Going Down

For dry land training for cross-country skiing in the summer we usually run, roller-ski (A video of a professional xc skier roller skiing) or do a strength workout. One day, we went on a roller ski. Roller skiing is supposed to be like cross-country skiing without snow, except there is one huge difference, you can't stop on roller skis (people on The Amazing Race attempting to stop). People always ask my teammates and I  "How do you stop?", our response is always "You don't". There are no brakes and no way (that I'm aware of) to slow yourself down once you start going fast on a downhill other than bailing out.

Anyway back to the roller ski, it was supposed to be a long, slow, distance roller ski. I was skiing with a group of girls on my ski team and it was really windy that day. Our coach to told us to ski along this road until we got to the hospital and once we got there we were supposed to turn around. On the way out to the hospital we had a head wind, which was not fun especially because it was all uphill, but it meant that would get a tail wind on the way back. We skied out to the turn around point and met our coach, who gave us some technique tips and told us to head back to where we started.

As I mentioned before the way out was all uphill, so the way back was all downhill. Again, roller skis DO NOT have brakes, so it is more than a little scary going down hills. We are going down this one hill and if you start out "snow plowing" for lack of a better term and continue snow plowing down the whole hill, you can somewhat control your speed (or you can just go for it, but I'm terrified of hills, so I'll just stick with the first option). About 3/4 of the way down the hill I decided to just go for it because the hill was about to level out. I stop snow plowing and just let my skis go down the hill. It's going fine until I remember that there is a big, yellow post right in the middle of the trail. I lost balance, but somehow manage to make it around the post. After I got around the post I thought I was in the clear, little did I know how wrong I was. After I passed the post, I hit a rock and according to my teammates flew about 5 feet in the air and 6 feet forward. I was fine... other than the internal injuries I was convinced I had but really I was fine other than being mental scarred for life.

Me Getting Ready to Roller Ski (Photo Courtesy of Ericha Oberg)