 Poster: A snowHead
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Well after all the WC stuff we see in this forum, maybe time for something a bit more down to earth  .
Went to my first Regional Race on Saturday and really quite enjoyed it - and am left with a mixture of exhilaration and frustration. Exhilaration in that I skied much better than I could have done, and got all three timed runs clean down the course, but frustration in that they were much less smooth and more tentative than I have been managing in practice recently. Still, I guess it was inexperience and the nerves tightening me up a bit, particularly as I usually take several runs down a course before I avoid skiing out, but I did manage to improve over a second between the first and third run. End result was that I came about 2/3 of the way down the field overall and in my age-group, came second (by a whisker) out of the four of us from our training group, and managed to beat all but two of the under-nines   ! So pretty crap, but plenty of room for improvement. There's a fair few in my agegroup, so plenty of targets to overtake, but the downside is that there are some pretty decent skiers at the top, whom I doubt I'll ever catch, so podiums of any variety look highly unlikely. I am a couple of years older than all/most of those though, so maybe things are looking promising for four years' time when I move into the next agegroup, all of whom I beat even this time around .
The most enjoyable runs for me though were the Dual Slalom head-to-head and team (effectively relay) races - you actually get the feeling you're actually racing against someone real then, and it provoked some pretty fun death-or-glory antics on the bottom half of the course. The irony though was that I won easily the one I should have lost, but lost those I should have won, and one of those was the needle match against the training partner I'd just pipped in the timed runs  ! That one I actually sort of threw away as I was leading fairly clearly half way down, then took the foot off the gas a bit, lost attack and got a bit late on the gates, resulting in a VERY painful straddle of the last gate, and ended up trying to avoid the timing equipment and running through his timing gate rather than my own!
Oh well, plenty to concentrate on for the next one in two weeks' time. 
I seem to remember PG saying something about FIS having turned down a proposal to make Dual Slalom a sanctioned event. As it seems to offer much more excitiement, both as competitor and spectator, this seems a bit perverse. I suppose the problems are a) safety when getting two skiers bombing down at full throttle, b) rankings end up a bit luck-of-the-draw and c) the courses end up being straighter and less technical (although that maybe less of a problem on open hillsides than on restricted width plastic slopes). One way round the b) point would of course be to run it similar to speed skating, where it's actually the final time that matters rather than a knock-out position. Any insight, Pete?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Graham,
I've only ever run two gate runs but even I know where my mistakes were made and how they can affect the time.
A crap or ragged turn in the wrong place can rubbish the run so getting clean runs sounds like good going to me.
I enjoyed the gates but can't think of anything more boring than skiing on plastic... I think I will leave it for real snow...or not at all
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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GrahamN, not sure how it works on plastic, but on snow the individual dual GS or slalom competitions are usually seeded, with seeded racers nos 1 and 2 at opposite ends of the draw of say 32 (like in tennis). In theory those two meet in the final. Each successive round has the racers going down twice - once on each course (because one run is almost always faster than the other), and it's the aggregate time that counts. Safety definitely isn't an issue on snow but I've no idea how close together the runs have to be on plastic... it's not a problem for FIS, that's for sure.
You get more parallel GS races than slaloms on snow over here. They're great fun. As you know, you've never won until you're over the line! Each face-off is tactical to an extent as well, especially as it's the aggregate time from two separate descents, so I don't think the speed skating system idea wouldn't go down too well in France, at any rate. Bit complicated as well.
You're right - the team parallels are excellent! - both for the racers and the spectators.
Can't remember offhand what the plans are for PSL at FIS level. We have it in snowboarding, why not in alpine skiing.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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PG, individual Dual Slalom within our region is a set of three races where you race each other member of a group of 4, the groups being essentially cut out from closest finishing times from the individual solo slalom, irrespective of agegroup. This means that the races should be as close as possible, although you then end up with a rawer deal if you come say 8th in the solo than 9th, as 8th is skiing against three better skiers while 9th is skiing against the three next weaker. Looking at this weeks results, that form held pretty accurately for the top 20 or 30 positions, but there's a bit more chance as you drop down the list (as you expect, the less experienced skiers probably also being less consistent). They do switch you round between courses for different runs, but not against the same opponent. I think the other regions have similar but not identical arrangements.
As yet I've still only seen two plastic slopes so I don't know how generic this is, but you can't really get much more than half a mat offset between gates on a parallel course and leave enough space between the courses - so it's essentially little more than an offset verticale run, which suits me just fine!
