Wildwood Teen Courtney Palm is a 4-Peat!
15-Year Old Qualifies for a Record 4th Time for
National USSA Junior Alpine Racing Championship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, February 25, 2013 — Courtney “Coco” Palm, 15, from Wildwood, MO, is now a four-time repeat qualifier for the USSA Junior Championships in Alpine Racing after competing at the USSA Rocky/Central Regional Championships held in Marquette, MI this past weekend. Palm is the first member of the Hidden Valley Ski Team to be invited to the USSA national championship races for a record fourth time.
Palm placed 22nd overall against a field of 65 other competitors, taking 11th in downhill racing and 25th and 20th in Giant Slalom racing during the Central Division championship qualifying races held last Thursday-Saturday. More than 250 athletes competed in the event from Ohio through Minnesota, along with athletes from Canada.
“Being able to qualify four years in a row shows me that even though I live in St. Louis, I’m able to keep up with the best girls in the northern regions,” said Palm after her wins. “The time commitment and effort put in is huge, but my coaches, friends, and family on the team make it constant fun and a great learning environment. I’ve learned that I have a lot of potential to become a really good competitive alpine ski racer.”
The USSA divides its competitive racing circuits into four regions — West, Far West, Rocky/Central, and Eastern. As a result of her finish at Marquette, Palm will be heading to Beaver Creek, CO, from March 3-9 for the USSA Marriott Rocky/Central U16 Junior Championships. The Junior Championships are considered a conduit for the U.S. Ski Team and, until a recent name change, was the Junior Olympics event.
“Courtney really put her heart into the last three days of ski racing and I’m very proud of her,” said Hidden Valley Ski Team coach Craig Spidle, Palm’s primary coach. “I have been at this event with most of our junior champions over the past 10 years and the competition this year has been tougher than any I’ve seen. Courtney has really matured as a racer. She is focused and has the technical and tactical skills to win against any girl in the Region on any given day.”
As a testament to the quality of coaching and the dedication of its member athletes, the independent Hidden Valley Ski Team (HVST) has had 13 straight years of athletes qualifying for the USSA Rocky/Central Junior Championships. Palm, who started racing with HVST at age 12, is an avid skier who has racked up impressive wins over the past four years.
In acknowledging her coaches, Palm said, “The feedback and encouragement given by my coaches really helped to develop me as a good skier. Without my coaches, especially Coach Craig, I wouldn’t have been able to progress as I have throughout my ski racing years. It takes a lot of work and dedication from them and I am so grateful for their willingness and commitment to help me grow as a racer.”
Spidle, along with Palm and her family, traveled to Marquette from Wildwood just ahead of a fierce winter snowstorm that hit the Midwest. “We made it to Marquette despite 12 inches of new snow and 40 mile-per-hour winds,” said Spidle. “The Hidden Valley Ski Team is consistently the team that travels the longest distance to compete in these regional championships.”
Spidle, a former racer himself, has been a nationally certified alpine race coach with the Hidden Valley Ski Team since 2005 and travels with several of the elite athletes to races throughout the Midwest and Colorado. He also serves as a USSA Technical Delegate and Referee and has annual alpine racing camps in both the United States and Switzerland during the off season months.
“Ski racing is a tough sport,” said Spidle. “It’s just the athlete against the mountain. The most difficult thing young ski racers must overcome is having the confidence to push themselves, take risks, and ski on the edge. Courtney has worked incredibly hard over the past several years to get to this point, and we are so proud of her consistent track record of being invited to the national junior championships.”
He added, “In the downhill, especially, which we don’t train for locally, Courtney was fantastic. Against a field of tough competitors, she posted a time of 42.31 seconds in her first race, and then 41.72 seconds with her second run, six-tenths of a second faster, enabling her to finish 11th overall in downhill. I have to admit, she was going so fast on the last run, it was thrilling and worrisome at the same time!”
What’s next on Palm’s agenda? She will be back running track and playing volleyball at Lafayette High School. But she’s already looking forward to next winter when she can get back on her skis. “My goal is to race in college,” she said. “In addition to being a ski racer, I look forward to becoming a coach myself and helping younger kids to enjoy the sport as much as I do!”
