Fast Skis And My Left Foot

We were finally going skiing as a family. The kids have been alpine skiing a bunch and Mimmu has gone a couple times on the gear she got from a friend. It was Sunday. It warmed up to -7C from -27C, so the snow was cold but the trails were packed. I mean with people as well as the grooming.

"Packed" Sunday ski trail

Nobody likes to classic ski in the family but me. I’ve always been a better skate skier, pretty much from the outset. My first ski racing season in any real sense was the 1985-86 season. I got a USSA racing license. I was a first year “Junior 2,” or “J2” as it was known. Today, it’s called U16, and is comprised of 14 and 15-year-olds.

I did pretty well that first year of USSA racing as a 14er, on a pair of stiff Rossignol Silver 44s I got on super sale from black-and-white newsletter-type Champion Nordic ski catalog in the UP. They were my first ever “top end” racing skis. I don't think they were top-end for me though. They looked like the ones Bill Koch won the World Cup overall title on in 1982. That's what mattered.

I think I finished 6th in the 10km opener at Johnson’s trails in Bessemer, Michigan—my first USSA race. It was a great place to start. Good enough to tell me I belonged in the race, but enough room to improve to motivate me. Some of the guys ahead would go on to be nationally competitive at the Junior Olympics (now called Junior Nationals, or “JN’s”) that March in Royal Gorge, California. I didn’t qualify for one of the 6 spots for the J2s that March, but I was close enough to get fired up for qualifying the next year, which I did.

But that first winter was all freestyle racing too. FIS didn’t break out into classic- or freestyle-specific races until the following winter. By my second year as a J2, the schedule was split.

I was a decent classic skier, so I was confident going into my first race that next season, which was a classic 5km at Wolverine, near Ironwood, Michigan—a hilly, tricky, sometimes-off-camber track. The course beat me up thoroughly that day, as my Rossi’s—though fine for skating—revealed themselves to be way too stiff for a 15-year-old me to kick. I would’ve been better off on our Karhu Fiber Racer rock skis or my brother’s old Peltonen Olympics, though I wouldn’t have been caught dead on either of those old, 2nd- and 3rd-tier racing skis when I had top-o-the-line Silver 44s at my disposal. That dynamic sent me flailing around the loop in my first ever JOQ classic race, under a further massive heap of personal expectation I placed on myself. I’ve always excelled at that. I went into that race thinking I should be able to win it. Well, I didn’t. I was like, twelfth or something. I got caught and passed by a kid from Aurora whom I knew from both of us skiing at Giants Ridge. Not only wasn’t I close to winning, I wasn’t even close to the best Iron Ranger! I hardly slept the next night, full of self doubt. Maybe ski racing WASN’T for me?! The next day in freestyle down the road at Johnson’s, I nearly won on my brand new, shorter, Karhu Matrix black-based skate skis, finishing second. That felt a heap better. I decided I was still a ski racer.

I’ve had only a few good classic races in my life. In fact, perhaps the best race I ever had was a classic race on that same Wolverine course two years later. I was 17 and totally jacked up on 2 weeks of skiing too hard at West Yellowstone. I rode a post-altitude wave of super-oxygen-carrying capacity in the season opening 10km classic, in which the only guys to beat me were on the Swedish and US Ski teams and Northern Michigan University coach, Sten Fjeldheim. Sten showed me before the race how to smooth and buff out a kick wax job so it was as smooth as the glide zone. I actually thought of that moment two days ago when I was corking out my kick zone.

The altitude bump was also a revelation as I’d never been to altitude before nor raced within 14 days of coming down. I am what you call a “responder” to time at oxygen-thin altitude. On that day, you couldn’t have thrown a hill at me that would’ve slowed me down. Damn, that was FUN! Though I’ve been a staunch advocate for clean sport my entire life, I’ve understood the enticement to doping ever since that race. It was a feeling I’d seek the rest of my days as a ski racer though only find a few times again, all instances post-altitude. Even though I was just 17, I don’t think I’ve ever skied faster in classic. Sadly, I never raced much classic after that one. I went 10 years into biathlon that competes only in freestyle technique.

I know what you’re thinking. How can a 49 year old guy remember what happened 33 to 35 years ago? Welcome to my brain. I can’t find my cell phone or wallet on a regular basis, but I see vividly in my minds eye, Jason Kissner’s red hair and black with red stripe Aurora Hoyt Lakes ski suit, gliding by me, eyes at ground level as my ass is stuck in the deep snow on the side of the track after crossing my skis in the shaky track traversing the wind-blown field downhill about a 2km from the finish at Wolverine. I can see and feel my fire-breathing stomp up the power line climb 2 years later, my well-fit Peltonen Infra’s with glassy Sten-Fjeldheim kick zone, grabbing the track, bounding off the grip, gliding several feet off every step, skis pointed straight up the hill, up the track, eating up the huge climb like it didn’t matter—the same hill I’d whimpered up in a herringbone every race prior on that course. I remember stuff like that vividly. Just help me find my car keys.

