Corrine Malcolm

I could write words and words about the relatively wonderful end to my season.  How it poured on us for days in Whistler and I discovered my love and admiration for a good pair of rain pants… Or how I raced really well, hitting more targets than I ever have ever.  How the competition was great and the camaraderie better.  How Mammoth Lakes treated us to amazing generosity, sunshine, and smiles…. How a bear crashed our race, and how I crashed on my face.  How I managed to break my hand and within what seemed like hours also make a very good attempt to hack my trigger finger off.

….But that’s all said and done and great, and I’ve got this massive elephant in the room that needs to write it’s way out.

As of April 3rd I am no longer a member of the national team.  BOOM! …the thing is, as much as I sensed this coming a long ways off, it still feels like I got punched in the soul.  You know that feeling you get in your throat when you are trying to keep it together, grating down towards your lungs, like you’re trying to fit a square through a circle?  It hurt.  It felt personal.

Then the questions started rolling: What are you doing next season?  What do you want to do next season?  Do you want to join a nordic team?  Will cookies make this all feel better?   No?  Chocolate?  No?  Chocolate cookies!?   Do you want to join our nordic team?  Can you classic ski?   You can classic ski can’t you?   What do you want?  Oh my goodness you don’t have a coach! What do you want?  Ahhh!  What do YOU want?  Screw it, just switch back to running!   No, seriously what do you want? Help!?!? (wow… you do not want in my mind)

I’ve worked through many of these questions over the past couple of weeks.  Ironing out the seemingly logistical mess and putting together something meaningful.  And you know what?  I think I can do this.  I recently wrote to a former coach of mine and told him getting kicked off the national team felt an awful lot like getting tossed in the ocean, and realizing that I can swim.

It’s not going to be easy but for the first time in two years I feel like I have a handle on my life and my happiness.  There are days when I’m still not sure which way is up but I have the most incredible support system put in place that I could not be more thankful for.  I’ve got incredible friends and family to keep me grounded and a community behind me.  (So very many shoulders!)

As spring slowly moves into Bozeman I can feel my fledgeling of a self grow stronger roots and boy is it an exciting conclusion to begin with!

Growing up in Hayward Wisconsin the American Birkiebeiner was something that you just learned to embrace, or rather… endure.  You got school off on Birkie Friday.  I skied the barnebirkie every year mostly because that meant I got to get out of school early on thursday too (and what elementary school kid doesn’t love free cookies and swiss miss hot chocolate?)…  However, racing the Birkie never really occurred to me as something I would do.

But there I was…two weeks before the largest ski race in North America doing nothing short of pleading, groveling, and begging my way into the Women’s Elite wave.  …which somehow worked.

The entire week I was home before the race was surreal.  The Birkie trail is where I originally proclaimed my utter distain for cross country skiing but also where I inevitably fell in love with the sport.  I’ve laughed and cried on probably every inch of that trail.  I helped to build the single track originating out of the Fish Hatchery trail head.  The very trail head that I would often bike to from the house I grew up in just a few miles down the road.  Simply put, I was home, I was in my element, and I was amped!

I spent the week listening to really mellow music on my ipod because I kept getting too excited every time I would head out for a ski. I had to fight the urge to yell, “Welcome Home!” every time I passed another skier on the trail.  I stress baked, and whatever energy was left over I channeled into laying on the floor and pumping fluids into my sick restless body.

A day out from the race I was still struggling to nail down a wax tech… Enter stress baking.  So I did what any other desperate overzealous underfunded athlete would do… I showed up to the expo with cupcakes. Yes, cupcakes.  Coffee Chocolate Cupcakes with Baileys Frosting.  Seemingly due to my baking prowess, but more likely due to the fact that I looked like a lost puppy, the HWK boys agreed to help me out.

After that particularly skillful bit of ingenuity the race itself went relatively well despite me being a full fledged amateur.  I laughed uncontrollably on the start line.  I got placed on the front row of the elite women’s field in my plain black tights and gray Craft top…. my grin seemed to be on the only thing in the right place.

