The great winter of skiing really helped me realize how much I need to exercise all the time. I got relatively fit from near-daily skiing. I felt good. The regular exercise and prescription drug regimen kept my tremors really under control. I’ve struggled though since the snow became unskiable and then left completely.
The spring up here in Norden, as you’d guess, is not particularly quick to turn summery. We have had plenty of sun—probably more sun and less rain than I’d expect in Duluth for the same period. We’ve even had some days over 70F. Two, but who's counting?
It’s pretty cold still by comparison to what we might be used to in Duluth, which stays colder than most places. Lake Superior holds winter’s cold a lot longer than most other places in America. Picture living next to a humongous ice cube as it melts. We live two blocks off of Lake Superior’s shores in Duluth. I’ve gone on road bike rides this time of year, leaving the house bundled up in ice cube world, heading straight uphill on Hawthorne Road. Eight blocks uphill it’s been 20-degrees warmer than outside my door, and after 6 minutes of riding, I’m taking everything off and stuffing it in the back pockets of my cycling jersey. The return trip downhill to get home is much crazier as you drop 8 blocks and 20 degrees in about a minute. It’s like jumping into a cold bath. I usually just roll right to the garage, goosebumps turning into moosebumps, and jump in the sauna.
Jyväskylä seems to like 50F degrees this time of year, give or take a few degrees, but usually taking them. Anyone who bikes knows that 50F is about where biking becomes nice or not nice. For a pro, of course you’re going out in sub-50 for rides. It’s your job. You have the clothes for it. But for the rest of us, even when you have the clothes for it, it’s hard to make it feel like it’s not work to get out the door below 50. Welcome to my spring so far. But I'm trying.
This week has been pretty good as I’ve been out on my mountain bike all but one day, and it’s Friday. I just wrapped up a ride in Laajavuori. As I pointed out in an earlier post on trails, the mountain biking around here is plentiful and not exciting by comparison to Duluth. With its decade-long construction of 100+ miles of modern, IMBA flow-style trail, one of the things I crave right now maybe as much as a killer burrito, is Duluth mountain biking. Still, I’m making due.
Jyväskylä has tons of trail that mountain bikes work for, but it’s all pretty much at the poles of the spectrum—road-grade, fine crushed rock, all-weather ski-trail highway, which is great for riding in the rain though, so I am not living any of this. The opposite end of the spectrum is super-rutty, almost unride-able--or actually unride-able--rock-and-root foot paths that even the best trials riders might get tired of after a while.
Even with my challenged balance, I’m a fairly undaunted trail rider. I started riding mountain bike in the 1990s when riding meant deer paths, foot paths, and anything that you that might let you, theoretically, move through the woods on a bike. It was a slow, acrobatic affair, like often walking-speed or just a bit faster. Broken collar bones? Unheard of. Bruised hips? Always. I spent many an oh-shit moment in the ‘90s, slowly falling over at a standstill trying to pop out of my pedals before my ass hit whatever was below it to my left and right on the forest floor.
A good bike back then had a center of gravity that aided you with slow-moving balance. Combine a bike like that with a decent track-stand, and you were a solid mountain biker. It was about staying upright at near-stand-stills when facing “features.” Back then, features weren’t manmade, at least for cross country riding. They were rocks and roots and stumps, and steep down hills you needed your ass on your back wheel to get down--the kind of stuff most people taking up mountain biking in the last 10 years never would have put up with nor considered fun, let alone drop $7000 on a new bike to do it. But listen to old man farty-pants here. Let’s just say, if you liked 1990s mountain biking, Finland has a shit ton of it for you, so pack up your Breezer and make the trip over. Mossy rocks and never-ending roots await. I’m looking forward to July, dropper post engaged, the Santa Cruz flowing at low center of gravity through the birches at speeds a flinch away from a hospital visit.
So I’ve been out surveying the territory by bike, riding wide open ski trail, hitting the brakes and heading down single tracks that look promising, only to turn around 90% of the time due to wetness, lack of fun, or both. Yesterday I spent an hour on a “polku lenkki”—small foot path--around a lake. I started down it and it was technical but fun far enough along, that basically, what was the point of going back? I walked my bike through half of it though. It was all just about committing to it. I thought of my neighborhood biking dads shaking their heads at what I was doing.
