Around the world and back again!
Beijing is trying to build excitement around winter sports ahead of the 2022 Olympics. As part of this, the organizers (underwritten by Swix China) invited foreign athletes to come race in an all-expenses-paid, 3-day sprint tour in and around Beijing. BSF Elite athlete Felicia Gesior and I joined 11 athletes and four wax techs from the U.S. continent. In addition to a large group of Chinese athletes (about half of the field), other foreign nations represented were Norway, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, Iceland, Australia, and France.
Nearly everyone traveling from North America and Europe arrived on Thursday February 28th, with the first races starting Friday, March 1. Beijing is 13 hours ahead of eastern U.S. time, so for Felicia and I, traveling from central USA, this meant leaving midday Wednesday and arriving Thursday evening after a ~14 hour flight.
March 1
The first race was the next morning, in the plaza next to the Birds Nest Stadium! The course was two times around an 800-meter flat rectangle, starting and finishing in the center, with one small bridge that allowed for a few V1 steps. Combined with soft snow (the air temp was around 50F), flat meant there was also no recovery, so it made for some burning legs and lungs. The air quality was also quite poor (AQI >200, making the Bozeman summer smoke air seem healthy and clear in hind sight!), but we came prepared with masks and did our best to mitigate exposure. In this first day, Felicia and I both made the heats; Felicia qualified 28th, I qualified 30th, going on to finish in the same places after our quarterfinals in a field that included many World Cup skiers! While we only saw glimpses of the TV coverage, it was exhilarating to start like they do on the World Cup, in the starting blocks, with the camera coming by each of us! (All results on FIS here.)
March 2
The following day we raced in Shougang, in a more industrial area, directly in the sight of a retired steel plant. In the process of renovating the area for the Olympics, it was a mix of dilapidated, looming structures with their renovated counter parts, providing for an ominous vibe, certainly unlike anywhere I’d ever raced! This course was also flat, with a bridge and a set of rollers, looping around what used to be the a cooling pond for the foundry, which is now a parking garage beneath a shallower reflecting pond. Felicia and I both missed qualifying for the heats on this day, but it meant we got to climb up in the old towers! (All the areas with yellow railings in the pictures are areas you can walk to.) We enjoyed seeing the course from a bird’s-eye view and learned about the transformation the area will undergo as it becomes the site for the snowboarding and freestyle big air events.
March 3
Following the Shougang sprint day, we traveled to our next location by way of a six-tour-bus caravan of all the athletes and our gear to the Great Wall of China!! After our Great Wall exploration, we continued on to our home for the final days, a luxury golf resort hotel outside of the town of Yanqing.
We got our first real glimpse of the mountains too, as our hotel sat just up against the foothills that went back to the mountains.
March 4
The final day of racing was in the town of Yanqing, in and around a convention center (that also served as their earthquake emergency shelter). This course was also entirely flat, in the shape of a squashed question mark, with three exciting sets of rollers. It started with a 200m stretch straight ahead, circled to the left around the inner building, then took a hard right turn to loop around the outer building that horseshoe-ed around the inner circular building, flowing back over another set of rollers into the finish straightaway. Another hot and sunny day, the air was a bit cleaner, and though we both again didn’t qualify, it was an exciting day to spectate our USA teammates!
March 5
For our final day, the original plan was to have a sightseeing day in Beijing. We found out the night before the last race though that the government had called meetings (apparently this happens routinely) which shuts down the city to foreigners. This meant we couldn’t take our buses in, couldn’t purchase a train ticket with a foreign passport, or get a taxi, and that all museums and historic places were closed. A bit of a buzz-kill, we all made the best of it.
I went into my default mode of checking out maps to find a an adventurous outlet, and found several trails that climbed the mountains behind us. Upon trying to get a taxi to the trailhead, the concierge told us the road was closed due to the Olympics, and we couldn’t get one. We figured that would mean it’d be quiet and great for running. It turns out the mountain road was closed because they’re constructing the “super highway” above it, to provide access to Zhangjiakou, the mountain site for the Olympics for most of the skiing events. We had a nice run though, got into the hills, found a trail that gave a view over the valley and the mega construction.
Perks of this day were that the air was CLEAR for the first time since we were there, and it felt so good to run and breathe. Felicia and another group of US athletes found their way to some caves that people had built and lived in, and they eventually made their way to see more of the city of Yanqing.
