Adventures of a Skeleton Slider - Year 3

Surprise!  It's time to pull out the spikes, helmet and spandex suit, because the 2004-05 skeleton season is upon us once again.  You can imagine my surprise when I re-read an old e-mail last week and realized that not only did we have a training session scheduled for Friday, but the first club race of the season was on Saturday afternoon.  I had barely looked at my sled since putting it away in February, and now I'm supposed to go running down that track again?  Yikes!

I did some quick scheduling with the Friday DJ at the station to see if he could come in early so that I could make the 7 PM session (normally I'm on the air until 7, and at the station until 7:30 or so -- this could become a problem with future sessions, we'll have to see), then I just had to hope I could remember all the turns on the track and what I'm supposed to do in each of them.

Thankfully, there wasn't any traffic on Highway 224 as I raced up to the track, put my sled in the start house, quickly got it adjusted, and then got on the ice.  Folks said they were surprised to see me, as they had heard me on the air not 15 minutes earlier.  I didn't push too hard, as I tried to recall the mechanics of getting on the sled, then just sort of held on and let muscle memory take over.

Amazingly enough, I made it down without incident, and in fact, turned in a fairly respectable time.  Had a little trouble with the second run, especially as my visor was totally fogged for most of it, but in the end, the two runs were consistent, separated by a mere 0.06 seconds.

Well, tomorrow is race day, that's when the real fun starts.  :)

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