Goldstream Sports Newsletter
October, 2008 Volume 1
Well, I don't know about you, but we here at Goldstream Sports have been out to Birch Hill almost every day skiing. The temperatures have been great and the snow - wow! Joel and Tyson have been out testing skis, testing stone grinds and waxes. We are so lucky to have these knowledgeable guys to do the hard work testing so we can just get the right work done and go and enjoy our time on the snow. Thanks guys!
This issue of the newsletter is very exciting. We have Tyson's new column about what he is doing to prepare his skis for daily skis and the season. We also have a very special interview with Jeff Oatley - an amazing cyclist who has raced everything from sprint criteriums to the Race Across America. This is a two part interview as he has so many interesting stories, we had to split the interview in two.
Services Goldstream Sports' Services
Stone Grinding - flatten your bases and get a good structure
Thermal Bag - hot soak your skis to get maximum wax penetration
Hot Wax - iron on wax for great glide
Mount Bindings - mount SNS or NNN bindings onto your favorite or new skis
Clean bases - especially good for classic skis
Expert fitting and service - what you can always expect from Goldstream Sports, every time
Goldstream Sports Classic Trail completed
The 5k classic ski trail, that we have been tirelessly working on with the wonderful help of our amazing volunteers, is finally completed and we are just awaiting enough snow to use it now. Joel is pictured above in part of the trail while clearing with Tyson. It was an enormous job. Until there is enough snow, Joel and Tyson have regularly been skiing at Birch Hill. One morning they started before dawn and pictured is Joel with the sun rising through the trees.
Jeff Oatley Interview - Part 1
On September 28 th, 2008 I had a chance to sit down with Jeff Oatley at Alaska Coffee Roasters to talk about his racing past and present, and how he got to where he is. Jeff’s partner Heather Best was sitting with us and elaborated on some details that Jeff may have been a little shy to talk too much about. Jeff is a very accomplished rider in both the road and mountain categories and has raced all over the USA, including the Race Across America Marathon. I started the interview where all good stories start – the beginning….
Jeff Oatley: I grew up in Michigan and Alabama. Moved to Alabama in high school, actually I didn’t “grow up in Alabama”.
Amanda Byrd: Alabama is a little different to Alaska, did you grow up on a plantation in one of those grand houses?
JO: No, (chuckle), we lived in a subdivision.
AB: did you ride bikes there?
JO: I started to ride bikes there, yes. I started off riding motor cross, and then went to mountain bikes.
AB: When did you change?
JO: After one too many bad crashes. I decided maybe I should try this mountain bike thing. That was around 1988 or 89. Mountain biking had kind of been around for a few years, and was less popular in Alabama.
Heather Best interjects: And you were less likely to be drunk while mountain biking. But maybe that helped with the crashes.
JO: Hey! There is a tape recorder here!
AB: So does drinking and motor cross go hand in hand?
Heather Best: I think drinking and Alabama go hand in hand.
JO: Everything else is incidental.
AB: Where did you go to college?
JO: I went to the University of Alabama Huntsville, Iowa State and UAF. I studied Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Water Resource Engineering respectively. I got a bachelor’s and two masters.
AB: In for the long haul?
JO: I worked six months in between the two masters and thought I needed to do something different.
AB: When did you start doing this Ultra Marathon cycling?
JO: It has been a gradual progression or regression. I did a lot of normal 2-hour Nova racing in Colorado for 6 or 7 years and then I did 24 Hours of Moab on a team once and that was at a lot of fun. I did Moab again and did a 100km race in Laramie. Then I did the Leadville 100 and then the races just kept getting bigger and bigger.
AB: Did you find you were more of a stayer than a sprinter?
JO: No, I was actually a sprinter. Most of the racing I did in Colorado, by numbers, was criterium racing on a road bike and I was the sprinter on my team.
AB: And now you do endurance?
JO: I don’t have much of a sprint anymore. I am kind of pathetic.
AB: I don’t know about that! I have seen you pull some sprints out of your hat recently.
JO: No, I would say you haven’t.
AB: The one with Tyson was pretty good.
Heather Best: That race had played out a little earlier in the event.
JO: It is a whole different ball game doing a crit with 70 people than doing what turns into a two-man tag team for 20 miles. There is not even a real race dynamic with 2 people, whereas a real crit puts you in a position to unleash a sprint at the last minute. It is a lot more intense and a lot faster than the stuff we do around here.
AB: Do you enjoy the bigger races with more competitors?
JO: A real criterium is the most exciting bike race I have done as far as just the adrenaline rush. You are going really fast in a really tight pack and you are just….
Heather Best: …waiting to see who wipes out next.
JO: It just breaks down to how many people are going to go for the win and how many people will be happy to not crash. It will separate that way. So, crit racing is so exciting that way, I just got burned out on it. I was kind of ready to quit racing when I moved to Alaska, I was tired of racing and tired of the Colorado scene. It is way more fun here. It is low key and low stress. Most people want to just have fun and ride their bikes.
AB: Do you consider the Iditarod Invitational fun?
JO: Oh yeah!
AB: It is super cold though. What is fun about it?
