well. I am very happy about the new plan that is in store for me now anyway which sees me racing some Swiss and possibly German or Austrian FIS races. These are a lower level of competition and I am very excited to back to racing at a level where I am fighting hard for good positions. I think it is very important to get these kinds of competitions in during the season to get some good confidence back and just enjoy the lower pressure racing – you still hurt just as much, but it should feel good to be right in the mix fighting for good positions

The Shenanigans never seem to stop really, and yes most of them seem to involve our team van. For the last few days we spent in Davos, huge snow falls along with the massive crowds turned the roads into absolute chaos. Some of this chaos was admittedly caused by us, predominantly caused by Phil’s poor judgement and lack of good eyesight. Let’s just say it’s a good thing he has never considered taking up Biathlon! Picture all the small down ramp streets from the main top street being closed for very good reason due to way too much snow. Now picture us seeing the only one that doesn’t have a ‘closed’ sign up on it, with the smallest gap to make it through a section and us taking it on! I’m going to say straight away that we all were saying that we should turn back, except the one man to disagree sadly was the driver. So down goes the blue box straight into the gap with about 1 quarter of the car plunging deep into the snow drift. Despite being on a very steep descent, the blue box reverted back to its natural wheel-spinning motion. Luckily enough for Phil, he was trapped by the side rail, leaving me and Pk to dig out the car along with half of the snow-bank, that was our local charity work done and a self-written ban for Phil to drive for some time.

The next stop for us boys is Campra, where we will compete in the Swiss Cup next Wednesday and Thursday.