I did my very best to cling, control, and elbow my way into a safe position.  Tucking myself neatly into the lead pack of 12 women I quickly realized that I was surrounded by very good company.  A small but strong field of some of the best women in the country… and I was right there with them!  I coasted on excitement and naivety until  kilometer 39 or 40 and then I exploded.  They surged and I spontaneously combusted.  I cracked.  Shattered.  My limbs fell off. Things started to move in slow motion.  I rode the struggle bus for the last 10kms of the race buoyed solely by a generous coke feed and the very real fear that I would end up like those videos of ironman athletes crawling the last meters to the finish because they couldn’t stand any more.  I did my best to keep my arms and legs moving, but I had blown up in spectacular fashion.

Not only did I find the wall but I collided into it with every ounce of me.  I lost just over five and a half minutes in 10 kilometers… but I made it and hung onto 13th.

It might not have been everything I had hoped for, but now that I can straighten my arms again I think I finally understand what this whole Birkie fever thing is all about… because despite everything a 50k will put you through I’m hungry for more.

My expectations going into Saturday’s race could probably be summed up best in a single shoulder shrug.  Why?  Well… the longest race I’ve ever done was a 20k back in 2009 and I haven’t raced without my rifle in over two years…. What I did expect however was a weekend full of sunshine, spandex clad master blasters, and having a grin plastered across my face at all times.

Turns out, flying by the seat of pants works in my favor.

I was nervous to do my first “big kid” nordic race in what seems like an eternity.  If I know anything about my skiing it is that I generally struggle to stay relaxed in a pack and I loose all sorts of time on downhills and flats.  I’m clumsy, frequently a liability, and (more than) occasionally a bit spastic.  Going into a mass start, of all things, was terrifying.

I’m the scared looking one on the far left hand side of the picture… obviously.

The women’s race was surprisingly calm and mostly just involved me being an amateur doing amateur things all over the place.  I spent most of the race wondering if we were going hard enough and then I would remind myself I had no idea what I was doing so I should just chill out instead.  I dropped my first feed (thanks BA for offering me your water bottle!) and sent most of my second feed back out my nose. Super attractive imagery.  I took myself out twice during the second half of the race but thanks to some wicked fast skis (huge shout out to Chris Hall and Fischer for waxing them up) I managed to never lose contact with the other girls for that long.  My shinning moment was probably pulling strong after the first Preem which broke the women’s pack of 6 or 7 women down to 4… that, and not taking anyone else down with me… besides that one old guy that got in my way… sorry?

Our little group of four never broke up going into the final 5km but our speed continued to ramp up as we got closer and closer to the finish.  Alexa and Brooke dominated the trail while Lauren and I apparently took turns falling over.

In a four way sprint for first I got shut out of a finishing lane and had to ski in the whiskers to move around Alexa and head for the line.  I ran out of ski race before I could get to Lauren’s shoulder and finished a mere 0.11 seconds out of first.  Someone proceeded to ski through my head as I lay on the ground which left me a little dazed but relatively unharmed (we think).

Racing was incredibly fun and I definitely came away from the weekend exceeding my own expectations… and apparently everyone else’s!

After soaking it up in the hot springs, mingling with our new British friends, collecting hugs, and filling ourselves with some exceptionally fast-exceptionally questionable Chinese food, Carl, Ben and I headed back towards Montana.  Home to Bozeman.  Although it was great to go to sleep in Idaho and wake up in Montana I also woke up to some bad news.

After a phone call from Europe and a Skype meeting later it turns out I will not be going to Europe to race at European/U26 Championships in Bulgaria like I had hoped.  It was, and still is, a huge disappointment… but I’m trying to turn my focus to the future and what races I do get to do instead.

After much groveling and shameful pleading I will be going home to race the Birkie!  As a Hayward kid who was never old enough to do the whole thing I’m getting pretty excited and looking forward to skiing with a bunch of familiar faces.  Birkie fever anyone?

I’m currently tucked away in a car on my way to Idaho.  For guess what?  A nordic race.  Confused?  You and me both.

What happened exactly?  It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot recently, and one I hope to answer for all of you now.

After trials back in December I was left with the devastating decision of “What am I going to do now!?”  Biathlon has an unforgiving race season of two strikes and you’re out.  Out of Europe… and into…what?

With my team, coaching staff, and seemingly, the entire race circuit over in Europe I was emotionally overwhelmed with nothing to fall back on.

