Something special happens in our bodies when our lungs take in frozen air. It isn’t the same as warm air. I can’t explain the difference precisely, but anyone who exercises in winter knows what I’m talking about.
I’ve attributed the physical buzz of a great winter ski to the magic of gliding over the frozen ground, through shadowy folds of a frozen, snow-laden field, accentuated by gray-scale shadows of white on white; the black-and-white staccato of snowy cream puffs on a boreal forest, split in two by a white track running through its magic. That medium is special, but I'm not sure it's the activity that matters. I think it's the air itself.
If you’re an ice skater or hockey player, you could say the same about a crisp winter night outside under the lights when temps drop into the Fahrenheit teens. No indoor ice arena can replicate the way your blades cut that hard ice; how your lungs take in the iciness of that dip in the mercury. It’s a feeling that if you’ve experienced either or both, you’re nodding your head to my words.
Those idyllic winter moments capture the essence of loving winter for the wonder it is. But even a gray, overcast ski on tilled chunks of ice after a New England ice storm, or a pensive shuffle in your icebugs over treacherous winter streets, still feels fundamentally different afterwards, than a midsummer over-distance trail epic high in the Sierra Nevada’s, or a sloppy, sticky, sweaty mess of a dog-days-of-summer jaunt around Lake of the Isles in late July. All give a sense of well-being, but I’ve never felt better nor enjoyed as much, the buzz of exercise like I feel after a ski in the blue-wax temperatures.
As they say, it takes one to know one. This month, it seems I’ve known nothing but. And it’s reminded me of how special winter—real frozen winter—is.
Central Finland, or “Keski Suomi,” really was a disappointment up to about a few days before Christmas. I’d picked up that the past few years here had been sparse on winter, waffling between what the winters of Finland have been for centuries, and the new garb global warming has re-dressed it in over recent years. Winter recently here reflected low-land central Europe winters more than the frosty arctic wonder its latitudinal birthright is supposed to model. Mid-December, I feared I’d missed Central-Finnish winter altogether; that it was a relic never to be seen again, at least by me.
Then the snow started to stay at Christmas, and after that, true, frozen winter stayed. The temps haven’t risen within a threat of the freezing point since the new year. Even better, snow has graced us as a heavy blanket Mother Nature is knitting, adding just a little more each day, fearing that the job isn’t quite sufficient yet. Keep knitting, Mother Nature.
I’ve spent many a day loathing the cold though. I grew up ski racing in the nation’s icebox. Embarrass, Minnesota, is famous for often recording the coldest temperatures in the United States in January. It has been colder in Embarrass, at times, than the North Pole. My early ski racing home is a stone’s throw from Embarrass. I was traumatized as a youngster by ski racing in a lycra race suit in sub-zero (F) temps, unable to shake from my memory the vivid pain of freezing up “down there.” I remember my friend, Brad Nelson, and me as juniors, sitting on a bench near each other in the old wax room near the stadium at Giants Ridge after a barely-legal race, rocking back and forth, groaning, tears in our eyes, hands down the front of our pants, as the thaw-out pulled the air from our lungs like the first drop of a terrifying roller coaster. Our mothers stood in the corner conferring with concerned glances our way, unable to help, obviously. You could imagine them wondering if they’d made a parenting mistake with this ski racing in lycra business.
Coaching college skiing in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, arctic forecasts filled me with dread. The worst situations were those forecasted to rise and be warm enough to legally have a ski race, but cold enough that it was going to be close. As a coach, it meant a weekend's worth of preparing with the hardest waxes to work with, being outside for hours doing all the ski testing you were going to do anyway even if the race ended up being cancelled. And then if it happened, the only chance to warm up was by skiing out to a spot to yell splits. Once I got to my spot, the act of skiing a few kilometers under layers of cold weather gear brought me back to life, then slowly turned me back towards human icicle, waiting for each of my frosty skiers to come by as I fumbled to keep my cell phone from freezing up, tapping out bare-fingered bib numbers into my split timing app, then rapidly jamming my hand and phone back in my pocket to save both from frostbite. I was a robust-enough yeller of splits, that the act brought me a hint of warmth for a fleeting moment. Overall, those race days felt especially long, changing layers, coming in and out of the ice box to the wax room, thawing out fingers and noses and ear lobes, then heading back out. It burnt up energy. It was exhausting.
Whenever Mt. Itasca in Coleraine. MN, was on the docket for an important college race in early January, dread welled up in my gut. Ironically, it was just such a day that we as a program ever won a meet against the perennial powerhouse of our conference and region. I remember being out early that morning in the dark at 16-below Fahrenheit, knowing we had to get to -4 to race (which we did), wind slowly picking up, trying to find ANYTHING that felt like it glided, period. I found one, and really only one, and it was way better than anything else. It was the only thing we applied for glide that day so as not to slow the skis down with any of the other horrible choices. Getting kick was simple.