I’ve seen Anne Kylloenen training twice this week while riding around looking for a stash of great single track. If you’re a Finn, you probably know who that is. For non-Finns, Anne is a veteran Olympic silver-medalist skier for Finland. I met her briefly in the parking lot at Laajavuori in January. She had recently moved to Jyväskylä. She wasn’t doing the Tour de Ski at the time and since NBC parked it commentator-less on Peacock, I wasn’t calling it either. In Finland, folks pretty much keep to themselves. I know that. But I’m not from Finland, so I introduced myself, told her my connection to the sport, and just had a nice, little introductory chat. Of course I did. What kind of TV analyst stumbles across an athlete they call on TV in a setting like that and don’t at least try to make a friendly connection and at least get a nugget? She was really very friendly. I was kind of surprised how friendly she was, especially since she was preparing to start a training session. Good impression made.
Anne skiing a few years back. I saw her skiing in this suit while watching the Finnish Championships in Vaajakoski, online. I couldn't miss her. It inspired my team's new suit a year later, after I couldn't pick out my athlete easily in the mass start at NCAAs. PC: Sakari Kekki/Finfoto
Anne is in the twilight of a pretty successful professional ski career, in an Olympic season. I am not familiar at all with what makes her tick, and I would be mistaken to assert so. But at her age and experience level, she is likely a very independent entity. She appears so anyway--she feels pro watching her train. She was lightning fast at the peak of her career in peak fitness, neither of which she’s displayed in recent years. The current Olympic season ahead can be a lot of things to an athlete like Anne--potentially great; potentially challenging. I hope it's going well. Regardless, she's a world-class skier and still at a level that on a good day, she can be at the top of the sport. Put it this way; she's legit. Her classic technique is model-perfect. Her release of the end of a classic kick is divine—perfect combo of relaxation, range of motion, and powerful snap. Her neutral body position in classic could inform any young aspiring skier what to strive for. While still not her strongest technique, she is one of the prettiest freestyle technicians in all of Finnish skiing. Technically, she’s a skiing work of art.
Just beyond our backyard is paved a path that seems very much to be a popular place to double pole. It’s probably about a 3-4 minute Level 3-4, sustained uphill double pole grade for an elite level skier on rollerskis from bottom to top. I’d have LOVED to have this exact spot for my teams as a ski coach. How ironic are the years spent with a near ulcer, driving all over northern Minnesota to find places motorists might not kill my athletes while rollerskiing, to now live just meters from a perfect interval hill with paved path completely separated from traffic, and no skiers to coach? Touché, Finland.
The top of the double pole climb
The clicking of carbide steel ski pole tips hitting asphalt has been a sound track of my life, and continues, as we play soccer in the back yard or sit on our back deck and relax in the evening. We live amongst rollerskiers. We do in Duluth too, but it’s pretty much just the Chandler family up the street, and they continue to risk their lives for it on roads. Here, it’s pretty constant rollerskier traffic by our house, day in and day out. Only, now I don’t HAVE TO analyze technique of the source of those rhythmic clicks. But I do. Iita actually said the other day in the car, “you know, you don’t have to tell us what that skier could do to ski better.” Once a coach…
I was riding bike back from Ladun Maja earlier this week on a paved path about 8k from home when about 200m ahead I saw a rollerskier coming my way. I knew instantly it was Anne. The rounded shoulders, the slight drift in weight transfer before she actually pops of her kick leg. This kind of instant recognition is partially why I talk to some of you on TV who watch skiing in America. It's not normal.
Today, I was out on the ski trails of Laajavuori, trying to familiarize myself with more single track that was fun and rideable. Back out on a dirt road after a muddy single track bout, I saw this woman just hauling ass running downhill through the woods on Kuntolenkki. I was kind of surprised and impressed at how quickly and effortlessly the woman ran downhill on the trail. It was Anne again.
I don’t know what it was that tickled me about seeing her twice in the same week while just going about old-guying my ass around the area woods on a mountain bike, but it felt cool. I know a lot of great skiers too, so I don’t think it’s a stardom thing as much as I’ve never lived where a top world-level skier might just show up while I’m out on my mountain bike. There’s something really kind of novel about that.