After spending much of last winter sick and on a steady stream of medication it has been frustrating to be faced with what seems to be such a dead end of a race season knowing I’m physically capable of so much more.  Hungry to be better.  *Enter – further banging my head against a wall. 

As January approached it was suggested I head to Northern Maine to finish the race season out under the watchful eye of Maine Winter Sports Center.  (Yes I’m 22 and need constant supervision) Instead of feeling like an opportunity I felt like an elderly women being pushed out on an ice-flow to die in solitude. Burnout was on the horizon, and more than that, something I was not ready for.  Not yet.

I’ve been called uncommitted.  Disobedient.  Unfocused.  I prefer professionally rouge. Or perhaps charmingly unconventional.  This isn’t me quitting.  This is me fighting.  Fighting for my place in this sport, for the longevity of my athletic career, and for my own wellbeing.

Instead of going East. I packed up my belongings and headed West… and then further West.  I’ve found a little nitch in Bozeman.  A happy place, in an awesome home, surrounded by some of the most incredible people, and it feels good.

I’ve got some of the best mountains as a playground. I’ve got snow and blue bird “Big Sky Country” days.   And yes, I even have my rifle… and 4000 rounds of ammunition…

I’d be lying if I told you I know what I’m doing or what the future holds, and I’m steadily growing ok with that.  For now the sun is setting on Idaho and I’m well on my way to couch surfing through the Boulder Mountain Tour this weekend (Thanks Kev)!   On Saturday I’ll be doing my first nordic race in over two years and on Sunday I’ll find out if I get to go to Bulgaria, for European Championships, at the end of the month.  Big things ahead?  I sure think so.

Until then I’ll be accepting deposits of crossed fingers and good vibes.

“Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things– they save you.” –Chuck Palahniuk

These words have been reverberating in my mind over the past couple of weeks.  Bouncing off the emptiness.  Writing about coming up short, although truthful and meaningful, is still hard heavy material.  …but as I find my own light in the tunnel I think this is as fitting a stage as any to bring closure to the past month.

Despite finding out my coach would no longer be working with me or USBA and a snowless week at home that I spent running, mountain biking, and puking my guts out I went into the trials races in Minnesota feeling calm and confident.  I even managed to win the first race of the series despite taking my dear time on the range…  However, that one glimmer of hope wouldn’t be enough.  I floundered on the range in the next two races, despite skiing well, and putting together some of the best standing shooting of my (rather short) career… I couldn’t pull it together.

I seem to have a chronic problem of under-performing when it matters most.  It’s as if I’m playing a little game called “How Badly Can Corrine Mess This Up?”  *hint: I’m winning

It’s cringe inducing.

Needless to say, it was also devastating.  There were factors beyond my control, and yet when I look back on it all I can think is, “You just weren’t good enough.”   Unfortunately, close doesn’t count for much in these settings.

So what do you do with an athlete like me?  An athlete in the development gap.  A gap we don’t have a plan for.  Heck, I don’t even know what to do with me.  I’m no longer a junior (although my experience level suggests other wise) and yet I seem to be a constant step behind my older senior team mates…  Honestly I’m spent.  I’ve spent the past 8 months banging my head against a wall.  Pushing to keep up.  To get better …and I am better.  My good just hasn’t been good enough to completely bridge the gap.  After all it’s only a six year leap right?  Of course right.

While no one is sure what to do with me I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands with the hope of avoiding an utterly disastrous (definitely looming) total burn out.

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the last year and a half it is that you have got to be happy.  Happy with what you’re doing, happy with what you’re aspiring to do, and most importantly happy with yourself.

Over the past few weeks I have had many a hard conversation and sent numerous heart wrenching emails. I’ve been faced with some tough decisions and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. My fear is real and tangible.  Yet with every positive step I take forward for myself I feel myself breathe a little easier, sleep a little better, and smile a little more.

As I write this it’s 55degrees and raining, and somehow, defiantly so, I am happy.

I spent the past couple of weeks in an epic pursuit of happiness that brought me out west to snow, sunshine, and good company.  Such good company!  Even now I feel the happiness radiating through me, lingering.

