I hope you all had a Merry Christmas everyone and have a Happy New Year! 2012 Here we come!!
The Curve Ball
Ah yes the surprise….Well not all surprises come with balloons and happy faces which ironically was actually the type of surprise this was.
I might not have explained this earlier but after the National Team is chose the Head coach has final say on who races and who does not. This allows coaches to make changes if for whatever reason they believe that a particular athlete(s) on a team production may have decreased. In an attempt to start figuring out what was going on with the start and why considering the push athletes testing numbers our start times were not in the top ten or higher, they informed the team that they were taking me off the 4-man team this week and were replacing me with the alternate!! Without me saying it you can imagine what was going through my head, actually from the expression on my face everyone in the room knew what was going through my head as well. The coaches asked if anyone had any questions and surprisingly enough I was able to hold my tongue because I knew that with the way I was feeling nothing positive, coherent or proper would have come out of my mouth.
After the meeting one of my teammates came over to speak with me about the coach’s decision. We talked about a few different things, resulting in me calming down enough so I could speak to the -coaches about the decision they just made. I ended up having about a forty-five minute conversation with the coaches, doing my best to understand their logic. I won’t go into the details of the conversation that was had but they were not happy with my two-man push the week before and as I mentioned before they had not been pleased with our four-man pushes either. They explained that this is the first of many evaluations and that they will possibly try something different next week. I admit I did not like their answer but I had to respect their decision just as they had to respect my reasons for why I thought taking me of the four-man was a mistake. Regardless their decision was their decision and for this week I would not be racing.
I would like to say that after talking to the coaches my anger had subsided but that would be a complete lie! In my head I was kicking over furniture, burning down cities, blowing up cars along with a million other things that would not be politically correct to type. Along with those thoughts a part of me was feverishly repeating the Lord’s Prayer to keep me calm. While this was going on I reached out to one of my sisters asking her to pray for me. The extra time from not racing made me really think about the bible verses that I read in the book of James ch2 v14 that says “what good is it my brothers if a man claims to have faith but has not actions?” It made me realize that if I claim to have faith that no matter what is going on in my life, no matter how horrible it looks from my perspective that if I truly have faith and trust that God has my best interest in mind then it will work out in the long run. Having those thoughts in my mind I decided to use this time to my advantage; I studied a ton of mines and others push video with my head coach as to identify any possible inefficiencies I may have in my push technique. That week I did have some intense lifting and sprinting sessions since I was not worried about my legs being too tired before a race. I even created a couple of new drills designed to reinforce proper push technique; personally although I was not racing it was a great week of training for me. On Thursday training it was my turn to push, allowing me to apply drills and technique I had been practicing. This resulted in me pushing closer to USA 1 in practice than I previously had; it was good sign from my stand point.
Like normal the 2-Man Race was scheduled to take place on Saturday with the 4-Man Race to be held on Sunday. Although I was not racing I still helped with sanding the runner along with all other normal sled preparations. At best the feeling of racing felt extremely weird but to counteract that weirdness I had an intense sprint workout before the start of the 4-man race, but sorry I am getting ahead of myself. For this week 2-man race it was Chris Fogt’s turn to push with napes once again the start was not exactly what people were expecting but being that Napes is a good driver and the track was long they finished in 11th place. As I mentioned the next day was the 4-man race and I was definitely feeling like I was in a Bizzaro Land having to watch. Once again I kept repeating the Lord’s Prayer to keep me calm that along with doing a sprint workout helped me to keep calm. On this day the USA 2 sled was 12th off, I helped carried the sled to the line for the guys as they prepared to push; placing it in the start groves for them as the sixty second start countdown began. While watching the guys push my adrenaline was pumping for them….I felt like a Wyld Stallyns(Be Excellent to Each Other! Thank you Bill & Ted) tied to a two-thousand year old tree forbidden to help my team! The guys pushed and the time was relatively slower to the field than it was our past races, once again Napes was able to drive to 13th. After the race not much was really said we just packed up the gear like normal and headed on to the next race in Winterberg, Germany.