Today, I went out for my 5th skate ski of the year. I have been classic skiing so much and enjoying it, that it’s been hard to put the skate gear on at all. Plus, it has been feeling much worse.

Skating requires more muscular strength to do well. I have a speedskater’s ass and quads on top of a distance runner’s shins and calves. It’s a weird combo, but it has worked for me. The lateral power necessary to skate ski effortlessly has always been at my grasp until recently. But I’ve shied from it as of late because the freedom of a skate ski on the skate tarmac is a greater challenge of dexterity and balance—both of which I have less and less of each passing winter, I’m sorry to report. I made a to-do about getting my $600 carbon Madshus boots here from America, and there’s a reason. When I skate now, my right leg and foot absolutely work better relying on that molded carbon heal cup, sole, and cuff. My right tip still drags a lot after I kick and transfer weight, but if I want to skate ski, timing my ski 2 hours after I take my PD meds and having those boots goes a long way in my enjoyment.

Conversely, the classic track helps me out in that regard. It guides my ski where I’m trying to go. It’s a bummer when all your life you have dexterity and balance in spades and you slowly lose both, so noticeably, that the previous you seems a mirage—a sort of foggy daydream. But today, I was in my sweet spot on drug effect. I have adapted well in the last 4 skate outings as well, and my 5km around Laajavuori this morning felt the most like me on skate skis I’ve felt in a while. Joy. And, it turns out, after all these years, I am a doper.

I posted on social media after my first skate ski this winter, that for the first time in my life I’m a better classic skier than skater. Truth is, that’s probably been the case for a couple years. The technical differences between the two for my PD-affected right leg is that in classic, the kick wax job/ski flex and the timing and the dexterity of setting the kick wax, is pretty challenging. I slip a lot on my right leg, but I love that I’m still able to do it. I put up with it, and try harder. A good, life-long friend of mine, who is a great runner, recently posted about troubles with her knee and how she’s simply not giving in to her slightly-rebelling body. I totally relate. Choosing to classic ski is me telling my slightly-rebelling body who’s boss.

As we prepared for a family ski in my life-long best technique Sunday, I waxed up the family’s skis with these new liquid glide waxes. They’re pretty slick! No iron necessary. No wax bench. No scraping. Just apply, let it dry, and brush it off. I’ve never waxed much for recreational skiing. In fact, with zero importance to my own performance, I’m probably very hard on my equipment compared to most. I think my fave ever classic skis are still hanging in my Duluth garage with dry glide zones and March 2020 kick wax still on the pockets. So, I’m not a “waxer” when it comes to me and my own skiing. Waxing has always been about just having a good experience when I ski, and helping others perform their best when it’s my job.

Kind of like getting my former skiers to perform their very best in a race, the cold, fine, new snow we faced Sunday as a family meant every bit of glide I could give Taavi and Iita would increase my chances of getting them out the door next time. The act of waxing again amidst a confluence of memories and recent experiences got me reflective.

Faster skis means more "airplaning" for Taavi.

I don’t have the exact date on my calendar, but I was diagnosed with early Parkinson’s Disease, or “Parkinsonism,” right around this time, 5 years ago. I was mid-season with my team and doing some travel on the side for TV. It was stressful and tiring even though I welcomed and loved all of it.

I had been having a hard time managing my right hand while typing for some time. I was a very fast typer—like almost-as-fast-as-talking fast, which if you know me, is fast. I think part of the joy I took in writing earlier in life was how I could make my fingers dance on the keyboard and just about think words onto a page. To be clear, I’m not doing that right now. I hadn’t connected that trend with a couple other small oddities I was experiencing . Mimmu actually made me go to the doctor because of a sort of sneer that would come and go around my mouth that I couldn’t control. It comes and goes still in periods. It looks like I’m pissed off while I’m saying something.

Looking back, I actually probably knew something was up well before my 2016 diagnosis. Wax testing was actually the first panic moment.

When I took the job to start and develop a competitive NCAA ski program at St. Scholastica, I looked top to bottom at each detail of where I might make a tangible difference in our performance. I had no scholarships to offer, competing against a conference and NCAA region with two of the strongest NCAA Nordic teams in the country, both with scholarships. One of several places I focused early on was race-day ski preparation.

I had some good connections for insight and inside info on stuff that worked that maybe wasn’t common at our level. For example, I got a hint early on about an under layer from the US Biathlon Team high performance director, that at our level, even when it’s 2-4 layers down, was a difference maker regularly. But doing what World Cup teams do to create their best results never added up for how we needed to operate.

