What a difference a week makes! I'm now in a different state most of the way across the country and getting ready to compete in my first bobsledding competition. I'll recap the happenings, so try and keep up.
Friday: The second day of Team Trials was epic! This was the second night of competition for the women. Each driver had a different brakeman than the previous week, and once again brakeman Emily Azevedo teamed up with a driver to win the event. This time the winning pilot was Jazmine Fenelator. Congratulations ladies!
Then it was time for the big show, the 4-man event. This was the first on ice competition with the 4-man teams. We'd been watching spectacularly crazy practice runs all week, and I must admit I was excited at the prospect of craziness ensuing on race night. The 4-man event is definitely the most difficult when it comes to the push and loading aspect of the race. Somehow, 4 large men manage to jump on a moving sled and cram themselves in their confined metal box. There were a couple practice runs during the week when people either didn't make it in the sled, they couldn't get everyone seated, or they crashed with 4 large men in a small metal box. As you can imagine, this is not a great scenario when there are spikes on your feet and no room to pull yourself into the sled. That definitely made for a riveting week of practice!
All went well on race night, except for one sled. Here's a shot of USA 4 right before their best push ever. They rocketed their sled off the block in 5.22 seconds (right up there with USA 2 and 3 start times). Unfortunately, their brakeman didn't make it into the sled. SO SAD! He was like a little turtle on his back spinning around on the ice, and then he had to make the walk of shame back up the track. It was by far their best push of the night, and it didn't count. The crazy thing is, Nick Cunningham (the driver) and Adam Blanford (the 2-man who sits right behind him) had no idea until the sled stopped past the finish line that they were a man short. Kevin (the 3-man seat) knew something wasn't right, and he was smart enough to push back and pull the brakes as they crossed the finish line. Unfortunately, Adam was the only thing Kevin had to push off against to pull the brakes, so he's got some nasty looking scabs on his back and calf from Kev's bob spikes. Ah, the joys of bobsledding...
 |
| USA 4: Kevin, Nic Taylor, Adam Blanford, Nick Cunningham |
 |
| USA 4 pushing a 5.22 second start time! |
 |
| USA 5: Caleb, Heider, Matt Senske, Jay Noller |
 |
| USA 3: Adam Clark, Dakarai Kongela, Spencer, Corey Butner (not shown) |
 |
| USA 1: Steve Langton, Curt Tomasevicz, Justin Olsen, Steve Holcomb |
 |
| Seeing the Night Train in action was amazing! |
After the Night Train dominated the competition, we headed back to the OTC to finish packing up our stuff. Next, we headed to the local bobsled watering hole in Lake Placid. This just happens to be a little joint named Zig Zag's Pub. Here I am with Britt and Matt Bailey taking my inaugural post-bobsled night out picture. After an intense game of darts, meeting a drunk guy who was searching for zombies, and hanging out with all our bobsledding friends, we headed back to catch some ZZZ's before our morning shuttle to the Albany airport.
Saturday: Nothing too exciting happened on Saturday. We got our bags to the shuttle, watched Top Gun on our 2-hour ride to Albany, boarded a plane to Vegas with a handful of skeleton and bobsled athletes, killed some time playing slots between flights, and boarded another plane to Salt Lake City. Let me just say, our country is huge! We could have flown to Europe in the time it took us to go from Albany, NY, to Las Vegas, NV. EUROPE! That's crossing an ocean. I'm just saying, it was a long flight. The layover in Vegas was fun. I only lost $2 to the one arm bandit, so I'd call it a success. Megan was trying to win it big. We need new runners! It made me miss my K-State ASHRAE buddies though. The only time I've been to Vegas was last February with them, and Matt, Joel, Zac, and I had a great time. Too bad Blue Man Group couldn't make an appearance at the airport because they were my favorite part of Vegas.
We made it into Salt Lake City around 10 pm. We got our bags and headed to the rental car desk. As we toted our bags out to the garage, Ken the Enterprise agent made our day. He upgraded us to a Ford Expedition for free. Thanks for supporting Team USA Ken! We drove the hour to Park City and unloaded our whale of a vehicle. It was a good thing we got a bigger ride because we have a lot of stuff. It is ridiculous how much stuff four girls need to bobsled for three weeks, but Sineaid and I got all of it in one load though.
Sunday: We just hung out and got our grocery shopping done for the week. Nothing too exciting.
Monday: Day 1 of FIBT driving school. It was Ms. Katelyn Kelly's first time driving since driving school last March, so I was a little nervous. It went great though. She drove like a champ from the Junior Start. It was like a passenger ride compared to Lake Placid. I am a big fan of the Junior Start.
This track is so steep, each sled at the Junior Start has to be lowered onto the track. It was intrugiuging to this engineering nerd. A picture would have been helpful in this explanation, but alas, I didn't get one. So, the truck with the sleds backs up to the loading dock. We push the sleds onto the dock, and the sled workers loop straps around the bottom of the sled. Then they lift the sled out of the scabbards, swig it out over the ice, and lower it ten feet down to the ice. It was so nice not to have to drag the sled to the start line! The problem with the Junior Start is that all the speed on this track comes from the first 5 curves, and we were at Curve 6. This means we had no speed crossing the finish line, so we had to push the sled from the finish line all the way to the finish dock. That's about 100m uphill pushing a heavy sled with a sick driver who was wheezing. I was hoping for a nice track worker to help us, but that only happened one trip. When we made it to the finish dock, both Katelyn and I were ready to rip off our helmet and gulp down some of this thin, mountain air.