Although I have written a little about my struggles with my health over the past few months I’ve opted out of acknowledging just how much I was truly struggling out East mentally and emotionally.  In general I like to think I’m a pretty positive person and I’m struggling to write about… struggling.   I don’t want people to worry about me, because more often than not I feel like worry only transpires into self-doubt.

However, my trip to the West was a daily reminder of how truly fortunate and loved I am, and a blatant acknowledgement of just how utterly sad and empty I was this summer and fall.  Somehow, through all of this I’ve managed to find some great clarity, despite the giant jumble of a life I lead.

This summer I might have found bottom.  A training cave of what can most closely be described as dismal…. but in it I also found my strength.  I now know more clearly than ever that even though I’m willing to sacrifice so much for this small portion of my life, I am not willing to sacrifice my sanity… or my happiness.  I now know that if I want to find success in this or any piece of my life I can not do it without being happy.

Throughout the past couple of weeks I stocked up on hugs, and when asked what I was doing in Canmore or Bozeman I simply responded with, “Happiness Training.” …and it truly was just that.  Just what I needed.

I can not thank all the people who made the last few weeks possible enough.  New and old friends, former team mates, and the families that welcomed me into their homes.  Especially (but of course not limited to) The national guard team, the Irwin family and the MSU alpine team, Andrew, Wes, Andie, Stephen and the Montana house.  You guys all made my trip bliss, and for that I can not thank you enough!

I learned that happiness training is more than a diet of wine and donuts.  More than running up snowy canyons, and racing with beautiful blue skies.  Happiness training is good, but having other goobers to share it with makes it great.

 

I originally posted this a little over a year ago, but as we head into the winter season I think this is a great time to take a step back and put ourselves in the best place possible to tackle the races that lay ahead.

 

 

Excuses: 

We all make them.  I’ve made plenty of them over the years.  About my school work or grades.  About my sports, training and racing…  I’ve made them about different relationships in my life, with family, friends… but I’m not really sure why.  Sometimes we use excuses to protect ourselves, but more than anything we are just selling ourselves short.  Holding ourselves back.  Why?  Why on earth would I ever want to do that?!?!

You have the training excuses…  I’m too tired, my arms hurt, my legs are sore, its too hot, its too cold, I don’t feel right, I ate too much food, my head hurts, I didn’t sleep well, my skis are slow, its raining, I’m breathing too hard, I don’t like sweat, my spandex is too tight?

You’re holding yourself back.  Intervals are supposed to be hard.  If racing is the hardest thing I do then I’m not trained well enough…

Even better are those pre-race excuses…those protect you right?  So if things don’t go so well you’ve got that excuse already in place.  I threw my arm out in that snowball fight.  The course is hard.  The conditions are slow.  I was sick two weeks ago.  My warm up didn’t feel good.  I’m not as good as these other athletes.

Why? Why? Why?  Do we want ourselves to fail?

Then when it’s all said and done we come with excuses to why you didn’t do as well as you wanted, you didn’t beat so-in-so, you didn’t live up to other’s expectations, your own expectations.  (so you can’t win them all they say…but you can sure as hell try)  They missed the wax, it was windy when I was on the range, I didn’t feel good, I went out too easy, I went out to fast, I don’t do well in long races, I’m not a sprinter, the course wasn’t built for me, its the altitude, this race didn’t matter…

Your self value, your self worth, does not correlate with where you finished on the results list….  So perhaps it’s time to stop looking for things to blame our results on and instead look for ways to make the results better.  You get to choose your outlook… so why do we love to settle on the negative?

This is what happens when I train by myself alot.  I get to thinking.  So I’m challenging myself to not make excuses.  To not settle for excuses.  Living and competing with intention and having ownership in that intention seems a whole lot more rewarding…

I do realize I promised to write you a post about our time in Utah… but in retrospect that might have been a lie?

Utah was great, the training (albeit frustrating at times) was good, the sun was appreciated and the snow was not.  I got to run in the hills, rollerski in circles, eat too much good food.  I had some of my best shooting ever.  (It’s always nice when you can surprise people by doing what you are suppose to do)

Utah was raw.  It was good and it was bad.  But I feel like I’ve moved on.

While the rest of the giggle gang hung out in Utah for another week I headed back to Lake Placid with Jonne to get in some of the coldest rollerskiing of the season… on our brand new roller loop!  HOT diggity-dog, does that not sound exciting???