A day after we arrived in Germany one of my Teammates informed me that I was back on the 4-Man Team for the race; I thought the coaches would have informed me about this but I was wrong in that thinking but I was racing again like I should have been so who cares how the info came about. In their continual attempt to figure out our start issues the coaches decided to have a 2-man race off between Johnny Quinn and Adam Clark to see who would race in the 4-man race. This move was a bit unusual since the race off is normally in the discipline that you are racing i.e. if you race of for the 2-man position using the 2-man sled and switching out the two guys in question and you race of for the 4-man position using the 4-man sled plus crew switching out the two guys in question. Regardless Johnny won the race off thereby keeping our team together, now for the life of me I don’t understand why I was not given any type of Race off before they took me off the sled but that is just some of the things I have to deal with. Yeah not fun! Now our 4-man team was back to its original group, the man 2-was another story. In order to try and get Napes a faster start Justin Olsen was chosen to push 2-man with napes this week. Me and the other guys did not take it personal at all, we just figured do what you guys feel you need to do to get a faster start plus we were more concerned about getting a good 4-man result.
I feel like I keep repeating myself but the first half of the season was just not going the way any of us could have imagined. We thought we were good to go for 4-man until Fogt started showing flu like systems forcing us to use Adam for the day of 4-man training, allowing Fogt to rest up for the 4-man race. The 2-Man race went off as planned with bit of snow in the forecast that was pretty sporadic snowing for some sleds and stopping for others. Napes and Justin pushes were once again not as fast as people expected and initially they were in 20th (only the top 20 sleds get a second run) but we thought they were in 21st and we almost packed the sled up! Luckily Gomer the Russian coach told us he thought we were in 20th so we waited for the official results from the first heat and Gomer was right! The sled was very close to being put on the truck!! It’s a good thing when the sled came back up we just left it in the scabbards and never attempted to take of the runners otherwise we would have been disqualified!! Once we found out that they had a second run we told Napes and Justin, they did a quick warm-up and were back on the start block. Their second push was better but still not where the coaches would have like to see it and in the end they finished in 14th.
The weather conditions were pretty much the same for the 4-man race if not worse. The warm-up for the race if you want to call it that was straight blizzard conditions on and off, added to the fact that Fogt was still throwing up before the race and would be afterwards. In conditions like this the plan is to get the sled down and into the start groves as soon as possible before more snow builds up in the start groves and within the track itself. We get to the start line with our plan in effect! The sled before us goes off and half way down there run we all begin stripping down to our speed suits so we are ready to go as soon as possible. They clear the start of the track for our run, the 60 second clock starts, we drop the sled and are getting ready to go. However the light system that is a secondary measure is still red and not green! So they stop us from going! They then reset the clock and the light but by this time more snow has built up, my coach then stops the guys at the start and asks them if we can get the start swept again (it was a good catch). First of all they did a crappy job of sweeping out the start and snow was building up in the track as well since the message to sweep apparently got out slow. Meanwhile we are getting colder by the minute and this is not helping Fogt’s flu systems by any means of the imagination. Finally we get the go ahead to start and we fire out the hole…..yup at the bottom we find out our push is not what we had hoped compared to the field. Napes then tell us about the snow build-up he saw in the track and wouldn’t you know it that after the run the snot STOPS!! Are you Kidding me right now is all I’m thinking as I see sleds we out pushed coming down the track faster than us by a good amount. The second heat would not go much different except the snow had stopped but it was a lot to recover from and we finished up in 15th! We were not happy by any means but sometimes racing is not always peachy keen. However it does mean that we have to work harder second half to fix whatever issues we are having and God willing second half will go better! I have to take my hat off to the guys on USA 1 because they have had some great finishes but I know we are capable of being on that same level!
The Break and Second Half
Due to this year’s Race schedule we only had a ten day break. I arrived in the States on December 20 and left for Frankfurt Germany yesterday, arriving in time to ring in the New Year!! Over the break I stayed at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs so I could regroup and focus on how I can help my team get better on the second half of tour. I took a few days off while I was back but then it was back to training. Along with lifting and sprint workouts I continued to break down my pushing form working on the small details that go a long was; slowing it down in my head in order to improve my overall technique. While I was back in Colorado I had the opportunity to meet some really great people who I am still getting to know but I’m pretty sure we will be friends for a very long time. I met one gentleman on the plane ride back from Frankfurt he name was…….well this e-mail is getting long so I will finish in my next installment!!! Yeah I just did that!
Sorry you all know I have a weird sense of humor
I am almost done labeling my pictures so check them out in the next couple days. They will be posted on the Media page on my web site under the title 2011 First Half Photos!!
P.S we just rang in the New Years at Hotel Mercure in Frankfurt Germany!!
HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE AND GOD BLESS!!!
Jesse