Overall I think ours are the easiest rules (simple best time of three runs rather than any aggregating, and you get a bit of practice on the course before kickoff  ), but the objective is to have a fun league to encourage kids and beginners - and seems to work pretty well on that basis. For overall league positions you score one point for each win, and you had scored 21-position_in_agegroup points (with 25 for coming first in agegroup) for the solo races. The team races are a knockout with some sort of rough seeding.
easiski, that must have been a completely different balding middle-aged git who couldn't ski faster than an eight year old!
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GrahamN, eat more pies son.
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GrahamN, sounds good to me. The alternating between courses is vital on snow though - I was at a French national race a few seasons ago where for the first of a possible 5 rounds to get to the final (32 starters) they had a single run to speed things up. The eventual winner (and no. 1 seed) took round 1 by a mere 1/100th of a second against the no 32 seed despite not making a single mistake - then went on to win each successive round quite comfortably once it was the aggregate of runs on both sides of the course.
Having two runs actually makes it fun - you get to know pretty quickly which is the best side - thus the favourite can lose by a few tenths on the slower run, if he/she's first down. Then he/she sets off for run two knowing he/she has the advantage of the faster course, but still with the worry that there's time to make up at the back of the mind.
It's impossible to get identical runs on both sides, even if you measure to the nearest centimetre. Conditions change (ruts etc) as the competition goes on, and there are always slight differences in terrain, not always visible to the onlooker.
It's an identical system to the Olympic snowboarder parallel GS races in fact, if you've seen those.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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ski, probably, although I'll see how it goes on the 10th first.....their rules are tougher than this lot's!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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GrahamN, I think skiing the course would be much quicker than running. if you stick to running thing, then ignore the pie thing.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Frosty the Snowman, you could be right, but if doing the running thing I probably stand more chance of pointing in approximately the right direction.
Well, as of today I now have three under my belt, and it was really good to meet ski at today's LSERSA race at Aldershot. I have to say the more professional rules (no practice down the course first, combined times from best of first two runs plus the third) put a huge amount more pressure on the novice racer and maybe takes a bit of the fun out of it . Probably really good mental training though - it's a big disincentive to my natural "go hell-for-leather and evenually it'll work" approach. Despite not skiing anything like I hoped, I actually got the result within agegroup I was aiming for (and the best result I could realistically hope for) - although I'm not sure that the overall position was very good. Conversely last week at Christchurch I dropped a place lower within agegroup (when I was hoping to climb one), but made it into the top half of the field overall .
Currently my feelings on the whole thing are a bit of a mixed bag - not that I'm not enjoying the racing, but I'm pretty frustrated with my own performances. Looking at some of the others coming down with similar kinds of times to me, I'm horrified to think that I might look like that. If I were actually skiing as I feel I am I'd be at least a second faster down a 12 second course - as one of the coaches said today, it sounds like its time to get the video out. It's also a bit frustrating that I seem to be at that awkward bit on the crap-technique/performance curve where when I try working harder on the skis to get down the slope faster I actually end up going slower - I guess because I'm then even less smooth. I also clearly need to work hard at not leaving what little ski technique I do have behind in the starting gate - but that's probably mainly down to lack of experience. Oh well, patience is a virtue (but not one I'm very good at).
The other really interesting thing is the competitive spirit this has all brought out in me. I've always been pretty driven to challenge myself against technical goals, but I've not really been that bothered about how that matched against others. Here though I'm finding getting a few places further up the field is immensely important to me  . As part of this, I've realised that the age-splits work very much in my favour this year: I stand a good chance of getting a podium position over the series if I can carry on doing no worse that today. Next year though another guy comes up into this division, who I stand no chance of beating, and a couple of others who will be tough come up the following year. So this has to be my year - which means I'm going to have to haul all the way over to Brentwood (which I didn't really want to do) in three weeks time, and the August race is the same day I've got a ticket for Glyndebourne  ....grrrr, decisions, decisions!
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You know it makes sense.
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easiski, oh, excellent....and I'll be going along to Mary's thing too, and it sound's like Andy R is getting interested in coming back to do a bit more coaching at Aldershot too, which'll be fantastic if he does. Yep, I just twigged yesterday evening the huge difference between having a slalom head (which I'm just starting to get), and a race head, i.e. being able to just turn it on from cold. Mostly I only wake up to what I need to do to go fast by about 3 gates in (or even that that's what I'm actually supposed to be trying to do) - by which time I've either dropped low on the gates, and need to do some survival skiing, or the time's out the window!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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ski, thanks for that, however unmerited! Skiing probably stopped about 6:10. I finally got away from there about 6:45 (getting home just in time for Dr Who). The organisation of the team races was all a bit of a shambles really, and with reruns and tiebreakers etc it wasn't at all clear when the final was - or even who'd won. One of our under-9s was in the winning scratch team and she and her team were stood around at the bottom of the lift for a few minutes being told not to go up the slope wondering what on earth was happening - they weren't explicitly told they'd won, just that they didn't have to ski again!