JO: It is just being out there, out in the wilderness. It is about being on an adventure. It is a race, but it is more of an adventure.
AB: It is self-supported, right?
JO: Yeah, I definitely like the self-reliance aspect of it, and of the Colorado Trail race. It was the thing I didn't’t like that much about the RAAM race. In the RAAM you are totally reliant on your support team. You are reliant on people to do every single thing for you. It just takes something away from it.
AB: Did doing races like the Fireweed and the Iditarod Invitational set you up to do the Race Across America?
JO: The Fireweed definitely helped me because I had to qualify for the RAAM and the Fireweed was a qualifying race. In that regard it did help me. As far as the Iditarod, it helped me during the actual race to just grind through things that cannot be fun at times, things that can be really hard at times. To just give into the pace and accept that you are not going fast, it is just distance divided by rate to get there and that is the constant thing on the Iditarod trail. To be walking and saying “Oh man, I am going 2 miles an hour. It is going to take me X hours to get to the next checkpoint”. You are constantly doing the math. Like when it is a half hour later and you think “I’ve gone one more mile”. The RAAM is more like that race. It’s like “Oh man, I can’t believe we are still in Kansas. That sucks.”
AB: So it is like when you are flying international and your see the little airplane on the screen moving painfully slowly…
JO: …and the Earth is rotating and your destination keeps getting further away.
AB: With all of that experience under your belt, you adventured onto the Colorado Trail Race, a 530-mile race that had very little structure.
JO: There are quite a few races that have adapted this self-sufficient off-road ethos kind of thing. Some of the people take it pretty straight edged and they feel it has to be just so, like you can’t carry a cell phone, or if you do use it you are disqualified. I don’t know if I am that wrapped up in it, and actually some of those aspects kind of turn me off a bit. I just like the format of it – there is a start line and a finish line, and who gets there the fastest wins, and I like the fact it is through a really beautiful area - that was a real attraction for me.See next Newsletter for the second part of this interview...
Feature Item - Kid's skis and boots
Kids learning to ski need to be comfortable and feel stable while skiing. Make sure you get the correct fitting skis and boots for your young skiers.
The most important thing is to make sure that your child's feet are warm, and are not slipping inside the boot. To help keep feet warm, Salomon has put a fleece lining in the young children's boots, this will help the feet stay warm. The boots are also easy to lace with hooks to make it easy for the kids to put the boots on themselves.
When it comes to skis make sure the ski tips reach between the nose and the forehead depending on the age of the kids. The shorter the ski, the easier the skiing will be for the beginner. But, once they get over 6 years old you might be looking at the longer ski as the young skiers will be a little more confident and wanting to go a little faster.
Let us help you fit the right skis and boots to your kids, and help them enjoy their first time on skis, or help them advance.
Tyson's Tech Tip - Stone Grinding
Right now I would love to be talking about classic skis and properly preparing your kick zone for the best possible performance. However, we do not have enough snow and there are no tracks set yet, so I will save that for the next time. For now I would just keep it simple and if you are classic skiing, wax a bit warmer than you usually would. At Birch Hill the trails are getting very firm and hard packed so having a little extra kick makes early season classic skiing that much easier and a little more fun, even though it may make your skis feel slow.
Over the weekend I have been able to ski more than 100km at Birch Hill, it has been awesome. While I have been skiing I have been able to think a lot about stone grinds, and I have also been able to do a bit of structure testing.
A stone grind refers to passing your skis over a special spinning round stone that has specific patterns, cut by diamonds, into the surface. When your skis make contact with the stone, it will leave that pattern, or structure, cut into the base. Stone grinding will also flatten the ski base and make it better than new - making it easier to wax and scrape as well as easier to ski on.
Grinding should really be done to any new ski and any ski that is scratched up or may not have been well cared for over the years. Grinding of the skis is not something that is just for the racers, it is good for any level of skier and will make the skis slide a bit easier and make skiing more enjoyable.
Ski structure is something that is usually overlooked when skiing every day. Joel and the crew here at the shop are trying to come up with some better Fairbanks-area grinds that will be more suitable for the “cold snow” days. If you have more than one pair of skis that you like to use, we can set them up so that on one set we can put on a cold grind, and the other set we can use a warm grind so that no matter what time of ski season here in Fairbanks you will have skis that are more suitable to the current conditions.
The reason behind the two grinds lies in the moisture content of the snow and being able to manage it in different ways with the structure differences in the ski base. The cold grind is a shallower, finer and overall smoother structure than the warmer grind. In another article I will go over more of the specifics of the different structures once we have finished our testing. We will have a wider range of structures available for more specific conditions. I am working on some race specific grinds for other areas outside Fairbanks and Alaska (some very cool stuff) but it is all still in the works. If you see me up at Birch Hill or UAF ski trails just stop me and see what I am testing or if you have any other ski/technique questions.
Goldstream Sports’ Classic Trail, is looking good, but we still need a bit of snow to smooth some of it out and cover some holes. We will let you know when it is ready to ski.
Till next time, keep the snow under you and the sky above and everything else should work out fine…Tyson
Note: We don’t grind anything with a metal edge on our grinder as when you do that you compromise the stone and the quality of future grinds.
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