Doing what's Right
I realized this morning that I'm going to have to revise my algorithm for deciding whether I'm doing the "right" thing. One of my checks to see if what I'm doing is a good idea has been to ask myself if I'd make the same decision regardless of who was around me. It's the "if your mother knew about this, what would she say" kind of analysis. Most of the time I'm pretty self-satisfied and tell myself that of course I wouldn't change my behavior no matter who was around-- LAV does what LAV wants what LAV thinks is right.
Skiing up at Hatcher Pass has been great for one of my new goals-- learning how to make tele turns. One of my shortcomings as a skier is that I've never learned how to tele ski, so now I'm trying to remedy that. I hear it's easier to do when you actually have tele gear. Part of the trails are on a gradual uphill road, nice and wide and perfect for practicing tele turns! So I've been working on my turns every time I go down the road. On the short section when we're skiing loops at the top of the trail and on the long section when it's time to ski down to the parking lot. I've even been faithfully practicing during our L3 and L4 intervals. I mean, it only makes the downhill take a little longer, right?
When I started my L4 intervals this morning Erik cheerfully said, "I'll do this first one with you, Laura!" The interval started on the outhouse loop before dropping down to the first turnoff and back up to the highest loop. When we reached the downhill I faced a conundrum: tele turn or not? On one hand I'm very focused on my goals and I'd tele turned during every other interval we'd done up there, but on the other hand I didn't want Erik to think I wasn't taking the intervals seriously. My uneasiness froze me into inaction and before I had resolved my moral dilemma the downhill was over and it was time to ski hard again.
I went back to making tele turns on my remaining three intervals... there are some instances where it's fine (and probably better) if your coach doesn't know exactly what you're doing.
Skiing up at Hatcher Pass has been great for one of my new goals-- learning how to make tele turns. One of my shortcomings as a skier is that I've never learned how to tele ski, so now I'm trying to remedy that. I hear it's easier to do when you actually have tele gear. Part of the trails are on a gradual uphill road, nice and wide and perfect for practicing tele turns! So I've been working on my turns every time I go down the road. On the short section when we're skiing loops at the top of the trail and on the long section when it's time to ski down to the parking lot. I've even been faithfully practicing during our L3 and L4 intervals. I mean, it only makes the downhill take a little longer, right?
When I started my L4 intervals this morning Erik cheerfully said, "I'll do this first one with you, Laura!" The interval started on the outhouse loop before dropping down to the first turnoff and back up to the highest loop. When we reached the downhill I faced a conundrum: tele turn or not? On one hand I'm very focused on my goals and I'd tele turned during every other interval we'd done up there, but on the other hand I didn't want Erik to think I wasn't taking the intervals seriously. My uneasiness froze me into inaction and before I had resolved my moral dilemma the downhill was over and it was time to ski hard again.
I went back to making tele turns on my remaining three intervals... there are some instances where it's fine (and probably better) if your coach doesn't know exactly what you're doing.
posted by LAV at 15:25
2 Comments:
Soon you may learn that there are different camps in the backcountry crowds: tele-nerds, lock-downers and boarders. And the crust skier cult. Each camp is nice to the other camp, but each usually snickers at the other camp behind their backs. I’m a lock’em down type. Gotta laugh at the knee droppers. They usually don’t dip when the gnarl goes nasty. You might want to figure out sooner than too late, that tele-heads have a high instance of trashing their ACLs, and then becoming lock-downs or (gaffaw..) boarders when their knee heals. Maybe think about being a tele-babe after retiring from your hopefully long and illustrious xc racing career. Maybe do it when you have a job, time to heal and a good health insurance policy to pay for rebuilding your knee(s). Just a random opinion from a randonee’er.
don't worry, I'll stay mostly out of the backcountry for awhile and stick to the racing cult and continue to snidely mock all the backcountry cults from my vista on the well-groomed trails.
I did wish I had a pair of alpine skis when I was at the top of powerline pass this morning... then I would have been able to carve some turns!
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