Verbalists

Julia’s facility with words has always been strong; she was talking as well at two or three as many five-year-olds (including some of her current classmates). Since starting kindergarten, she has, as we expected, rapidly acquired and improved her writing and reading skills. She’s always loved to draw pictures, so being able to label some part of the picture, or to write out all-text stories, is new and wonderful. She’s also quickly complemented her writing abilities with very good, and constantly improving, reading skills. Just this morning, for instance, she read aloud three pages in a kids’ magazine that she’d never seen before.

I’m a bit surprised by how satisfying I find all of this. Undoubtedly because I’m a guy who likes words and who values verbal skills (and who makes his living by writing end editing), I find it immensely pleasing that Julia enjoys writing, reading, learning new words, wordplay, and the like so much. It just feels right that she does.

And that’s only the half of it. Mostly because she wants to do everything and anything that Julia does, Genevieve, too, has quickly and impressively mastered the alphabet (with the curious omission of K, which she refuses to write) and delights in writing, both for particular purposes – birthday cards, thank-you notes, “menus” for playing kitchen – and for pure fun, like this morning when she carefully used big block letters to write “BackYeLLoWaBaBYHappy.” As she told me solemnly after finishing this little bit of preschooler Dada, “It’s a good fing that I dint wite ‘pencilbaby’ again!”

Olympiaddicted

The Vancouver Games are turning out to be pretty engaging, which means I’m writing a lot of stuff about the nordic skiing events, like this look at the unexpected results of today’s sprint races or yesterday’s assessment of just how bad Norway is doing. Perhaps you’ll enjoy reading them – or perhaps you’ll be appalled at the way I waste my evenings.

(Credit to my writer friend Mary for the title!)

Julia’s Manifesto

The Saturday morning daddy-daughter breakfasts at the downtown coffeeshop incline Julia toward thinking about crucial issues in her life, such as whether cream cheese is better than peanut butter (it isn’t), when she can have coffee (when she’s older), and why we can’t go out for breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday. So far, she’s reasonably accepting of the (real) answer to this last question, which is that, even though we are very lucky to have a house and food and clothes and a car and toys and some fun stuff (“like your skis, Daddy”), we can’t afford to hit the coffeeshop twice in two days.

This shades quite naturally into questions about why we live in a “little house” (a townhouse), not a “big house” like her friends, and from there it’s a short distance to a broader discussion of having stuff, and how much is enough, and why some people don’t have enough (like the little girl in her kindergarten who sometimes doesn’t have a snack).

Trust me, we have basically this same conversation every Saturday morning. It makes me feel a little bit guilty about ordering a latte and not just a small cup of the light roast.

Last Saturday, Julia let the have/have not conversation tail off. I got busy doing something with Genevieve, and hardly noticed that Julia was busy working on something that required me to spell out an occasional word. When she was finished, she read it out to me. It’s cute and sad and hopeful all at once. I’m so proud of my Junior Democrat!
Julia's Manifesto

Translation:

The world is good for some people but for some people the world is not good because they do not have enough so you give them money. By Julia Tassava.

Olympian Conditions

I welcomed the Olympic Winter Games by knocking off early and going out for a long ski in Carleton’s Lower Arb. Conditions were magnificent: 20°F, no wind, cloudless blue sky, brilliant sunshine, and brand-new classic tracks everywhere. Fantastic. I love running on these same trails in the summer, but there’s nothing better than skiing on them.
Tracks

Arb Oak

Tracks

A Classic Race, or, Far Too Many Words on One Ski Race

That was fun. Apart from a little transportation glitch* that led to the relatively minor problem of missing my start by a minute, the City of Lakes Loppet classic race could not have gone better. Okay, I might have skied faster – and will try, next year.

In brief, I started pretty well, maintained a solid pace throughout the race, did well on the uphills (thanks to a good wax job), and saved enough to be able to chase down a bunch of racers in the last 5k, which is mostly fast, flat skiing over a couple of lakes. I finished, officially, in 1:47:10, which is well under the guesstimate I extrapolated from training times and the previous two years’ races in the longer freestyle event. My finish was good for 74th out of the 233 male skiers – upper third, baby, and almost a half hour ahead of the average.

More than those particulars, I felt good through the whole race: decently strong, under control, and most importantly able to accelerate as needed. All those uphill double-pole interval workouts paid off! In addition to making me feel like I did a halfway good job training for the race, this good experience inclines me to think that with more and better training next year (and the luck to avoid getting sick the week before the race), I should be able to cut quite a bit of time off in next year’s race – only 360-some days away!

