nineveh_uk

Two years ago I posted a clip of a bloke in a predominently white suit beginning the clip in 5th place and going on to win the race a minute later. I can't quite manage that this time round, but I can do a bloke in a white suit entering the clip in 6th place and going to to get fourth, 2.9 seconds of the leader, which is pretty bloody impressive when you're British and the sport is cross-country skiing. Although the Norwegian press swiftly labelled him, only part-sarcastically, as the best Norwegian since he trains there, has a Norwegian club, and is studying at the Univeristy of Trondheim, and pointed out that he beat all the Swedes, too. So congratulations to Andrew Musgrave. The Nordic Ski World Championships greatly cheered my post-holiday week, alas only two weekends left and then I'll have to find something else to iron to.

I have decided to give structure to my forthcoming holiday by booking myself a course of three mornings of group lessons in cross-country skiing skate technique at the extremely well-regarded school in Seefeld, where I shall be next week.

I am not entirely sure whether this is a brilliant idea that will teach me exciting new skills and be enormous fun, or whether I am completely out of my mind. I am definitely not ideally fit for it, but since at the moment my max distance skating is about 15m, I expect to fall over from technique fail long before my lungs/shoulders/legs give out. We shall see.

Naturally, I have not yet packed.

The member of the audience leaping to the action to save the show is familiar from real life as well as 42nd Street. Singers do, after all, get coughs. The occasional actor will break a leg. If you're lucky, it happens in time for the management to get Thomas Allen fresh off the plane. If you're really lucky you're the student in the audience who happens to know the role, as happened to Patrick McCarthy years earlier when Thomas Allen was taken ill.* Of course, understudies exist, and most of the time the 'emergency' performer is well-rehearsed. It happens in sport, too, though again usually the person stepping up is someone who was going to do it anyway at some point.

And sometimes they are Lars Høgnes, a 36 year old waxing technician who works for the Norwegian World Cup team and found himself taking the third leg in the relay for the second team after one of the skiers got food poisoning. Høgnes is actually a good club skier with a couple of team relay medals from national championships as a young man, but he never reached the top level. In true Scandinavian style he was sent off with the comment from the team spokesperson that "He's probably not very good". They did come last (minus Kazakhstan, who were lapped), but at least they were there.

Meanwhile, today's example of something I don't need in my life, a woollen sports bra.

*I learned today that Thomas Allen's middle name is Boaz. That's north-eastern mining communities for you.

It is, however, in only 6 and a half-weeks time, which is terrifyingly close for the end of term and last week of March. I had better get to the gym.* It is skiing, Norway, and I shall be breaking exciting new ground in seeing the E6 road from the train, rather than the railway line from the E6, because I am getting myself to the hotel independently rather than having someone else do all the organising. This feels a lot more adventurous when it is 300km in Norway in winter than continental Europe in the summer even though it isn't in actual fact, despite the fact that I've been to the hotel itself before. I am even being sufficiently grown up that I am paying an extra £25 for the week to have a room with an Amazing View. With a view like this, it seems money worth spending.

(The picture is on LJ again. I must look up how to put them on DW.)

Possibly I should put it on my work computer desktop as an incentive to survive the term.

*I won't get to the gym.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a well-organised cupboard holds more than a cupboard into which things have been crammed at random and that you worry about opening the door of in anticipation of Stuff falling out. After a certain amount of work this afternoon my airing cupboard is now much tidier. Only the rest of the house to go before Tuesday's inspection by the agent. Tomorrow I get to clean the oven, oh joy, oh rapture. I wouldn't normally, but since I am specifically going to get them to get the oven door fixed so it doesn't require the strength of ten (pure hearts optional) to open, I should at least make a gesture in that direction.

A domestic weekend is much cheered by the return of the cross-country skiing world cup. Winner of the hardcore stakes must be Aino-Kaisa* Saarinen, who at four months pregnant is just looking for motivation for training rather than victory, but still - 1.30 min off the leader is pretty impressive. This year has no Olympics and no World Championships, so several of the older skiers have taken the opportunity to have a baby before returning to the WC next year as a lead in to another Olympics. As I am not hardcore, my achievement of the opening ski weekend*** is some significant ironing. I have a couple of quilt covers lined up for tomorrow.

I seem to have failed to write fic today. These things happen. Tomorrow!

*I love the name Aino-Kaisa. My hypothetical daughter is lucky she doesn't exist. Mind you, if my hypothetical daughter did exist, the many terrible names** I might give her would be the least of her problems compared to having me as a mother. As I put it once, "I would be fine as an upper-class Victorian father."

**The great thing about not wanting children is that the list of potential baby names is not bounded by fairness towards a real person.

***Except for those Norwegian races I watched a fortnight ago.

The last couple of weeks have been enlivened by the Nordic Skiing World Championships. As outside Scandinavia this is of limited interest, I have refrained from going on about it, but I cannot entirely resist. It was fabulous, and a great comfort when I was lying limply on the sofa with the latest bug that’s going around.

Anyway, this is not about skiing technicalities. This is about narrative. Because I have to admit that what I really like in a race, any kind of race, is the concept of pursuit. My favourite races are largely those in which Person A gets out in front, and Person B mercilessly hunts them down. So although the man is a complete tosser, and if I were a cross-country skier I would probably be considering taking out a contract on Petter Northug’s life, this really is a fabulous 1 min 30 seconds of an absolutely brilliant finisher destroying the competition (Norwegian commentary, sorry, but they are really enthusiastic. Northug is the bloke in the white, unfortunately transparent suit, who enters the clip in fifth place).