Their coach, who certainly never intended to lose to us, ever, under any circumstance, was kind of grumpy that morning. So was I, truth be told, but I wasn’t letting on. What wasn’t there to be grumpy about? It was miserable weather, with a thin layer of wicked slow, wind-blown, styrofoam snow atop an abrasive base of old and manmade, and we were just freezing out there, trying to get something to feel worthy of a race ski. I kind of sensed us both wanting to call a truce at the misery of the whole thing, pack up our test skis, and go inside to shoot the shit over coffee. It was palpable and tempting. But I soldiered on, diligent and stubborn as ever to try to win, half expecting a race cancellation. It paid off, far more for me than that coffee and superfluous attempts at humor we didn’t share, ever would have.
That day we won—our women did at least. It remains our only victory over said team to this day. I knew from my own splits at 3km, we’d probably gone first, second, and roughly 7th or 8th individually, but was so conditioned to being not first as a team, it didn’t cross my mind we could’ve won the team score. After the results came out, I was thoroughly satisfied like rarely ever in my lifetime. It rivaled the way it felt laying down to sleep an hour or so after I went berzerk yelling here comes Diggins into a microphone. Exhaustion intensified the joy. Josh, my assistant coach, and I went to the Subway in town to get lunch and we spontaneously danced a jiggy all by ourselves in the parking lot. We didn’t want to be obnoxious after all and do it at the venue. Then we composed ourselves and went back to congratulate the team, clean up, and drive the whole show home to Duluth.
That the time, energy, and detailed effort we'd put into our little program for so many years on end yielded our only victory on the kind of day I so loathed, is ironic. It hasn’t made me love the bitter cold any more though.
I am not lauding the frigid winters I describe above. On the contrary. This Finnish winter, while cold, hasn’t been frigid. It’s been blue hard wax for over a month now. That’s between 22 and 14 degrees Fahrenheit for you non-skiers, about -5 and -10 Celsius for you non-American, non-skiers. Basically, what a cross country skier might call paradise.
Rex Blue. Perhaps one of the most versatile kick waxes ever, is a staple of Finnish ski culture, because it's so good. It has been on my skis most of this month.
The pace of life I’ve been forced to live, almost entirely due to Covid—which is really what put us here—has ironically become enjoyable in the most surprising way. A frozen-but-not-frigid winter has much to do with it. Our move to our new row house in Haukkala from downtown has filled us with a sense of home again, even though it doesn’t quite feel like home. Let’s say it feels homey. Further, our proximity to groomed ski trails right across the street paired with this frozen stretch and seeing a wonderful white winter forest out our windows, has me skiing almost daily, while the neighborhood has our kids outside all the time playing, skiing, skating, sledding, and finding Pokemon. The infrastructure I described for summer athletic activity in earlier blog posts is matched and exceeded in winter. It’s jaw-dropping. I am so happy my kids are here, at this time. I’m happy here too.
Winter at our doorstep
After answering critical emails, google translating international stories about skiing and biathlon, and hitting my basic recruiting tasks each morning, I step outside with skis waxed, and cross the street to ski some of the most appropriately-matched ski trails in my life, to my current fitness and ability. The trail is about a biathlon target away from my door. I ski with the kids after school if they don't have hockey or salibandy practice, go alpine skiing, or play with friends. I have a new feeling of wellness that I really didn’t remember existed, and in fact maybe never actually has for me.
As an elite athlete, your fitness is supreme, but you’re always riding the edge of sickness too. This is what a lot of folks don’t realize about finely-tuned endurance athletes. That skiers and biathletes compete in the cold tests their immune responses even more. I spent a decade trying hard not to get sick. Know how you feel in a crowd with Covid on the loose? Yeah. Welcome to the elite Nordic ski racer’s reality every winter even before Covid. The slightest cold, not to mention the flu, can devastate an athlete trying to compete at the world level. It’s not going to kill them, but it’s going to undo months of what they worked for. Imagine a huge year-long project at work that you poured yourself into and your job success rides on it. Then it all basically gets shot to shit when your teenage cousin comes to Christmas with a horrible cold, or worse, your own child! Your project depends on whether or not you catch what they are snorting around the house you’re sharing. Sounds harsh, and it is.
When you leave that world behind, if you’re like me, it’s a huge load off. I struggled to find exercise and healthy living as a fundamental daily essence of life after that. I wanted other stuff filling my cup, I think. It didn't prioritize itself for me for some reason. I certainly wasn’t good at training without a competitive goal tied to it. I thought when I quit seriously ski racing that I’d take a few years, chill, and probably find my way back into some kind of competitive thing for myself. Nope. I was a momentum athlete. I fell a LONG way fast once I stopped my training momentum, and I just never had the gumption to get out daily to train or exercise. Until this winter.