So, the race itself…

The transportation problems meant that I arrived at the race late, which in turn meant I had to skip any warmup except running up to the start pen. (I also didn’t have time to find and say “hi” to my e-friends. Bah!) I threw my bag into the pile that would be carried to the finish, found a way into the pen, slapped on my skis, fastened my pole straps, hit my stopwatch, and started skiing. If I’d made it into my assigned second wave, I’d have had roughly a third less traffic ahead of me, but the course was such that passing was easy, whether on the infrequent flats in the first half of the race or, better, on either the uphills or the downhills. I probably passed fifty people, altogether, simply because I descended in a tuck while they stood up, and half that many because I stepped through turns instead of snowplowing.

My wax job helped, too. The conditions were hardly sketchy – day-old but fine snow, air temps ranging from about 15° to 20°F – but I still had the right glide and kick waxes on my skis, and it was immensely heartening, especially in the first third of the race, on a hilly golf course, to kick better than a lot of people going uphill and to outglide almost everyone going downhill. Visual proof (as shot by a guy who skied the race with a camera mounted on his head!): that’s me on the left, bib #138:

City of Lakes Loppet Action Shot (by Rich Hoeg)
City of Lakes Loppet Action Shot (by Rich Hoeg)

Anyhow, I picked off people like crazy over the first 5k, and more slowly but steadily over the next 5k. All that’s not to say there weren’t a couple unfortunate moments. Back-of-the-pack racers tend to be terrible descenders, and while I avoided several actual spills, I ended up crashing hard on my shoulder after a woman did a funky little 270° thingy – but didn’t actually fall! – ahead of me. I bounced back up and used the adrenaline to catch and drop her right away (the better to prevent another such mishap).

A little bit later, the course flattened and the traffic thinned out, and I got into a nice groove of just skiing along, mostly in a steady double-pole that I swapped every now and then for a few minutes of striding. There were still enough people in front that I could pick out particular racers to chase, which helped immensely with motivation and keeping my speed up. I don’t think anyone caught me from behind, except for one guy whom I passed but who caught me back a k or so later and wound up finishing just ahead of me.

The emptier trails also gave me a chance to refuel with a few hits from my water bottle and a delicious espresso energy gel. Gel? What gel? Where the hell were my gels? They weren’t dangling carbohydratally from my drink belt when I reached for them, about an hour into the race, so I can only assume that they fell off when I crashed. Oh well. I took some water at the aid stations and, with about twenty minutes to go, downed a few ounces of sweet, sweet Coca-Cola.

That elixir did wonders. I had started feeling just a little peaked around then – maybe 1:20 into the race – and found I didn’t have the oomph to close down the gaps to a couple guys who were maybe 30 seconds up the trail and visibly skiing no faster than I was. But within a couple minutes of sucking down the Coke, I felt good enough that I could pretend to hammered my double-pole for two minutes, bringing me up to and then past both of those guys. As I went through, rather enjoying the slippery lake ice underneath me, I realized that we were already approaching the finish line. Herringboning up the rise off the lake, I saw that two other guys whom I’d written off were right there, just starting the straightaway to the finish, which is a gentle but long uphill. The snow here is always deep, sugary goop, but my DP continued to work, and I passed both of them well before the line – satisfyingly capping off a pretty decent race.

What’ll be even more satisfying next year is going ten or fifteen minutes faster, which would put me in the top fifty or so. It’s pretty obvious how do do that – more long skis of 2:30 or more, more longer intervals of 4 minutes or more, and better classic technique. It’ll be fun trying to improve on my time and place next year!

* The transportation glitch was simple, but annoying: too few shuttle buses running between the remote parking lot and the race start (which is too compact a place to have enough parking). The last two years, I’ve parked and walked right onto a bus. This year, I waited for a good twenty minutes, and finally boarded about 25 minutes before my race was supposed to start. This meant I had no time to spare for a warmup – or to stop at the Porta Potties – and that I even missed my wave, and thus started a minute later than my assigned time. Thank god I’d waxed the night before…

Stoked

I wish I could do a race every two or three months. Everything about the experience – choosing an event, training for it, anticipating the race as it approaches, doing the race-eve prep, enjoying the race-day atmosphere, and of course actually racing – is fun, so much fun that I would like to do it four or six times a year.

Alas, right now I cannot, so I am especially savoring the run-up to the City of Lakes Loppet classic race tomorrow. Not only will I probably get to meet two skiers I only know through social media, but everything should be just about perfect for the race: we’ve had new snow on an excellent base, the race organizer have done their usual superlative work, and it appears that we’re going to get good weather – or even some racetime snow, just to mix things up.

The classic race has its largest-ever field, so the organizers are going to start us in three waves of about 120 people each. Somehow (clearly not knowing I’d never kickwaxed a classic ski before December), they seeded me in the second wave, a perfect position since it means the fastest racers will be long gone before I even start and since it will put me in with a lot of skiers whose speed and skills should be a decent match to my own. Skiing in a group is a lot more fun, and a lot faster, than skiing alone.