At that level, skiers are choosing from a quiver of great skis in different conditions. My skiers had 1, maybe 2, sometimes 3 ski options on any given day. We had to make due with those skis. And that affected everything else we did and prioritized. I snagged old World Cup skis from members of the US Ski and Biathlon Teams when they moved on to new ones and were thinning out their travel herd. I mostly tried for rare conditions my skiers likely would never own their own skis for, and used them as program skis when the conditions called for them. One of our athletes won Junior Nationals on a pair. We had multiple marquee race results on some of those pairs as well. One pair, “the Freeman’s,” we actually bought from the Fischer race director, was so fast but so hard to kick once our skiers got tired, our assistant coach in charge of kick on classic days, wanted to kidnap those skis. He was tired of being blamed for them “losing kick” late in the race when really, the skis were just a mustang our guys weren’t fit enough to break for a full 10km. We still had a few firework results on those skis. Our local shop, run by one of our other assistant coaches, also tapped into an opportunity to buy classic skis from the shop’s brand’s World Cup race room one winter. They weren’t cheap, but they were wicked fast and they kicked great. Amazing skis almost to a pair. Nobody who shelled out the money complained after they parted with the cash. They were that good. Point is, if you’re creative, you can make ground inch by inch if you look carefully for maybe unconventional ways to do it

World Cup teams also have a menu and myriad of stone grind structures to match to those great skis, each with research and success to guide them. With our very limited quiver, we needed flexibility to hand structure day of the race, over proven, broad structures that won’t get too wonky if hand structured over (screwed that up once in a championship race with our best skier). We settled on a couple of grinds we liked to see on skis from which we could then adjust by hand, by testing the day before or day of the races. This is a common occurrence at our level. We tried to standardize everyone’s grinds though to know what we were doing every time we had the ski on our wax bench.

Which leads us to wax. While wax is important at all levels, I recognized that in my position, it was probably the place we could cover the most ground to get an advantage if we worked it hard enough. There’s never much time on an NCAA race weekend. With the 3-4 hours Friday and the same amount the morning before each race, you need to cover a ton of ground in a very short time span, and get everyone’s race skis waxed before the start. I invested very thin on volume of expensive race waxes, always on the edge of running out of each one, in order to have more things in the box and maybe find a big ringer. I studied the weather and had upwards of 30 things ready when we hit the ground Friday afternoon at the race site, across different test factors. We did this with a rapid testing protocol using a single ski against single ski and our sense of feel. Our credo was rapid decisiveness. With 3 matched sets of test skis we could find trends and go down rabbit holes to find something truly special on each wax layer. We’d see trends and chase the winners and always, always, always push to beat the grand champion at each layer, until time ran out and we had to wax the team’s skis. This system had its flaws. It didn’t test durability or if a wax picked up dirt, for example—a risk if you don’t know the winning wax very well. We were bit by both of those a couple times in 10 years. But if we consistently got 3-5 layers, each the very best from that broad of a selection, we simply would have great skis. Which, we pretty much consistently did.

The thing that made this system work was our ability to feel the slightest nuances of ski speed while we glided--the human factor. We also had no brand loyalties. Our loyalty was to just-a-little-bit-faster.

There is no magic to getting fast skis at any level. It comes down to having the tools and a system and doing hard grunt work vs. the time you have vs. the experiences you’ve had with waxes and conditions vs. adjusting to what you see happening in front of you. But if you’re going to do what we were doing, you had to have utter and complete faith in your feel while on the test skis. It wouldn’t have worked at all otherwise. If the feel is not precise, it gets confusing. And you had to enjoy doing all that.

My long-time assistant, Joshua Tesch, and I, trusted each other’s ski feel completely. Our system actually thrust to the forefront what many systems try to avoid—a single opinion and choice of winner in seclusion. This puts more pressure on you as a tester for sure. Joshua and I never got in each other’s business testing. Well, almost never. We’ve yelled at each other once or twice, but with the understanding of a married couple arguing how to best raise your kids, not with any true anger. But our concentration while we tested was intense—acutely focused. We weren’t talkative or friendly while we tested skis. We were under a time pressure, and we both took the process as fundamental to our performance as a team. I loved it. I also kind of hated it. More on that later. But how we evolved to what we were doing and the apparent outcomes on our team's skis was fun. I miss that. There’s nothing like being in a ski race knowing nobody has faster skis than those on your feet. A skier can use that knowledge many ways over the course of a race to elicit a better performance. I saw it happen time and again. The flip side, on the other hand, is agony.

