Still confused but much happier!!

I'm still confused, not many answers came after the 4-man. Once again I had a fast sled, a fast push, one good drive and one bad drive, only this time I came out in 2nd place, tying the track record annd once again I'm out by .03 seconds.. How is that? I did pretty much the same in the 4-man as I did in the 2-man. The only major difference is that I almost crashed the 4-man, and I am about 99% positive that it didn't help my time But hey, it seems its the only thing I didn't do in the 2-man. So......next year, I'm going to nearly crash in both races.



It definitely helped that I finished 2nd. I was pretty bummed after that 8th place finish. Not so much that I finished 8th, but that I narrowed the gap between the Overall 2-man World Cup lead. It means I'm going to have to race my ass off in Konigsee. I'm only 10 points ahead of Canadian Pierre Lueders, down from 40 points. I normally wouldn't be that concerned because he has to basically win the race and I've pretty much beat him at every track so far this year. Unfortunately for me, he's won the last two times we raced in Konigsee, and one of them was the World Championships. So, there is no doubt that he is going to be one tough SOB.

Confused

Can somebody please help me out on this one:



Fast Push + Fast Sled + Bad Driving = Slow run



but, as I proved today:



Fast Push + Fast Sled + Good Driving = Slow run





how is that possible?



I could understand my result today if we had a bad push, or our sleds weren't the best. But when you have the "Big 3" you should be fast. Regardless.



Oh well. Tomorrow is another day, wait, why do people say that? Wasn't today another day? Everyday is another day. Instead, they should say don't worry tomorrow is not today.



So, back to what I was saying. Oh well, tomorrow is not today. We had a bad day in the 2-man. Winterberg may be one of the easiest tracks to get down. Its why new drivers choose to start here. However, while getting to the bottom on all 4 runners is very easy, getting down fast is not.



Now its time to redeem ourselves in the 4-man.

When it rains, it pours

First I missed a World Championship medal by one place in the 2-man. Then I miss a World Championship medal by .02 in the 4-man. The next day, my keyboard stopped working on my laptop. A few days later the computer not longer charged, and the hard drive crashed. It was all down hill. One system at a time would fail until finally, at 10:39am on February 7th I officially pronounced my computer dead.

I performed the autopsy that evening where I extracted the hard drive, pulled the RAM, and kept the WiFi card just in case. It is what he would have wanted, he was a donor. Maybe his parts could save another computer. I had to respect his wishes. I sewed him back up and was preparing for cremation when I lost control. My emotions got the best of me. How could I have just let it die? Why God, Why? He was too young to die, there were so many websites, video, pictures that he hasn't seen. Its not his time!! Eventually I couldn't take it anymore so I punched my laptop for not fighting harder, for not trying. I punched it again hoping it would just snap out of it, wake up, and laugh that the joke was on me. But it didn't happen. All I could do was shove it aside in disbelief. There was nothing more I could do.

I had given up after a few minutes. Made my way towards the TV, try and find a new friend. Someone else to connect to. But wait, what is that noise? That small hum of electricity? I must be hearing things, There's no way it could be, he's dead. Its all in my mind, its just me wishing I heard it. Hold on. What is that? What is going on? I quickly grabbed my laptop to find the source of the noise. To my astonishment and disbelief, the battery was charging!

Incredible.

I gently grabbed the computer and made it more comfortable on the table. Then quickly marked off the area with police tape to make sure nobody entered the area and disturbed the recuperating computer. The ICU is a difficult place to be, he could go either way. Right back into the dark, or just as quickly (about 90 minutes to fully charge) come back to life.

I sat, and waited. Waited. The longest 90 minutes of my life.

When I finally got a full battery I gently pressed to power button. All I needed was a sign of life. He was literally brain dead at the moment. No hard drive, and his memory was gone. However, all i needed was a reaction when I poked him. Sure enough, I did.

When I felt he was stable enough, I re-installed the hard drive, the RAM and the WiFi card. Booted him up and celebrated. Unfortunately, he's not back to full health. Still no keyboard, but for the most part, he's ready to go. I bought an external keyboard and now I'm writing this blog from my own computer. Which days earlier was only a prayer.

