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Cross-country news - 18/4/6 This article first appeared in the magazine of the Manchester Cross Country Ski Club, and follows one of its members progress from rollerskier to hardened ski racer. For more information and to join the MCCSC, please visit their website, www.mccsc.org.uk Thanks go to Ros Brown-Grant for contributing this article - Ros has been introducing rollerskiing to new members of the Manchester club, one of England's most active clubs.
EVVIVA LA MARCIALONGA! By Ros Brown Grant Countdown to the race August 2005: The seed is sown… Was it the thin mountain air high in the Alpine village of Camerto (Cumbria) where we had gathered for our annual rollerski tour to Whitehaven? Or was it the excited chatter of my fellow skiers Mike and Helen Smith, Alan Shepard, Al Brown and Ellen-ann Finnighan all planning their loppet race calendars for 2006? Whatever it was, I suddenly thought to myself that I too should have a go at one of these loppet thingies given all the rollerskiing I was doing that summer. Though I had vowed publicly in the pages of that esteemed organ, the BMCCSA Newsletter, that I would never do so, such is my hatred of crowds, I would now have to eat humble pie. However, since it turns out that all the training involved gives you an enormous appetite, I soon found that I could gladly eat several slices of whatever pie was placed before me… October 2005: The gauntlet is thrown down (or, in my case, a fingerless mitten)… SSE rollerski skills course, Salt Ayre, Lancaster: as Mike Dixon swishes along beside me, despairing of ever improving my double pole technique, I quip to him that he has a week to turn me into a “lean, mean racing machine” during the On-snow skills course that I have signed up for in Sweden the following month. His bonny blue eyes try hard not to sparkle with disbelief as he mutters something encouraging which I later de-code as “Och, lassie, ye havnae a hope in hell”. Nothing daunted, I start eagerly on the training programme of putting the rest of your life on hold and rollerskiing for 25 hours a day that he emails out to us in preparation for the course ahead… November 2005: The end is nigh… Bruksvallarna ski camp, Sweden: Mike Dixon and Patrick Winterton are working hard to keep our minds focussed on skiing when there’s no snow for miles around and the rollerski track is iced over. What gems do I take away from their instruction? These are many and various. Most notably, a decreased sex-drive is a sure sign of over-training (there are 12 other signs apparently, but no-one remembers them) and my glycogen uptake is in velocity ratio to my CO2 max (well, it did make sense at the time). The really good news is that I have discovered an infallible diet: do as much rollerskiing as you like and you can eat as much as you want. I later shock my touchy-feely veggie friends after a yoga class in Chorlton by sinking my teeth into red meat in a restaurant… December 2005: The eager have landed… Christmas, and my husband Steve looks on in horror as all the clothes he bought for me as presents two months before just hang limply off my shrunken frame. As he tries to force a third helping of Christmas pudding into me in a vain attempt to restore my femininity, I rush out of the house for an intervals training session with Alan Shepard at the Howden and Derwent Dams. The holidays go by in a blur of rollerskiing and eating our way through the pasty and baked potato menu at the Fairholmes carpark in between our training runs. Evening sessions consist of jive-dancing in Prestwich or Bowdon where my high spirits lead me to attempt ever more dangerous jumps and drops, whilst Sylvia Mercer struggles to remind me that I have a big race to do in a month’s time… January 2006: The going gets tough but the tough keep going… Our first rollerski tour of the new year and race fever sweeps South Manchester! Alan Shepard and Kathy England have just triumphed in the Jizerska races in the Czech Republic and their tales of derring-do infect our improvers from the autumn rollercoaching course with amazing enthusiasm. No sooner have Leif Andersen, Alison Pawley and Sue Bambridge completed their first 12 miles from Chorlton to Debdale on rollers than they are excitedly talking about us organising a group to do the Engadin ski marathon in 2007! As a coach, I swell with pride like a mother hen at seeing our tender chicks showing such promise, though I keep fingers crossed that it’s not just avian flu… The race arrives! Oh, the beauty of synergy as all our complicated travel plans come together. Al and Ellen-ann come over from the Dolomitenlauf to meet me at Verona train station and we journey on to Ora where we are picked up by Alan in his car and driven to our hotel high above the valley where the Marcialonga will take place. We spend the next two days scouting the route, shopping, trying to get rid of Alan’s cold, more shopping, and compiling a user’s guide to all the hot chocolates served in the region. The route-scouting proves invaluable as Alan totally takes the fear out of the hills at the start and the end of the race and we practice crucial techniques such as waxing, lane-changing, scraping off balled-up skis and trying on new outfits. Having wanted to buy a tight, clingy skisuit and failed miserably, I curse the manufacturers for making everything bloody unisex (i.e. made for men) and therefore doomed never to fit those of us of a more dainty build. When our hotel fills up with Scandinavian giants the night before the race, I start to understand why this is the case but still lament the fact that the race is not exclusively reserved for androgynous dwarves like me. On the morning of the race itself, we carbo-load like mad as Al and Ellen-ann chuck as much porridge down their necks as possible. Alan can see that I’m getting very twitchy but reassures me that this means I have peaked at just the right time for the race. I only hope he’s right and that I’m not about to freak out from a sugar-rush. The actual start of the race is very emotional as Pavarotti sings “Nessun dorma” over the loudspeakers and thousands of people surge forward in different waves, all with the same thought in mind, i.e. “I’ve got to get to the finish before the free pasta runs out”. I struggle to recall all of Alan’s race-tips