I was testing in Houghton when I first noticed, or at least consciously addressed it. It was 2015. My right foot started to always feel faster. I caught myself realizing it really clearly that day. I panicked a little. I remember standing on the side of the trail artery by the big pine stand at the Michigan Tech trails, in the dark, time to the race ticking away, a little wigged out. “How do I pick a winner from 16 skis in the next 30 minutes if my right foot is always faster?” I thought about it for a while. I skied a bit. Switched skis. Did it again. I realized if I didn’t ski too long and switched fast, I could tell the difference entirely by concentrating on my left foot. I made one call that way, then just kept repeating it. My right foot simple became a ski holder. I tried to detach it from the glide sensations I focused on with my left foot. As we’d almost always do, we’d get down to our top three, then Joshua and I would take each other’s winners and test them and rank them blind and compare our order. We had our confirmation at that late stage for two different layers that way, all in about 20-40 minutes. Our consistency gave us confidence in our system. That day, Joshua pulled the same winning order from my top 3, after my wig out. I sighed relief, especially after the skis were great during the race for the team. But I was still concerned about it...I had a right foot feel problem in a system that really couldn’t afford it.

A completely different symptom sent me to the doctor and gave me an explanation 9 months later, with a diagnosis. I ended my coaching career with the left-foot ski-testing protocol.

The chemicals we were throwing around for the 10 years I coached, rubbing on with fingers, burning into the ski base with mega hot, smoking irons, and brushing out as plumes of particulate in front of us, are now the hot button issue on the elite and even developmental levels of the competitive sport. Turns out, they aren’t good for the environment and they aren’t good for us.

I’m not necessarily going where it seems I might be going here, but of course it’s crossed my mind.

I have been exposed to far less fluorocarbon ski wax than many others who have made ski preparation their profession. There are reported cases of lung disease among wax techs, though the cross-section is a relatively tiny pool of people, and I haven’t seen a conclusive evidence even on lung disease in wax techs. You’d think if my exposure to this stuff was a pathogen that causes my shakes, it’d be more prevalent. Joshua, who certainly was equally exposed, is fine, for example.

I hate to admit today that my own attitude and actions towards the chemicals in the first half of that decade was cavalier, but it was. I didn’t wear a mask or gloves much if at all in the early years. You think an N95 sucks, try a 1-lb. rubber gas mask with cartridges strapped to your face with your head down for 12 hours every weekend. Of course, I wish I had a do-over though.

The confluence of my 5 year anniversary of figuring out what was wrong with my right foot, the FIS fluorocarbon wax ban and subsequent retraction, and waxing my kids skis for a family Sunday ski, just kind of built up to this post. Pathologies for Parkinson's seem to gain a little more understanding as time goes along, but still, we don’t really know. My family has no history of the disease. I had more concussions as a kid probably than most. I grew up drinking water from the ground near one of the worlds largest iron ore and taconite mines. I spent hours upon hours as a kid, jumping my bmx bike on black, dusty, taconite tailings piles, sometimes ending the day with a concussion. I had what I think was swine flu in 2010, but if it wasn’t that, whatever it was, so acutely hurt the very part of the brain that Parkinson’s affects, that I had to lie still on my back for the better part of two days as the only remedy for the pain. I waxed with fluorocarbons for 5 years with little to no protection before I wised up and took it seriously. Are any of these pathogens of my disease? Some of them? All of them? This isn’t the way science works to arrive at a conclusion, I know, but your mind turns these things over when it's you. I’ll probably never truly know. And you know what? I think I’m ok with that. That’s life. I don’t mull this over that much. It just brewed to the surface at the moment.

What I’m not ok with, is, if waxing skis with fluorocarbons might have ANY possible thing to do with it, that sucks, and I should be the last one affected. I loved ski waxing for races, I’m the first to admit that. But I also hated it. I hated 12 hours in a gas mask on race days. I hated the hacking most winters I was coaching (I had to quit coaching to realize it wasn’t a “normal winter thing” for me...). I hated the cracked, dried-out, bloodied cuticles. I hated the fatigue and general feeling of having chemicals and fine plastic particulate on your skin, in your hair, in your lungs, driving 8 hours home from the Upper Peninsula. I hated how it made me irritable. I didn’t get to coach on the side of the trail enough; to yell and be a part of witnessing and encouraging more race performances because I was frantically waxing for the next race. My team understood my choices. I did too. It didn’t make them necessarily right, even when the skis were awesome and the results were celebrated.

I can’t draw a line from fluorocarbons to Parkinson’s but we don’t need to go nearly even that far. I’m ok with what has happened to me. Really. I’m dealing with it and it is likely not even a root cause. Still, it's bad stuff. I’m competitive. It’s what I chose to do under the circumstances. The circumstances, looking back, were kinda nuts. I think nuts is where change often has to come from. Let’s hope this fluorocarbon ban becomes complete and lasting, not because it might have contributed to my health problem, but because it’s harmful in many ways to many things. Most importantly, let’s do it because it’s the right thing to do.