As the Sochi Olympics come to a close and semi-obscure events like bobsled drift back into irrelevance (though no one can forget “Cool Runnings” (1993)), we decided to break the one rule we set for the winter. That’s right, faithful readers. Those of you who follow us religiously, which is probably all of you, will recall that we solemnly swore never to Nordic ski. It’s physically taxing, cold and isolating, and we don’t look great in skin-tight apparel (just kidding).
But then we saw what critics have called the most underrated event in Olympic history: the biathlon. For those of you who live under a rock or don’t appreciate the finer aspects of crazy winter sports, the biathlon combines skiing incredibly long distances and then being able to control your breath enough to shoot a golf ball-sized target with a .22-caliber rifle.
I could be wrong about this (but I used Wikipedia, so I’m not) but the biathlon was originally based on a Norwegian military training exercise in which soldiers would ski huge distances and then be expected to fight in battle. We have to hand it to you, Norway — that’s nuts.
So, like most weeks, we sent out a frantic, last-minute blitz about something we should have taken care of a long time ago, but this time instead of being bailed out by our charisma and charm, all we got was: “Sorry, the team is at a Carnival this weekend and won’t be back by press time.” Huge downer, but hey, at least this week, we couldn’t get upset by a country mile. So we have that going for us.
Regardless, we still wanted to try out cross-country skiing and cross it off our nostalgic senior “I really do kind of like seven feet of snow and want to get out there and try stuff” bucket list. Coincidentally, so did my old man, who is fresh off a balmy six-month “vacation” in Afghanistan and using me as an excuse to go on an actual skiing vacation in the mountains. Classic Dad. Mom was smarter and forecasted that it would not be quite as easy as it looked. Good choice.
We prepared as most do when their parents are up for the weekend: going off campus in search of real food, eating as much of it as humanly possible, getting dessert and all the beer and wine the restaurant could serve and, of course, not having to pay for any of it or even bother to look at the check. Then, they dropped me off for a balmy eight hours of sleep before we got up at the crack of dawn to have breakfast, because that’s what actual people in the real world do, allegedly. After this drawn out (and probably extremely effective) pre-game ritual, we went to the Dartmouth Outing Club house, rented skis and traipsed onto the golf course.
First of all, when it takes five minutes to put on skis, you know you’re in trouble. The second warning was probably that as soon as we got them on, one of us (and I promised my dad I wouldn’t say who) fell flat on his butt and started swearing in front of a 5-year-old lad who was leaps and bounds better than us. The third sign was when we based our form off the same child who was now approximately 200 yards away from us. The stars weren’t aligning, but as is Legends tradition, we convinced ourselves we knew exactly what we were doing and didn’t take advice from anyone.
After a few more spills, bad words and questions about our initial motivation, we started to get the hang of it. By that I mean we were proficient enough to move without relying on the poles. Courses, apparently, aren’t flat. We learned this as we came to our first hill, which, for those of you planning to get a golf pass in the spring and play everyday after 12s, will recognize as the one between the 5th fairway before you get to the bridge. We figured the hard part was going to be getting up the hill. Turns out that’s not that bad. What we didn’t realize was that turning is hard. There isn’t really much control on those skis. To stop, we found the place with the most snow and bailed as close to there as possible. Needless to say, it was a pretty rough go.
After about two hours of waltzing through Pine Park and the rest of the course, we gained a sound appreciation for a sport that competitors make look so easy and graceful. Throw firearms in the mix and we have no idea how people do it.