I try very hard to come up with descriptions of Northug that don’t involve phallic or masturbatory comparisons, but it cannot be done. A friend and I once had an entire conversation about him in which every sentence basically went “He’s such a wanker, but...” with variations that despite our best efforts did not get very far. It is probably not his fault that whereas some people suffer from resting bitchface, Northug suffers from resting sneerface. He personifies the line from Twelfth Night, ‘Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful/ In the contempt and anger of his lip!’ ‘Beautiful’ is rather pushing it, but he really does do galactic-standard sneering. Actors playing Evil Nazis could model themselves on him.

The problem is, that while were there to be a World Championships in Being a Total Knobhead, Northug would undoubtedly be a strong contender*, he is also a really good skier. He is not the world’s best technical skier, which honour belongs to his female compatriot, Marit Bjørgen**, but when it comes to grinding your opponents into the dust with +2m planks strapped to your feet, he is the winner. In any case, it makes for massively entertaining viewing.

*At the end of this ski season, Northug’s next destination is 50 days in the Norwegian prison system due to crashing his car while drunk driving in May, which also involved speeding, leaving the scene of the crime, and lying to the police about who was driving.

** Bjørgen is basically the Roger Federer of cross-country skiing. Like Federer, and unlike Northug, she also manages to be a nice person.

My first week back at work has been enlivened by watching the Tour de Ski on Eurosport online (and on one occasion, some Russian channel on YouTube). For the second year running there were Norwegian victories for both women and men*, but this year was also enlivened by serious British interest (men’s), with two top twenties in the sprint, a staggering fastest time in the fifth race, and after all that a slightly disappointing 20th place finish. Since the British cross-country ski establishment essentially consists of a small club outside Aberdeen and a minibus, this is not bad going. Having spent my adolescence wanting to learn and being fatally hampered by being British, I am slightly envious but realistic that while I have about the right basic shape for a female skier (if you took my height, build, and weight, and turned it into pure muscle), I completely lack the work ethic and need not to come down with colds in chilly conditions.

However, despite the inspiring examples in front of me over the weekend, as a bunch of the world’s fittest people skied up a downhill ski slope, some of them to a sprint finish, I nonetheless completely failed to go to the gym for my pre-holiday training. Says it all, really.

*Norwegian top four for the women, reflecting last year’s men’s result. And finally, Marit Bjørgen got it, and in barnstorming style. *waves little Norwegian flag*

I may be the equivalent of a Manchester United fan living in Buenos Aires*, but that was an AWESOME result for Norway in the women's 30km cross-country race in Sochi today, taking first, second, and third place. Marit Bjørgen won in 1 hr, 11 min, and 5 seconds, taking her to ten olympic medals, six of them gold. I shall be attempting to cover the same distance on holiday in about 6 hours. It would help if I started doing some training. Silver went to Therese Johaug, bronze to Kristin Størmer Steira to break her four fourth places in individual olympic races (she has a relay gold).

Right, now to dash to the supermarket before the slalom starts.

*Although in my defence, in most races there is no British racer for me to support, and it makes it more interesting to follow someone. She says, defensively.

Just talking aloud, really. More interesting LJ posts will resume, I promise!

The ski holiday company have informed me that the holiday I’d expressed an interest in won’t run due to lack of take up. This isn’t a complete surprise, as it’s at the end of the (British) season, and they’ve told me in time that I can make alternative arrangements if I want to. Which is a question...

When this was a theoretical issue I gave it some thought, and decided that I would damn well go skiing this year regardless, even if it meant a week in (Finnish) Lapland on my own. Now it’s concrete, the question is inevitably less straightforward. I’ve ruled out guided holiday alternatives on grounds of cost and (in one case) location. I could go alpine skiing, except I’d rather go cross-country, and anyway, alpine presents exactly the same question as to whether I actually want to stay on my own in a hotel for a week. On the other hand, not going has the definite downside of not going. There’s always a weekend in Scotland, but it’s not exactly guaranteed snow.
Of course, it would help if I weren’t great and being enthusiastic about things in the abstract, and then got worried when things get more concrete. Anyway, I shall think about it and try to decide what I want to do, and which decision will make me happier to have made (the “leave the shop without it and see how you feel/buy it you can take it back” method of determining this works very well for clothes, but is less useful for other things!).

Meanwhile back on the treadmill my cold has receded, but I have spent the day smelling a mix of phantom smells thanks to catarrh. I was puzzled even while dreaming as to why on earth I was dreaming I was at a tobacco trade fair trying to persuade people to eat tobacco-flavoured sweets instead as less bad for their health. It turned out that when I woke up it was to a strangely powerful smell of tobacco smoke. Other features of the day have been liquorice (the office) and aerosols (a meeting room). However it seems to have been receding this afternoon, which is all to the good.

*I could go self-catering, but then I might end not talking to anyone for a week.

I made it to the ski slopes of Ogden near Halifax, where there was snow (and the odd grassy bit to avoid - alas, there has been a lot of thaw in the past few days, with snow dissolvéd-ing like anything, though we still drove past some 5 foot high drifts getting there), and I got to go skiing.

As a result of two hours of said activity, and a rope tow, my arms hurt, my hands hurt, my thighs hurt, my calves hurt, and I have been reminded how tremendously unfit I presently am. It was a lot of fun, though.

Also, that accomplished, the weather now has my permission to warm up.