I think for the first time since I quit competing, I am in a groove with exercising that doesn’t require coaxing myself to do it one bit. It feels great. I had been finding a love for skiing again more the past few years, but my weekly flights to and from New York for TV shows ate into that. There was absolutely nothing in Stamford, Connecticut, that grabbed my attention for physical activity. I tried going to the gym in the hotel with mixed success. I hated it. Last winter though, every single day I was in Duluth, I skied. That might have been a turning point.
Now, I’ve got skiers Valhalla out my door with a Valhalla winter to boot. And it is glorious. I feel good. My demeanor is light. I’ve not cared about my weight really ever, and the one time I did as an athlete, it cost me hugely and didn’t work. But if you love something that keeps you active, you will be a healthy weight for you. I’ve not weighed myself at all here, but I’ve lost weight. I’ve lost it because something happens when you breathe blue-kick-wax-cold air for a while every day. That cold air transforms the way I feel. It feels better than when I ride my mountain bike. It feels better than when I go for a run in the summer. It feels better when your skin warms up in that cold air due to its own exertion. And to follow it up with a sauna? Oh mama! Well, it’s addictive.
If you’re nodding your head in knowing agreement, you are of my tribe. You would feel as healthy and pleased as I have this winter. It is rare today to go a full month-plus without even a remote thaw in the weather, yet that is the winter Finland decided to give me for my very first, and it has been exceedingly good to me. Add to it that I’m not flying twice every week, always eating out a great restaurants (which I admit I love!) and that I’m home with my wife and kids every day while still effectively doing the same jobs I’ve had all along, and it’s an amazing development for such a weird time. I realize this may not be sustainable—that something in the picture will likely have to change at some point. But for now, I’m going to live in the moment and appreciate what I have here.
The second-most-asked question I get is, when are you coming/going back? I don’t think most people are consciously digging into my business when they ask this. I think it’s actually a nervous, reactive question that bubbles up to the surface for a lot of folks. We live in a world of political nation-states with monitored and secured borders that separate us, presumably for good reasons. One might be things like this virus! What we are doing is not common, and it might trip a reflex in many of us that feels contrary to how we are conditioned as citizens of nation states. It almost certainly triggers a question of loyalties, whether it’s to family, home, neighborhood, career, city, state, or country. In a pandemic that has us all pining for getting back to normal, I think our move here accentuates the abnormality of it all, and maybe that’s tough for some to reconcile? I get a feeling that responding with a hard return date will appease some sort of anxiety we’ve triggered in our move. Not giving a firm date is probably the antithesis of the source of the question, like a firm date will trigger when things will go back to normal for us all. The question's prevalence and frequency suggests there's something more there than mere inquisition. It's ok to ask. I'm just synthesizing. And I might not have the answer we both want.
Suffice it to say, I miss my family in Minnesota, but we are getting time with our family here, which is huge. I miss the fist bumps on run-outs with my athletes minutes before the start of a race as I post up at 400 meters to help them dial in their race pace. It sucks to see them only on a Zoom call. I miss the camaraderie of my athletic department colleagues and the production crew in Stamford. I even kind of miss the down time watching a movie in the air between Tetris games while taxiing at DLH, MSP, and LGA. Fixating on them isn’t bringing them back, though. Our situation here is affirmation of just how little control we have over all of it. What we do have control of is where we are now. We feel good about it still, and we’re keeping our eye on the situation.
The most-asked question I get is, how am I doing? I don’t want anyone I love and miss, or whom I work with and miss, or whom I’ve lived by for years and miss, to take this the wrong way—and I’m not cueing Covid for any stronger grip on our world, our ability to move around in it, our well-being, and our way of life—but these have been some great days. I don’t know yet where they lead, but to the questions of how I’m doing, I’m doing well. Remarkably well. So well, it’s disorienting in some ways. It’s hard not to feel some guilt for how well I’m doing when so many aren’t. I can’t remember a frozen stretch like this of such natural beauty, healthy living, relaxation, and, well, low stress. It’s as if coming here in the face of this virus has pulled the mask off of a life I was living, that by comparison, now seems kind of unsustainable. Maybe ill-advised is more like it. What I’ve taken from this frozen white and blue winter is that we can continue to love and care about those in our lives but we don’t need to be defined by the things we’ve always defined ourselves by. And it’s ok to realize that. Maybe even liberating.
For now, I’m taking it one day at a time, and it’s a lot of good days stringing together. I am grateful to my family, my athletes, my colleagues, my employers, and my luck. A month of frozen air can clear your head in ways you didn’t even know you might have needed.