as I push ahead: keep elbows well in during the mass start to avoid losing a pole and take little relaxed steps in the bottlenecks up the hills. The first few kilometres are slow as we move in a huge herd along the tracks through the villages and down by the river on our way up the valley to Canazei. The weather, which had been grey, clagged-in and snowy two days before, turns into stunning blue skies as glorious pink limestone peaks are revealed above the treeline. Some of the competitors are so taken with this view that they stop for photographs. A huge grin spreads across my face at the sheer beauty of the landscape, the excitement of the race and the prospect of at least seven food stops on the way. All these warm, glowing thoughts are only interrupted by two bothersome incidents: some competitors decide that going up crowded hills on skis is a bore and take them off to walk, whilst later, as the wax wears off, others resort to skating up the hills in what is supposed to be a classic race. I try not to let this annoy me at the time but mutter darkly to myself about divine retribution and fantasise about a well-timed trip-up on a lonely and icy descent… But, the Mike Dixon training in positive thinking then kicks in and I start to concentrate on what’s more important instead: patting myself on the back as I clock up the kilometres, working on technique if the wax starts to fail, and looking out for good-looking Italian men… On this latter subject, Kathy England, that seasoned loppeteer, had told me that the best thing about this race was the hordes of handsome Italian firemen who leap forward to help you if you fall over (well, they do if you are female). None in the first 20k had caught my eye, but, as I crested a hill, I spied a likely candidate. Cleverly making it look as though I have been cut up by some brutal macho fool, I sprawl at the feet of an olive-skinned, raven-haired vision in khaki. “May I?”, he purrs, taking my arm, as I coo back “Oh do, do!”, all in faultless Italian, we are like something out of an updated E.M. Forster novel. It was the highlight of the race for me, though I bitterly regretted not having put on some waterproof mascara just for that moment. On the question of moral support, the race is extraordinary as locals line up along most of the length of the course, jangling cowbells, shouting encouragement and plying you with food and drink. This has a very positive effect on your performance because it ties into the key Italian notion of keeping up a good appearance or, as they put it, “non fare una brutta figura”. As you ski past the locals, you want them to shout out “Bravo” or “Brava” and so you raise your game, making it look as though you have been doing perfect double-pole kick or diagonal stride on every single metre of the race. I have been told that this level of support is unique to this race since, in loppet events in other countries, competitors are more usually greeted with stony silence, bemusement or even hostility by those out walking their dogs, showing off their fur coats or driving their skidoos along the tracks. Yet another reason to love the Italians, I thought, as if I needed one… After Canazei, the route is mostly downhill, with the odd climb and long descent sorting out the half-decent skiers from the really rather crummy ones, some of whom fall over themselves like pairs of entangled photons ineluctably attracted to each other as they spill out of one track into the path of another skier. The temperature had gone up and the quality of the snow gone down, particularly in the villages (Moena, Predazzo and Molina) where it had turned to heavy mush. I had no wax left to speak off but, remembering what Alan had said about not sacrificing glide for grip in a race where almost two thirds of it is downhill, I struggled on double-poling for a good 40k. When I came to the foot of the final hill only 3k from the finish, a little surge of happiness ran through me as I knew that they put klister on your skis to get you up the last climb. Seeing it as an opportunity not a threat (again, thank you Mike Dixon!), and determined to put on as good a show as I could past the crowds, I trotted up the hill passing many knackered-looking skiers along the way. If only they knew, the reason I still had some fight left in my legs was because my arms had done most of the work up to that point. Heading for the finish in Cavalese (the most beautiful word in the Italian language), I looked out for a friendly face to greet me and was rewarded by the wonderful sight of Alan’s wife, Enid, pointing a camera at me. I think my grin cracked the lens before I headed down to plunge my face into a most welcome bowl of pasta, my chief motivation for the previous 70k. All four of us came in under 7 hours (which had been my personal target). Alan’s time was 6h18, which was heroic in view of an awful cold which had moved from his throat to his nose to his chest in the space of two days, Al’s was a cracking 6h47 and I managed 6h57. Ellen-ann’s time in the 45k Marcialonga Light (from Moena to Predazzo) was 5h41, another sterling achievement in the light of an unresolved thigh injury. Hot showers, a bout of cramp, a huge meal and a stretching session later, we sat around the hotel bar supping enormous hot chocolates and being regaled by the normally taciturn hotel manageress with tales of the VIPs who grace the Marcialonga with their presence. Did you know that the king of Norway skis it every year incognito? Fascinating. I just hope that next year she tells the king of Norway that we choose to do it in full view of our adoring public… Enormous thanks are due to Alan Shepard for his race expertise, his unfailing technical and moral support, and his sheer good humour in the face of adversity, whether meteorological or physiological. An equally big thanks to the rest of our great group for so much else: Enid for being there at the finishing line, Al for putting up with my jokes and Ellen-ann for the best de-cramping massage ever! Same again next year and this time we hit the dance floor after the race? It’s a date… Ros Brown-Grant Note to Adam Pinney, editor: Good god, man, isn’t it time you re-branded this unwieldy title to some stupid but snappy word with redundant punctuation, such as “Skidäddle”?
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