Engineer Mountain hovers over the Start Line of the debut of Durango’s Nordic Ironman; the Tour de Ski. the course would offer us exhausted nordic skiers our 40k turn-around at an elevation very close to the 13,211 summit of “Engie”.
race day morning
5:30 am.
Andrew “Ferggie” Ferguson’s beautiful home in Durango. “ilg…”his deep lung’d voice from outside my guest room which is now referred to as “the ilg wing,”...”you up?” i answer, “Yeah, baby! Let’s do this thing!” the prior day’s drive from Flag has nested in my body with a restless stagnation of chi. ilg is shark-like; i need motion to live. no messin’ around. i gotta merge quick into my WF Early Morning Ritual. moving through Neti, Pranayama, a ‘traveling version’ of Rock Vinyasa, and finishing up with a special pre-race pranayam, puja, and mediation, i emerge from the “ilg wing” erased of pre-race jitters and raring to give this monster of a race a go(o)d go. some oatmeal followed by my SUNRIDER Race Day battery of Sacred Herbs; Action Caps, Metabalance 44, Liqui-5, Vitadophilis, and – of course – the Sport Caps. this intake i chase with a handful of BioBuilde Amino Acids. then, i choke down consecutive packets of PowerGels and on the drive up to the venue a PowerBar is methodically forced down. Sacredness in eating, the mainstay of WF Nutritional Guidelines, takes a backseat to sheer necessity on Race Days. bonking during a 40k at altitude is simply not an option. eat. as Nordic and World Championship MTB racer Carl Swenson taught me about pre-race food intake, “You must PUSH IT DOWN!”
9:00 am.
pull into a parking lot at Durango Mountain Resort (DMR). i fight the memory, vivid as the 13-degree cold on my face, of when this place was called Purgatory (Purg) and had only one little chalet lodge, one parking lot, and three chairlifts.
another car, moments later pulls in near us. doors slam and three very lean looking nordic studs step out. Ferggie, my current Sherpa for all outdoor endurance things happening in Durango these days, introduces me to them. They are all pro mountain bikers and look like it. Miles, in particular, has eyes that shine like granite feldspar. He uses them to immediately dissect me, kindly, as if to pierce any competitive armor i may offer him today. i offer none. he senses, “no threat” and we instantly drop into one another respective of each other’s Warrior resumes. Hours and a tonnage of sweat later, Miles would later finish second to US Ski Team National Member, Tad Elliot, son of my childhood coach and 3x Olympian Coach Mike Elliot whose name graces my books. Gary, another lean warrior of the professional MTB world, starts going off about how much he loves yoga, how much he wants to be a coach and integrate cross training disciplines like yoga, meditation, and herbs. inwardly and outwardly i smile. it’s great to see this new young crop of emerging Servers of Sacred Sweat understand intuitively about the priceless value of a Wholistic approach. only later, after the race, after we shared the Sacred Mountain Sweat together would i inform him that i pioneered such an approach; in 1982.
as we Nordic Warriors slalomed lightly through alpine skiers clumping around in their heavy boots like so many overfed cattle, i felt deep gratitude for my Practice and Lifestyle which enables me to experience such scintillating m(om)ents like this morning. a deep Tribal Warriorism rushed my cells as i strode with my spiritual fitness brothers toward Race Registration carrying our swords of long, light skis and light saber-like poles. my heart thumping with excitement, anxiety, and utter joy. i lingered in warm introspection in the cold early morning rays to reflect, “How many other 45-year old, new fathers of a 4-month old can experience a morning like this? i’m gonna be one of the first, select athletes to race on this ‘nordic ironman’ course which covers the same spiritual paths of snow that i once regularly did decades ago? This is an Om So Ti day…this is a Kundalini Development Day…this is a go(o)d day for a mountain yogi to suffer, to purify, and become greatly empowered.”
UP NEXT in the Tour de Ski Chronicles;
The Race