World Championships Day 2

4 runs, 6 miles of track, and over 4 minutes and 21 seconds of bobsledding only to miss the a medal by 0.02s. Yes, I said .02. To the make it easy on your brain, that is 2 hundredths of a second. TWO!!! Again, that's 2/100's of second. Do you know how close that is? Of course you don't, the human mind can't fathom such a time. TWO HUNDREDTHS!!

Ok, I'm over it. You get the point. Although, I do want you to try an experiment for me. Here's what you're going to need:

1 Friend
2 Stopwatches
and 4 minutes of free time.

Now, you and your friend grab the stop watches. On the count of 3 start each stop watch. (try to start them at the exact time. Do one in each hand if you have to)

Wait 4 minutes and 20 seconds.

as soon as the clock hits 4:21 each of you stop your watch.

Now compare times. Are you within .02 second of each other? I'm going to bet they are not.

Try the experiment again, this time counting down to the moment of stopping the watch. I am willing to bet you are still not within .02 seconds of each other.

Now you see what kind of time we are talking about.


So why did we finish 4th? Well, it was a combination of many things.

1.)My Thumb.
Yes, my thumb hurt. it was determined to not be broken. I'm really happy about that. Unfortunately, on our first push I was a little hesitant and we weren't as fast as we could have been.

2.) That damn kink.
About 45m down the track is a bump, that pushes the sled to the left down the straightaway. Its very difficult to drive, and I didn't get it right all weekend.

3.) Equipment.
Its not all bad, we were lucky to finish 4th because Bob Cuneo and the Bodyn Bobsled Project have provided me with a fast sled. The Allianz-Whelen-Speedo sled is the fastest in the world. I was able to make mistakes and still finish 4th. Thanks Bob!!

4.)Heart
My Pushers knew I hurt my thumb, they knew I was going to be hesitant on the push, they stepped it up and pushed their best to keep us in the running. Thanks PAVLE, STEVE, and BROCK!!

I know most of the Media calls my performance a disappointment, and I broke the winning streak. BOO ON ME!!! But I'm very happy with a 4th place finish. Of course I'm pissed about missing a medal, but look at it from the other side. I finished 10th in 2003, 12th in 2004, 8 in 2005...............4th in 2007. I improved, I got better. I can't ask for more this early in my career. Instead of walking away the 4th place loser, I need to build and learn from this experience and come away the 4th place winner.

4-man World Championships Day 1

I’m doing this a little different today. I’m posting this blog entry via e-mail so if it looks strange, or has some weird formatting I’m sorry. I guess I should have tested it first. EH, who cares.

Anyway, day 1 is over. My team is sitting in 3^rd place .2s out of 1^st. As for me, I am sitting in my room with a cast on my hand. Well, a plastic splint like thingy. I managed to damage my left thumb getting into the sled on the second run. Not sure what exactly happened, well, I know what happened, I don’t know why though. The push bar collapsed as I was loading into the sled and it smashed my thumb pretty hard. I’m tough so it didn’t bother me one bit. Actually, that’s a lie. It was excruciating. Of course, after it happened I couldn’t look down and see if it was ok, I was still in command of a 1300lb. ice rocket that was home to 3 other souls for the next 65 seconds. (65.18 to be exact). To make matters worse, St. Moritz starts with a 300m straightaway, and I managed to use every last inch of that straight to think about how mangled my thumb was; and as everybody knows, your imagination always runs wild. I was totally convinced that the bone was sticking out and that I was going to bleed to death before I made it to the bottom. Obviously I didn’t. Turns out it’s probably not broken however the doc says I tore a ligament. Guess I’m just going to have to kick your ass with one hand!

Seriously, I think were sitting in a great position, even after the mayhem. Had we had a clean 2^nd run and moved into first there would be a lot of stress overnight. Luckily I left that stress to the Germans. However, I don’t think it’s going to affect him very much; being that he’s won the last 4 World Championships and double gold at the Olympics. He’s a tough SOB.

So, that was my day. How was yours?