Anyhow, I’m bouncing off the walls with expectation, and looking forward to skiing a solid race and enjoying the time on the course.

Tassava’s Bank for Northfield

Sunday, Genevieve decided, as part of an elaborate game of playing “bank,” that we needed a sign for “Tassava’s Bank for Northfield.” Here it is, in all its crazed but also well-punctuated splendor. The key parts are across the top – “Tassava’s” (note the apostrophe!) – and in the center “BANK” (love the N that looks like a W) – and along the bottom (“FOR NORTHFIE/LD”). The sign also includes some great extraneous letters and pseudo-words: “Bisca’s” and “ICSES” and “BSEi” and the line along the left, “STBE.”

Pure awesome.

Click through for a link to the annotated (deciphered) version on Flickr.

Tassava's Bank for Northfield

The Season for Ski Racing

January is a good time to enjoy nordic ski racing. On the “doing” side of things, I found out today that the Northfield High School nordic ski team is holding their annual fundraising race on Saturday, so I’m going to ski in that event, a little 5km around the Upper Arb. And yesterday I switched from competing in the 25km classic-technique race in the City of Lakes Loppet festival next month to the 32km freestyle-technique race, which should be an easier and better race for me, though longer. One of these years – maybe next year, when Vivi’s four and Julia’s six – I can actually do more than one long race in a season. There’s certainly no shortage of great events here in the Upper Midwest, whether a little north of the Twin Cities, a bit further away in the western end or the center of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or in the middle of Wisconsin.

On the “watching” side of things, I hope I can go to cheer at the NHS nordic ski team’s meet in the Arb on Thursday. I’m still enjoying the drama of the just-concluded Tour de Ski, and regular World Cup racing resumes this weekend in Estonia, proceeds to Russia, and then comes to this hemisphere for pre-Olympic races in Canada. The “Marathon Cup” race series, which parallels the World Cup and shares some of its top racers, is now underway as well, and includes its usual twin peaks: the 70km Marcialonga ski marathon in northern Italy on January 31 and the 90km Vasaloppet in southern Sweden on March 7 – just after the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, which open on February 12 – four weeks from today. Medal events in nordic skiing start on the second day, with ski jumping and a women’s biathlon race, and continue right through the last day (February 28), when the men’s 50km “marathon” race will be contested. I can’t wait.

Every Cloud Has a Cheesy Lining

I like this comparison in a comment by “Anthony” on a football blog today:

Rodgers’ Second Year
30TD, 7INT, 4.4k passing yards, 103 passer rating.

Favre’s Second Year
19TD, 24INT, 3.3k passing yards, 72 passer rating.

Brady’s Second Year
28TD, 14INT, 3.8k passing yards, 85.7 passer rating.

Manning’s Second Year
26TD, 15INT, 4.1k passing yards, 90.7 passer rating.

Roethlisberger’s Second Year
17TD, 9INT, 2.4k passing yards, 98.6 passer rating.

Brees’ Second Year
11TD, 15INT, 2.1k passing yards, 67.5 passer rating.

Warner’s Second Year
21TD, 18INT, 3.4k passing yards, 98.3 passer rating.

Rivers’ Second Year
21TD, 15INT, 3.2k passing yards, 82.4 passer rating.

Ski Whee

Today was the last day of the Tour de Ski, a multi-stage cross-country ski race that’s held in Europe just after the new year. Modelled to some degree on the Tour de France and shorter cycling stage races, the TdS has become a pretty big deal in the world of elite cross-country skiing – which isn’t saying much for most Americans (though a surprising number of people do follow elite skiing), but which means that in Europe, the Tour airs uninterrupted on many national TV channels and attracts thousands of spectators.

Up until today, this year’s Tour had been pretty good, with quite a few interesting and exciting races, a good dose of drama, and almost-daily changes on the men’s and women’s leaderboards. Today, though, the Tour had what might have been its best day ever. The Tour always ends – as it did today – with a “final climb” stage in which racers ski for about four miles through a scenic valley in northern Italy, then ski about two more miles up the slopes of a downhill ski resort. That’s it here, on the right edge of this course profile:

Course Profile of the Tour de Ski's "Final Climb" Up the Alpe Cermis
Course Profile of the Tour de Ski's "Final Climb" Up the Alpe Cermis

Yeah, the climb is brutal, regularly taking the best skiers in the world about twenty minutes to finish. (These are athletes who can ski 50km – 31 miles – of hilly terrain in about two hours.) And this year, this “final climb” stage saw excellent battles to see who would be the men’s and women’s Tour de Ski champions.

