2009 American XC Skiers Trip To MWC2009
Autrans, France -- January 27 - February 7, 2009
TEAM USA TRIP REPORT: Wednesday, February 4
USA Battles Illness, Slush, Stellar Field To Relay Triple Bronze Relay Day
After a largely oh-so-close week of race results, the USA contingent broke through in a big way today with three bronze medal efforts in the 4 x 5km mixed technique relays.
The men's Category 4 (45-49 years) team consisting of the "dropped down" Doug Armstrong (actually a M7 skier), Scott Ellertson, Rick Reynolds, and Kent Murdoch managed to shake off the loss of veteran MWC skier Milan Baic who came down with a morning illness to eek out a two second come-from-behind bronze to get the day going in a very positive direction.
Later on, both the women's Category 3 (50-59 years) and Category 4 (60-69 years) teams came up with bronze efforts. The USA women's F3 team consisted of Lori Steinbach, Meg Heerdt, Sherry Dixon, and Maggie Fillmore. The USA women's F4 team was Louise Wholey, Nancy Bauer, Audrae Coury, and Paula Larsen.
Conditions for the relay were a "full on spring slush-fest" according to several skiers. Since arrival, Team USA has been treated to a wide array of weather conditions ranging from brilliant sunshine and packed powder, to fresh wet snow, to small amounts of rain showers, to today's sunny, warm, and slushy conditions. Luckily the local organizers have had enough snow to keep the tracks in generally good (albeit progressively dirtier) conditions despite the uneven weather.
Prior to today's relay, the lone USA medal for the MWC2009 was Diane Legner's bronze in the 10km freestyle on Saturday. Tough luck followed the USA group in the next three races with multiple 4th and 5th place efforts in many classes combined with a fair chunk of the contingent coming down with one of two fun-filled illnesses here at the height of the winter season for that type of thing. Hope remains high for some strong efforts in the two remaining distance days before the MWC2009 comes to a close and attention turns to the MWC2010 next February in Falun Sweden.
Links For Team USA While We Are In Autrans
Autrans village map jpg file showing the two official hotels in relation to the village center. On the left side of the image you'll see "Depart des pistes de fond" which is the ski stadium" (yeah, it's that close to the hotels!).
Grenoble-Autrans Bus Route pdf file. This should be printed out ahead of time by any skiers needing to arrange your own connections to/from Autrans without a car. Note that TLJ means "everyday", S means Saturday only, TLJ sf DF means everyday except Sunday.
---------------------------------
Weather and Event Links
Official MWC2009 Event Site
Autrans continues to report excellent snow conditions and a healthy snowpack as of early January.
AccuWeather.com For Autrans, FRA
Hourly forecast info in addition to other features.
Nice graphic features plus breakdown on likely snow consistency.
---------------------------------
Important Contact For The MWC2009 Trip
AXCS Travel Agent Diana Lynn-Rau (The Travel Society): 866.759.6867 *** Dianalrau at cs.com
AXCS Travel Group: Hotel La Poste Skiers (hotel website)
AXCS Travel Group: Hotel La Buffe Skiers -- Ellertson, Bray, Langer (hotel website)
---------------------------------
Getting Ready For The MWC Trip (a ton of useful info)
Extensive pre-trip planning and preparation notes specific for USA skiers going to the MWC is found on this AXCS resource. Before you ask the AXCS office for help with a specific trip question, please check this information first. If anyone has a useful travel tip that we do not have listed on this resource, please pass it on to the AXCS office!
---------------------------------
Course/Stadium Preview (prepared by AXCS National Director J.D. Downing)
-- The Autrans stadium in the heart of the village is a pure horseshoe so it will have a more 180 right turn than the 90 that was in McCall at the end of the normal "double pole only" start straightaway. This shouldn't matter too much as it is very wide, but for the bigger men's starts you'll want to be prepared for a power start, then a 180 degree right turn with a very slight gradual climb, a few hundred meters of rolling to flat, then long climbing on gradual. The courses should not need to narrow down as much after the start straightaway and the first 180 turn so there should be fairly ample room to move around throughout the race courses. This exact start area is used for a multi-thousand person ski marathon a couple weeks before the Worlds so it should work really well for Worlds age group starts.