About the Hidden Valley Ski Team
The Hidden Valley Ski Team, established in 1991, is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing the sport of alpine racing. The team trains at Hidden Valley Ski Resort in Wildwood, MO, and currently has more than 80 team members, ranging in age from 5 to 19. HVST also has more than a dozen certified coaches, many with racing experience. Coaches are certified and licensed through the United States Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA). For more information about the team and its levels of involvement, visit www.hvst.org.
originally posted by Alpine Shop Adventure Race Team member, Emily Korsch here.
As I mentioned earlier, I am substitute racing on Alpine Shop‘s adventure racing team this season because Carrie hurt her knee in a mountain bike crash and needed surgery to fix it. While she recovers, I’ll be racing with Jeff, David, and Doug. Here is the first installment of the season, the Bonk Hard LBL Challenge 18hr Adventure Race.
PRE-RACE
We all arrive at Kentucky Dam Village, site of the pre-race activities (check-in, dinner, meeting, cabins) and are given really nice Columbia fleece vests as part of our race entry. Thanks, Bonk Hard! Jeff’s reserved an “Executive Cottage” which is probably the nicest pre-race accommodations I’ve stayed in – tons of room for all of our gear and bikes, a kitchen, and a great table for map prep. We do some bike fiddling and then go to eat dinner where Carrie is bombarded by questions about her knee. She has been a fixture on the AR circuit for so many years, and racers want to know what the story is. We all finally manage to feed ourselves (2 servings of the bread pudding for me, thanks!) and go across the street to the pre-race meeting.
Gary starts the pre-race meeting and the course is quickly revealed to be one of the most interesting ARs I have ever participated in: 45 checkpoints, all rogaine-style (meaning you can visit in any order), and only 3 are mandated as paddling. We can get the other 42 CPs via foot or bike or more paddling. This is truly a choose-your-own adventure and allows every team to play to their strengths…are we better bikers? Runners? Paddlers? Navigators? Game on.
As it happens, Alpine Shop is pretty dang good at each AR discipline, but I’d say the biggest strength we have is experience. Or rather, the biggest strength the boys have is experience, since I am a newcomer to the team. We return to the Executive Cottage and plot all 45 CPs efficiently. Then, we start looking at route options. I trust David and Jeff’s wisdom and we start piecing together a sweep route. It comes together gradually and in chunks but pretty soon we have a good idea about how best to complete the course. But, once we put some time estimates to it, we realize that sweeping the course (getting every CP) will be tough. So we revisit our route, giving ourselves some time cutoffs and identifying good CPs to jettison (word of the evening, along with mint gum) if things are going poorly. We finally wrap up map and gear prep about 1:30am, which barely gives us any time to sleep before the 3:30am wake up call for the 4:00am departure, the 4:15am bike drop, and the 5:00am start.We arrive at Race HQ (Hillman Ferry Campground) with about 30 minutes before the start. We huddle in the warm van and debate glove choices. I try the Executive Cottage coffee in my mug and it’s really, really bad. But thankfully Bonk Hard Racing has provided hot coffee at the HQ so I fill up on that. It’s a delicious luxury and very much appreciated at a winter race. We say hi to our AR friends/competitors and are treated to an AMAZING performance of the National Anthem by one of the racers.
TREK 1 (CPs 6, 5, 23. 2mi. 5:00-5:40)
Did I mention, we are doing this in our bike shoes? It’s such a short trek, and we are going almost directly to the bike drop at CP23. When we first planned this I was not amused. But, as I thought about it, it made lots of sense because our feet would already be in warm gear once we hit the bikes, and we could get out onto potentially bottlenecked singletrack with more speed. So, Gary counts us down and we clomp off into the pre-dawn woods. We have a little nav bobble on the way to 6 but David corrects it quickly and we run into the bike drop in good spirits. My bike shoes weren’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought and now my feet are toasty as we quickly transition.