After one more sleep we began the (time) travel back to the U.S. My flight took off at 2:20pm on Wednesday in China, then after 13 hours of flying arrived in Toronto at 2:10pm on Wednesday!
With a few adverse conditions- poor air quality, questionable water cleanliness, soft snow, a lot of travel, it was a great exercise in focussing on the positives! My list: I didn’t get food poisoning, I didn’t get sick, I successfully navigated the squatty potties on race morning. We had a really fun group of athletes, many of us having raced together for many years on various international trips and against each other for even longer domestically. We also ran into many friends racing for other countries, many that had raced in the U.S. in college and went home to race for their home team afterwards. We had a rad group of wax techs supplying with us with fast skis and great vibes on the daily. We had one great clear day. I got used to training in a mask; it’ll make summer smoke training feel easy! And we got an essentially free trip to China. They paid all of our expenses other than the cost of getting a visa!
1. Once in a lifetime.
It’s much easier for me to see the learning experience in hindsight than while I’m actually in it, so maybe that is a great purpose for writing and sharing a blog! I went into this trip thinking of it as a once-in-a lifetime experience, likely this is the only time I will ski race in Beijing. While I recognize that every moment and race trip is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, this felt more stark since it was so different from anything I’ve done in skiing, or at least I was more intentionally aware of it for the brief week we were there. I also can easily get wrapped up in racing, thinking that there’s always another chance, but as one coach often reminded me, this is both the first and last time you’ll ever do what you’re doing right now, and I felt really in it in that way while I was over there. I can’t say I had any aha moments, but it was a fun thought experiment, and a nice reframing in the more challenging moments.
2. Doing it for the process.
After early-season frustration with my results this year, I took a mental and physical reset in January, bringing intentional focus and a renewed effort for a training block to emphasize the end of the season. Each day bringing in mindfulness to my physical and mental spheres, I felt like I was really in it.
I was doing the work, enjoying it, focussed on the process, letting go of anxiety around any outcomes, knowing that my goals would come only from my presence, not my anticipation or apprehension of the end game.
Going into China, I felt really good, I was exactly were I wanted to be, feeling like I had made really positive progress since the beginning of January. I went into each race as a new opportunity, but after coming short of my results goals there (qualifying, and being competitive in the heats), I was really rattled. In hindsight, I know that the races were not my most favorable conditions (flat, soft, tough air, 12h jet lag, travel across the world the day before racing), but in the moment, that didn’t feel like it mattered. A little perspective would have seen the challenges and told myself I had in fact made big gains. I didn’t listen to that angel on my shoulder though, and listened instead to the sabotaging devil, a lesson in itself, to choose which dialogue to credit.
The bigger reminder I found in this case though was an eye opener. While I thought I’d been in it for the process, I still had half my eggs in the results basket. I was doing it for the process, only as long as it led also to the result. Which is also maybe why I came up short. I wasn’t as wholly in the process as I thought I was. And I know, from this and from previous experiences, the only complete way is the way where I’m in it for the process of it, every step of the way. Otherwise the results are only coming by accident.
3. Wishing it away doesn’t work; the grass isn’t greener.
By the end of the trip, tired from the travel and racing, and mental fatigue of frustration, I was ready to go home. Having been proud of living in the moment through the first 5 days of being there, after letting the frustration get to me following the last race, I just wanted to go home. I imagined it would all be better if only I could be done with it. Clean water, skiing, toilets you can sit on, air that doesn’t make me hack all day. But sure enough, it was not! While I adjusted easily during the travel there (or was just exhausted enough to sleep), coming back, I spent 3 nights unable to sleep, wide awake from 2am from the jet lag, feeling like a total zombie during the days. Turns out it I felt a lot worse actually for several days, and those last 48 hours in China were very nice in hindsight!
Heather Mooney skis on the BSF Elite Nordic Team. She captained her team at Middlebury College and spent two years racing for the Craftsbury Green Racing Project before “retiring” in spring of 2017. The BSF team was kind enough to let her join some practices and races last fall and winter. She’s now in her first full year officially with the BSF Elite team, she’s enjoying the training and racing lifestyle in this outdoor mecca!