-- All the courses start with a long gradual climb of maybe 1km (probably less). You climb out of the village on pastures but with many village buildings and fences nearby so it's going to be an interesting mix of pasture and "heart of village" skiing. Snow depth will determine pitches of the climb, but there will be some sustained work periods making this one of the harder first kilometers in recent MWC courses. So a harder start than McCall. One big benefit is that this profile will spread out fields very quickly. If you are looking to hang in toward the top of your class, you will want to set up some tempo sessions in your training that have a sustained series of climbs early in your workouts so you are ready for this challenge. Many races will likely see more significant separation in the top 10-20 skiers far earlier than what we've typically seen at the MWC. There will still be big packs -- just probably more fracturing very early on. Be ready.
-- After the initial climb, most of the courses consist of similar long pasture descents and long, gradual climbs throughout. There are a few places with some rollers on one side of the fields along a forest, but not a ton of really technical terrain from what we could tell in the dryland inspection. If it is windy or stormy it'll be important to stay in groups as exposure will be significant. You could think of this as skiing on a very hilly golf course. Think about long climbs as being the most important training focus as the descents should not prove to be much of a challenge except if we are in melt/freeze conditions. For western skiers, prep for the long ups/downs should be quite easy as most western XC areas have this kind of long gradual grades. I'd try and train in open or meadow areas as much as possible so you can psychologically get used to being a pasture type of environment. I can't tell you if you'll be stuck in V2 the entire time or mixing up with V1 stretches. It was too muddy for me to run much of the courses when I was there. But I'd say safely it'll be similar to the McCall grinders -- just without many trees.
-- The finish or lap (depending on race) is a very long gradual descent down into the village stadium. In the 10km, for example, you finish with about 2km of downhill in some fashion (very few flats or short uphills breaking up the downhill). So you should work on tempo sessions that end with long downhills. I don't think you'll tuck the entire time -- so a mix of short work sections and long glides similar to the latter third of the courses in McCall -- but a lot more net downhill. You will want to get used to the idea of selling out well before the finish as every race will be down to the finish sprint group with about 2-2.5 kilometers to go! Good gliding skis will be a premium.
-- Altitude is really going to be a non-issue or a very minor issue. It's just over 1000m so 3,500feet. For me coming from Bend, Oregon that is a spot-on trade so obviously I felt totally at home running on the trails and local roads. For a sea level skier it'll only have a very minor impact. Nothing close to normal FIS altitudes like in McCall (which was just over 5,000 ft). The biggest challenge for sea level skiers is simply not allowing yourself to get psyched out since physiologically you will be fine. Really your biggest challenge will be the length of the climbs since midwestern skiers may not have access to long climbs at home. For high altitude skiers it'll feel like you are lower than back home, but the tempo difference won't be quite as great. So it should be a very comfortable place.
--Snow could be a mix of wet and dry since that part of the Vercors region can get storms from any direction. We'll need to be prepared with all manner of glide and kick waxes -- although I think super cold isn't real likely. The interesting thing about the area is that it will have a mix of Central Europe mountain snow/weather (i.e. valleys that can see inversions in high pressure), but at a more southwestern location than the MWC has ever been before (i.e. more maritime and subject to warming influence), combined with a fairly low altitude (3,500 ft is pretty typical for Central Europe -- but more so NW of where we'll be). We will be there during the prime snow and cold period for that region so we have a very good chance of having good snow. But the conditions could literally be anything and everything. It is a great idea to try and have a lot of people bring various waxes on this trip so we have many options.
--Our hotels are literally a few minutes walk to the stadium and a large waxing tent that will be "semi-divided" (don't really know what that means) between nations. Being so close, it should be possible to do glide waxing the morning of races if necessary and also to easily adjust kick even from the hotel. It remains to be seen how much of a facility we will have at the hotels for waxing. As is typical at the Worlds, we'll want everyone to be flexible and we'll figure out a good scenario. One thing that could prove very useful is if we had a few sets of radios in order to try and communicate with people out on the courses from the village. AXCS has one set. Another 1-2 sets of radios could be really useful.
-- Final thing to remember is that everything here could change if they moved up to the 1968 Olympic courses in the event of really bad snow or very warm temps. I think this unlikely as they do have extensive snowmaking capacity at both venues, but nowadays we never know. The 1968 courses are much more forested and much more rolling. I don't have a good battle plan for those courses as we could only see parts of them on the WMA inspection (there was a foot of fresh wet snow on them when we were there in September '07 (good sign!). The Olympic courses do have a mix of net up and down meaning that some of the courses are above and some below the stadium which makes for interesting profiles. The skiing is likely fabulous, but we'll just hope we can be in the village on the planned courses just cause it'd be easier logistically.