Over my two week stint in Lake Placid I spent my time making more baked goods than anyone could eat, drinking an entire bottle of tasty liquid iron, and working on feeling fast while trying not to simply flail my limbs around uncontrollably.  Modest success!

Sick of rollerskiing in long-johns, mittens, and the occasional down jacket I decided it was time to find real winter.  And so the hunt for snow (man made or that natural stuff) began.  You know it is time for winter when you’ve forgotten how many layers of nonsense it actually takes to keep you warm, what snow-baskets are, and when you may or may not have found a dead mouse in your pole tube.  (Hey, my car doesn’t stink anymore….)

One direct flight  and a very generous former team mate later I arrived in Canmore with my rifle and jumbo ski bag.  I’ve been putting around for a few days, getting my feet under me, catching up on some z’s, sipping too much coffee  (that or I’m developing tremors), and logging my first k’s of the season on snow.

I’ve only been here for a few days…. but there is something about this place I’ve discovered over the past few years since I started this whacked out sport that is seemingly magical.  The kind of magical place that every time I get sick of the east and threaten to run to some where far far away… Well, that place is here.

*Photo credit goes to my team mates and their iphones. Yah cell-phone journalism! 

While you were all dressed to the gills (preferably as sparkly-spandexy-zombie-princesses) I have been tucked away in a sleepy little hallow in Utah.

Have no fear, I am working on a post for you guys chalk full of borrowed pictures and all about  our training camp, pillow forts, not getting shot by hunters, dognapping a dog (too obvious), snowy rollerskis, and of course our trials races…. but for now all I can think about is Halloween.

Although I did  not celebrate Halloween this year  I did get to celebrate it four times in one week last year… so I suppose I can skip a year every now and then.  While out west reminiscing about costumes of past years, drinking a little wine, eating a little pumpkin pie I kept coming across all these pictures from people dressed up as really clever things.

Thinking of getting clever I thought back to my first few Halloweens.  Now, my parents were a clever bunch.  When I was little they convinced me that children were suppose to be the same thing for Halloween every year until you grew out of your costume. Wait what?  For four years I was a bumblebee…. yep.  Oh yes, my parents tricked me real good.  I’m sure at that point I had no idea what Halloween was about.. if anything it must have been about celebrating bumblebees and pumpkins and your parents taking away all of your candy, putting it on a high shelf, and rationing it slowly out until Easter.

Maybe this is why I struggle making decisions.  Don’t mind me if I start to eliminate legitimate choices, I’ll just chose option E) bumblebee.

Take one:

Take two (still loving it): 

Your bodies number one job is to keep itself alive.  (this is where you yell, “Thank you Captain Obvious!”)

As an athlete you ride the fine line between pushing your body to adapt and get stronger and pushing your body to freak out and get over protective.  This happens often times when athletes get sick, injured, or are under-recovered while trying to maintain their ‘normal’ training habits.

I’ve been feeling flat for over a month now.  Lack of concentration, increased fatigue (wait you’re passing out at 9pm again?)… I feel lazy and have a hard time motivating to train.  This isn’t normal for me. I generally struggle with the opposite!  Frustrated, I brought out all the old training logs, combed through numbers, data, how have you been feeling? blahblah.  But nothing was different.  I wasn’t training more than normal.  I was left scratching my head, and teetering on terrified.  How did I mess this up!?!?!   

Panic was setting in.  “Am I setting myself up for another horrible season?”    “I can’t go through that again!”  ”Body why do you hate me!?”  It’s funny how the mind forgets the months of injury and sickness and dwells on the general disappointment.  “Snap out of it crazy!” 

…Then I got my blood results back.    Anemic.

I suppose I shouldn’t be excited to hear the news.  But Yes.  I am excited that something is wrong.  And yes.  I am excited to get better.  Because somehow knowing that I can do something (even if that something is taking those nasty dirty penny flavored pills every day) feels like good news.

So it might be September.  And I might be in salvage mode already… but every day I’m going to get a little better.  My crazy anemic gasping for air will stop.  I won’t bonk every 20 minutes.  Everything will stop feeling like resistance training.

It won’t be tomorrow.  Or next week.  ….I just guess it’s a good thing I like going up hill.