Following your suggestion I've had a go at rousing the troops over here
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Oh well, next (and penultimate) installment in the South-Eastern region series was yesterday. It was good to see Dunk turn out for his first race in about 20 years (IIRC). Made a creditable showing for about the first 90% of his progress, although clearly "not entirely comfortable" with the forest of poles on the slope. Unfortunately, under their rules that last 10% is pretty vital and a storming last run ended in disaster for the day . I'll leave him to elaborate on the tale of woe.
My day was a little better, but with a nasty sting in the tail. Seeing the forerunner (Mary Ondrusz) not being entirely comfortable, and I've been recetly chastised for being way too aggressive with my runs, I was pretty conservative with the first run, and it was rubbish - loads of unnecessary skidded turns. 2nd run a lot better, with pretty cleanly carved turns, but still fairly conservative - 0.6 secs better than the first run. Trying to repeat that for the last run didn't really work, trying to put a bit more into one turn half way down resulted in a bit of a skid and probably cost about 0.1 sec - overall it was 0.2 secs slower than the 2nd run. Normalising times wrt the other skiers, it looks like I was nearly 1% slower than last time out - about 0.20 - 0.25 secs overall.
The really annoying thing about this is that I got beaten by my nearest rival in the series rankings within my agegroup - who I've normally been beating by up to a couple of seconds - by 0.08 sec . Until I looked carefully at the times I thought I'd just completely messed up the race, but now I see it's mainly that he skied about 10% (i.e. over 2 secs in 25) faster than he's ever done previously in this series (but similar to some of his results in the other series we both ski in). Of course if I'd skied to my form of the last race I'd have beaten him, by about 0.1 sec, so it's still largely my own fault  .
What makes it most galling, though, is that I was looking at a probable 2nd overall within the series (in agegroup), but this means that even if I get back to beating him in the last race (and so I end up 3-1 up on head-to-heads) we end up tied on the points table (due to the combination of discarding worst results and not every racer skiing in every race), and first countback, and he wins on 2nd countback due to having one more race than me to count in. The only way I can get an overall 2nd is either of a) me improving 7% in time and beating the series leader (on his home slope  ) or b) my rival having a complete disaster, and no other faster skiers entering the last race so I end up with a 2nd. Snowball's chance!!!!! Still, I am virtually guaranteed a 3rd place (the guy in 4th has a mathematical chance, but would need to make about 20% improvement and beat the series leader to beat me in the series).
The really depressing thing about all this is that I'd felt a real improvement in technique over the last month, with a much higher proportion of turns being carved, (although, easiski, I'm of course still sitting down too much ), and the chances of completing runs yesterday felt much less marginal than previously. So I was looking for a real improvement in my time. Part of the problem though may be that I've also been training with much tighter and wider courses to get the improvements on turn completion. That has resulted in a lot more slower runs and ski-outs in training though, so it does seem to have been counterproductive with keeping a race head on for straighter courses - and I think this course ended up being much easier than I originally thought. Half way down both 2nd and 3rd runs I had time to think "I could be skiing this harder". I guess that's good for the future, but cr@p for the middle of a race!!!
bu%%er, Bu%%ER, BU%%ER!!!!!!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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GrahamN, Sometimes improvements in technique do result in a temporary loss of time in a race. It'll be worth it in the end - it's only a transient phase, and only your first season after all. If Mary looked ill at ease, then the course was probably harder than you thought.
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GrahamN, I like your competitive spirit. Go for it.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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easiski, Mary has a knee injury, so probably isn't the best forerunner to watch.
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easiski, as rjs says, Mary has just started skiing again recently after blowing her ACL last year. rjs, she was actually a particularly good forerunner for me to watch, as she's been training in our sessions at Aldershot the last few weeks, and we've been having fairly similar successes/failures through the same courses.
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GrahamN, Took her longer to recover than Tom thought then.
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As the heading says " I have just run my first race". Not strictly true in my case, excepting racing snowplough in my teens, this is my first time through gates on plastic in over 20 years.