Proximity to star athletes promulgates a sense of what can be achieved. It’s not surprising that Anchorage, Alaska, is perhaps the hottest bed of rising cross country ski racers in America. Stratton Mountain has that going for it too, but it’s tucked away in a relatively small Vermont resort village with limited interaction with any sizeable population. Kids who go to the Stratton Mountain School get it every day, as do townsfolk nearby, but it’s not like Anchorage. While the Alaska Pacific University program can be credited for much of that effect, the fact that a kid biking around Anchorage at a time when Kikkan Randall was at her peak, might have run into her doing a set of intervals in a housing development, has cultural value and significance to developing more great ski racers. Sadie Bjornsen and Rosie Brennan have been there all while US skiing was rising as well. It’s not the sole reason Anchorage is pumping out folks like Gus Schumacher Luke Jager, and JC Schoonmaker, but it helps. And I think that’s what’s cool to me about running into Anne around Jyväskylä. It provides some cultural insight into Finland as a skiing nation. Seeing might not be believing, but it is believable.
Anne was running this morning on my normal ski trail, Kuntolenkki. Further down the path, she was going to run into about 40 school children about Iita’s age, and their teachers, whom I passed earlier in my ride. They were likely hiking out to our family’s favorite laavu—a log lean-to in the woods with a fire pit for roasting hot dogs and general merriment in the forest. I just loved the fact these kids were in school, out on the trails in the woods. That gives them a leg up to begin with.
Iita, Taavi, and our friend Anita (from the previous picture) at our fave laavu on Kuntolenkki
If you consider how Finland floats the sport of cross country skiing to the top level of the world in what I can only describe as an effortless-by-comparison manner than the United States needs to go about it, Anne running past those kids in the woods, matters. Just this winter, Finland edged the US to the World Championships finish line in a relay the US should’ve probably beaten them to. It would have been an historic first medal for the USA in that event. That doesn’t just happen. It’s cultural. You need that kind of depth of athlete base to choose from to pull it off. It’s expected in Finland, but those expectations are rooted in deeper, broader, cultural expectations too. With Anne Kyllönen running by you at 10 years old when you’re hiking in the woods, stuff like that doesn’t seem so impossible. Anne probably got that message several times as well through her own youth.
Over ten years ago now, I was among a group of skiing enthusiasts in Duluth who met about strategic planning for a snow-making venue in Duluth. It seemed impossible at the time. We’ve spent exhaustive amounts of time since, taking on more supporters and champions of the idea, strategizing, planning, fundraising, politicking. Today, that ski center exists. It’s actually there. It makes snow. It now holds skiing events. I’m so proud of it. But living here, it has struck me how Herculean an effort it has been for the ski community and City of Duluth, with our public priorities and sense of where tax dollars should and shouldn’t be spent in the United States. All to pull off a thing that really is almost expected by the Finnish public in every municipality of similar size in Finland. Our venue in Duluth isn’t special by Finnish standards. On the contrary, it’s almost a minimal expectation, really—if not the snow-making infrastructure itself, then the end result. Boiled down, that’s going to show up at the finish line in a World Championship relay.
Snow under sawdust. It'll be laid out to cross country ski on next October to November
Finns believe in healthy living. Their tax dollars, infrastructure, and politics, prove it. The health and wellness of their population does too. It’s in the rollerski path in front of my house and all over the city, and every city and town like it across the country. Duluth's Lakewalk isn’t special in Finland. It’s well below the minimal expectation of the public for safe spaces for citizens to move about other than in a car. The 2.5km of trail at the base of Spirit Mountain has nearly failed to materialize at multiple moments, because of the politics of city money going into it. It has actually been controversial! Trail like it exists here in mind-boggling amounts by comparison. It’s so easy to appreciate. How a project like that would be controversial would be disorienting to a Finn. And it makes me a bit weary returning from a place that almost universally supports things that matter to me, to a place that almost universally doesn't. Fundraising for things we shouldn't have to has become normal in America, and it's super sad. Forget fundraising for ski trails. I'm talking about fundraising for schools.
In a board meeting for an organization I serve—the National Nordic Foundation, a fundraising organization I care about and you can feel free to support too—it was casually stated that the United States’ biggest ski racing circuit was likely to have a competition stop in Duluth at Grand Avenue Nordic Center this coming winter. I don’t know that it’s certain and don’t want to let any cats out of the bag nor shoot any clowns, but I choked up when I heard it. Because when you work as hard as our community did to bring about what Finns merely expect of their municipalities, that feels like a small victory.
Maybe sometime in the next twenty years, we’ll have our own Anne Kylloenens rollerskiing and running around Duluth? And maybe we won't have to fundraise for school supplies either? One can dream.