And I made the USBSF website!!! Check out the picture on the last post. Thanks for all your encouraging comments everyone!
Tuesday: Still at the Junior start pushing the sled a VERY long ways uphill. Another day of good driving by Katelyn. The weather changed really drastically today. The mountain storm moved in overnight, and it was snowing huge, fat flakes all morning. We went from 60 degrees to 30 degrees overnight. It was like being back in Kansas.
Wednesday: Moving on up, to the top. (Make sure you sing the Jefferson's theme song at this point.) We graduated to the top of the mountain. Not exactly the top, but very close. Katelyn and I loaded in the sled and were lowered down the track to just before Curve 2. The track workers lowered us with a cable and winch system. It was a lot like an amusement park ride. I always used to think bobsledding was like a roller coaster until I finally rode in one. Big drops. Speed. Tight turns. G forces. The beautiful thing about roller coasters is the harness that holds you in place during all of this. Riding in a bobsled is a lot like being in a washing machine with hammers and wrenches. Just holding yourself in the sled takes a lot of effort. Anyhow, being winched down was like riding the Superman at Six Flags. They take you to the top and hold you there while the anticipation builds, and then they finally release you. Well, one of the track workers dropped his walkie talkie, so our anticipation time was about 10 minutes long. We just hung out in the sled, being held there by a thin cable and trip mechanism while he chased it down the track.
And here's another assumption that was shattered, moving up just 4 curves couldn't make that big of a difference. Like I said before, all the speed comes in the first 6 curves, so moving up to Curve 2 made a HUGE difference. Katelyn wasn't quite prepared for all this speed, so things got a little crazy. We went airborne through Curve 6. Yes, as in all four runners off the ice. After pulling this Santa Claus, we were not set up to enter the labyrinth correctly. This is a series of small, tight turns in a row. We smashed into Curve 8 hard. I found out my hip checking abilities don't phase a metal sled. I have a very substantial bruise on my left hip to prove it. We then proceeded to hit in almost every turn down the track, but we made it all the way to the finish dock without pushing. (I'm looking for positives at this point.)
We loaded the sled up and headed back up the mountain. Play it again Sam. We didn't go airborne, but we smacked into 8 again. I find myself wincing every time we come to that curve now. All in all, it was a much better run, and I even cheered for Katelyn when we reached the finish dock. It was quite a day. I have the bruises to prove it. Check out those leopard legs. Beautiful! I look like I've been beaten, and I find a new one everyday. I have learned that bruising is a big part of bobsled. In all fairness to Katelyn, I think most of these are from moving sleds around in the shop and loading/unloading them off the trucks, not from actually being in the sled. We pad up pretty heavily for practice. I wear knee pads, lacrosse elbow pads and football shoulder pads everyday under my jump suit. I look like a linebacker with all that padding on, but I'm sure grateful for it.
Day 3 of driving school complete!
That's all I can cover today. Check back tomorrow to find out what happens during the rest of driving school and race week. Get excited because I've got some real doosies for you.
Sunday: We just hung out and got our grocery shopping done for the week. Nothing too exciting.
Saturday: Nothing too exciting happened on Saturday. We got our bags to the shuttle, watched Top Gun on our 2-hour ride to Albany, boarded a plane to Vegas with a handful of skeleton and bobsled athletes, killed some time playing slots between flights, and boarded another plane to Salt Lake City. Let me just say, our country is huge! We could have flown to Europe in the time it took us to go from Albany, NY, to Las Vegas, NV. EUROPE! That's crossing an ocean. I'm just saying, it was a long flight. The layover in Vegas was fun. I only lost $2 to the one arm bandit, so I'd call it a success. Megan was trying to win it big. We need new runners! It made me miss my K-State ASHRAE buddies though. The only time I've been to Vegas was last February with them, and Matt, Joel, Zac, and I had a great time. Too bad Blue Man Group couldn't make an appearance at the airport because they were my favorite part of Vegas.
Monday: Day 1 of FIBT driving school. It was Ms. Katelyn Kelly's first time driving since driving school last March, so I was a little nervous. It went great though. She drove like a champ from the Junior Start. It was like a passenger ride compared to Lake Placid. I am a big fan of the Junior Start. 
Tuesday: Still at the Junior start pushing the sled a VERY long ways uphill. Another day of good driving by Katelyn. The weather changed really drastically today. The mountain storm moved in overnight, and it was snowing huge, fat flakes all morning. We went from 60 degrees to 30 degrees overnight. It was like being back in Kansas.
We loaded the sled up and headed back up the mountain. Play it again Sam. We didn't go airborne, but we smacked into 8 again. I find myself wincing every time we come to that curve now. All in all, it was a much better run, and I even cheered for Katelyn when we reached the finish dock. It was quite a day. I have the bruises to prove it. Check out those leopard legs. Beautiful! I look like I've been beaten, and I find a new one everyday. I have learned that bruising is a big part of bobsled. In all fairness to Katelyn, I think most of these are from moving sleds around in the shop and loading/unloading them off the trucks, not from actually being in the sled. We pad up pretty heavily for practice. I wear knee pads, lacrosse elbow pads and football shoulder pads everyday under my jump suit. I look like a linebacker with all that padding on, but I'm sure grateful for it.