Skiing fast through gates IS HARD, although I am a good technical skier, racing is a whole different genre. The day was good fun and there are lots of very nice people involved with racing, some more seriously than myself. GrahamN, has worked hard on his racing, his understanding of skiing gates is much better than mine, this has been achieved by training. One afternoon at Aldershot has not really enhanced my race technique and if I wish to emulate GrahamN, I need to spend alot more time training rather than drinking in the pub.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Oh well, last one of the season done now, so time to update what seems to have turned into a blog for the last time - again with mixed feelings, but this time even more so.
Today the skiing was really entertaining - there were more ski-outs, straddles, and some of the most remarkable recovery skiing I've seen all year - almost up to Bode standards in come cases . I don't know what gsb's kids felt about the course (since they were at significantly closer to the front end of the finishing order than me ), but I found it really interesting. I think about half of the first 10 or so down skied out - mostly at the same gate - and some of those were some of the best skiers in the race. After that though, people got a better handle on the course - but it never really settled down to being routine. I felt it had some really interesting rhythm changes - two normally offset gates to start off, into a 3-element flush, then a big sweep into a hairpin immediately followed by a banana which then swept around a normal offset into another flush with a final couple of offset gates. It was the sweep between the first flush and the hairpin that was causing most of the problems. Talking to the course-setter afterwards he reckoned he'd set too straight a course and should have made it a bit trickier . As his son was one of those good skiers who didn't manage to record a time, maybe that's not a universally held opinion . Possibly on one count it was a bit straight as the leaders managed to get through the 15 gates in 9.5 seconds, but I think the rhythm-changes and opportunity for screwing up made it far from trivial.
As for my own performance, in practice I was feeling really good - good commitment to edges in the turns turns, plenty of movement in the knees, and managing to get round the markers left on the matting from yesterdays (schools) race at pretty much full speed. Once todays course was put up though could I sustain that?....could I hell . I seemed to have completely forgotten how to attack a pole, commit to edges on a turn, went all stiff and ended up wimping down the slope in a really hesitant wishy-washy skiddy manner - grrrr! I also lost about a second by making a really stupid mistake confusing myself on the course and setting up for the under-gate defining the banana two gates early - realising my mistake just in time to avoid skiing out, but needing me to virtually stop to make it round the right side of the top pole of the hairpin. That was the run you really go for it on, and should be the fastest of the day, but ended up being my slowest. The result was about the slowest time (relative to the leaders) I've managed all season - about a second slower per run than I should have been recording. As usual though, I felt much, much better in the dual slalom in the afternoon, and managed to get a vestige of technique back - although as the slowest team in the draw by a long way we got hammered in every race. BTW, ski was a no show today, and his team took the cowards way out and just spread themselves around the scratch teams, bemoaning the fact that their three fastest skiers weren't there. BAD SHOW - I think I counted about eight of you, and there were only the minimum required 5 of us (including none of our top 4) - at one point the commentator asked why there was no cheering from the Aldershot guys, and the obvious reply was that we were all in the start gate!
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and the miracle I needed after that August result happened - my big rival had the required disaster and skied out twice so got no recorded time. As (despite my crap performance) I still managed a reasonably comfortable agegroup 2nd place today....I ended up getting the 2nd place finish in the series overall - yay-hay! Unfortunately that doesn't really feel that good because I don't feel I've earned it.
Still this sets me up for the winter's training: 1) get my major technical problems sorted out, 2) sort out this psycho hang-up about being too conservative around the poles 3) get better at course assessment (which is actually part of the same thing as 2). The really strange thing is how this over cautious thing has happened - conservative is that last adjective usually applied to my skiing ("reckless" is far more usual). Still, I've only had one official skiout in the 24 solo runs (and a couple in dual slalom), although the gate judges did miss one I think I straddled (which didn't affect any result), and there was one important one that was definitely marginal.
So the goal for next year is to consistently take at least a second off my average time (and there's plenty of scope to achieve that) - which should get me to that series top spot in the old gits agegroup .
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Well done GrahamN, sounds like you're really taking to this racing malarky.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Hi,GrahamN, Good to see you again yesterday, I was expecting you to write this post during working hours My two liked the course, even though son took until 3rd run to get it completely right. I always think it's me that takes the cowards way out and just lets them compete. I hope your winter training goes well and look forward to seeing you in top spot next year.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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GrahamN, well done on the series result. Work commitments stopped me from making interesting lines around poles on Sunday.
I hope to see you at Aldershot soon, as I need to do some training???
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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ski, thanks, but that really says more about the weakness of my agegroup than anything else - I would have come 13th in yours! The only other groups in which I would have got a podium finish would have been the under 9 boys, under 9 girls or the various adult womens agegroups .
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FAQ