The women’s race was as good as any athletic contest I’ve seen in years, with a late attack by the second-placed skier, the young Polish skier Justyna Kowalcyzk, to pass the leader, the ebullient Slovenian Petra Majdic, and thereby win the TdS championship. But the men’s race was ten times better, pitting the brash young Norwegian Petter Northug – by consensus, the best skier in the world – against the older veteran, Lukas Bauer of the Czech Republic. Northug is a great tactician and a deadly sprinter, so pretty much everyone – including me – thought that he would toy with Bauer and then accelerate away for the win, which would be the most prominent single accomplishment of his short but already great career. To say Bauer was an underdog would be an understatement.

Bauer had other ideas. He first caught up to Northug, who was skiing extremely hard through the initial flat sections, and then remorselessly attacked as they hit the climb. Bauer steadily expanded his narrow lead until, by the top of the mountain, he had crushed Northug by a minute and sixteen seconds – a gigantic gap. His come-from-behind victory and TdS championship was incredible enough to make me say – as I did on Twitter – that “Lukas Bauer is my hero,” but then, rather than celebrating in really any way at all, he stood at the finish line with his skis and poles and greeted other racers – including Northug – as they labored over the line.

Lukas Bauer
Lukas Bauer

The suspense of the race was great, of course, and it’s fun to see how really good skiers ski, but it was really Bauer’s behavior at the finish line that reminded me why I spend quite a bit of time following relatively obscure sports like cycling and really obscure sports like XC skiing. When the action is great, it’s as inspiring as anything else in life.

And on top of all that, I had a nice hard ski workout of my own today.

The Theme for 2010: Monotasking

On Facebook the other day, I read a rather brilliant post by a rather brilliant member of the faculty in which she described trying to choose a “theme” for 2010 – the “theme” being a more general but still effective way to focus one’s energy than the usual set of resolutions. I’d been toying with a short list of resolutions, but honestly they’ve lost their charm. Read more fiction? Do one drawing a day? Be more patient with the girls? All (and suchlike) are less things that merit some sort of firm “resolution” and more like things I ought to do just to be a decent person.

But a theme! This, I could get behind. I mused about her examples (and several examples offered by others who had adopted similar “themes”) and about a possible theme for my own 2010. Then, this afternoon, a lightning bolt leapt from the radio while I was listening to “Car Talk” and struck me in the head: “monotasking” – defined online as “the carrying out of one task at a time; single-tasking.” Inevitably, there are zillions of resources on the web about monotasking, such as “6 Reasons Monotasking Will Help You Get More Done Than Multitasking,” some of which I’ll peruse (one at a time).

This afternoon’s epiphany perfectly complements a line from a novel that I have been repeating in my head since reading it: “Now we’re doing what we’re doing now” (uttered [as it happens] by the cold-blooded criminal Parker, in Richard Stark’s thriller Firebreak). I hope this mantra helps me do a bunch of good things: focusing on the girls when I’m with them (even if they’re each doing and wanting something different), taking up and completing discrete tasks on the job(s), checking Facebook and Twitter and email less frequently, enjoying a meal in its own right rather than a chance to read something and email and eat simultaneously. I might even be able to go several consecutive wakeful hours without using my iPod Touch.

Beyond those rewards, though, I also hope that monotasking will help me feel less pulled-apart and frazzled and frayed and disgruntled and dissatisfied – adjectives that certainly applied to 2009. Now I’m doing what I’m doing now. Next I’ll do something else.

Chrismoustache

Every now and again, partly because I’m deeply envious of the hirsute among us and partly because I figure that an almost-40-year-old guy should be able to have some goddamn facial hair, I try to grow a beard. Christmas Break 2009, being constituted by 13 days without any time in the office, was one of these times. I can’t say the Chrismoustache was a success, though I did leave my usual territory (five days of growth that look like most men’s five o’clock shadow) and venture into a new area that we might call Brokenrazoria or Drifterland. Anyhow, it’s all coming off tomorrow morning. I guess that I’ll never be able the end a ski race wearing an ice beard like the great Thomas Wassberg

Chrismoustache 2009
Chrismoustache 2009

Skiing Real and Virtual

Real: I had a nice 50-minute ski around the Upper Arb trails today in very nice conditions. We could use a few inches of snow to freshen things up, but the tracks are in pretty good shape and there were lots of people out enjoying them.

Virtual: Over at my other blog, the Nordic Commentary Project, I’ve written two posts on this weekend’s racing at Rogla, Slovenia: previews of the sprints that were held on Saturday and of the distance races to be held on Sunday. The racing’s been good this season, and it’s getting more intense ahead of the weeklong Tour de Ski stage race over the New Year’s holiday.