BIKE 1 (CPs 4, 3, 2, 1, 11, A. 12.5mi. 5:40-7:45)
Our first order of business is to crush some of the sweet singletrack LBL is known for. It reminds me a lot of Council Bluff Lake, except without as many rocks. I’m on the new SegSlayer and it is one amazing machine. David leads out the team and sets a perfect pace – it has me hustling to keep up but doesn’t trash my legs. The sun rises while we are still on the Canal Loop and it is beautiful. I’m so thrilled to be outside, racing on awesome trails with an awesome team on an awesome bike. Life is good. Except when David gets a flat on the singletrack. But we execute a lightning-fast change (seriously…less than 5 minutes…I timed it) and are back on the trail with minimal interruption. The rest of the singletrack is wonderful and soon we hop onto the paved North/South trail, where we are able to tow and GO FAST. We have a little trouble with CP11 which requires a short out-n-back run in the woods off of a fire road, but again David corrects us and we are able to keep pushing. We see Rachel and Dylan from Bushwhacker just after we punch 11 and that motivates us to hustle to CP A, a manned transition area where we have a gear check and the canoe put-in. Despite the general disdain that most adventure racers feel about bikes in boats, we decided the night before that the most efficient route requires us to bring the bikes with us on the 12.5mi paddle. So after we pass our gear check, we break the bikes down to the shore, lash them to the canoe, and shove off into the chilly waters of Lake Barkley.
PADDLE 1 (CPs 10, 26, 8, 25, 24, 12, 14, 27, 28, B. 12.5mi.11.5mi. 7:45-11:00)
I’m in the boat with Jeff, paddling with my Christmas/birthday present, a new Epic 4-piece carbon paddle inspired by the one I borrowed from Brian of Epic Machinery for the 2012 MNOC Adventure-O. This paddle gives me great feedback from the water and makes me look like I actually know what I’m doing (hint: I’m not a very good paddler…yet). So we start paddling our way to CP 10 and before I know it, the wind has picked up and I start to get cold. No worries, I tell myself, just paddle harder. It doesn’t help that I’m getting wet from paddle splashback, and it’s barely 25F. Then on the way to CP26 I start to realize I might be in trouble. Jeff seems to sense this and starts asking how I’m feeling. Um, pretty cold, but I think I just need to eat something, can you hand be a probar from my bike’s bento box? He does, and I chow down while David and Doug complete a mini-portage, punch CP26, and return to the lake. We are faced with a really strong headwind on the way to CP8. The chop on the lake picks up and there’s nowhere to hide from the gusts. Jeff does an incredible job guiding the boat through the waves, but the situation is such that I forget about the race and just focus on not dumping the boat. At least it helps take my mind off being cold. And I am REALLY COLD – the worst I’ve felt in recent memory. There are Coast Guard safety boats on the water and we speculate if they will call off the paddle due to dangerous conditions. I am in enough discomfort that I hope they do. But, no announcements are made as we pass them (very slowly), so we just keep paddling. We make a plan to full stop at CP25 and put more clothes on me and Doug while Jeff and David punch 25 and nearby CP24.
We beach kind of in the middle between CP25 and CP24 (they are on 2 separate but close islands) and when Jeff gets out of our boat to punch, he can hardly walk from his legs being so cold. But he soon shakes it off, goes and gets the punch and comes back with my rain pants which were in Doug’s pack. I put them on along with my fleece and shuffle around the beach to try and get my heart rate up. Doug does the same and I imagine we look like waddling penguins to the other approaching teams. No one ever said adventure racing was dignifying.
Back in the boats, the horrific headwind has turned into a terrific tailwind, and we are able to make up some time on our self-imposed schedule. I am warming up significantly and as we pass the Coast Guard safety boat, this time I hope they will let us keep paddling despite the bad conditions. They do. We get the rest of our CPs with minimal fuss (I even punch a few, which entails more waddling). But, as we are approaching the last two CPs, we know we are behind schedule so decide to drop CP27, a longish out-n-back paddle into the wind. It is a tough decision to make this early in the race, but we are committed to our plan. As we approach the take-out at CP B, we see Carrie’s van there since she is volunteering. It’s nice to see a friendly face after such a painful paddle. We assemble the bikes, break down paddles, and are thankful for the steep hill out of transition that helps us start the long warming-up process.
BIKE 2 (no CPs, <1mi, 11:00-11:15)
We only have a short distance to ride before we find a spot in the woods to stash the bikes before we set out on our first significant trek. We’ve dubbed this the “north o-loop” and transition as quickly as possible with frozen extremities.
TREK 2 (CPs 17, 19, 18, 20, 21, 22. 6.5mi. 11:15-2:00)
The first few CPs on this loop are completed on frozen feet. Since 5:00am, we have been racing in bike shoes which, at least for me, have been soaking wet since 7:45am. Now that I have my dry trekking shoes on, my feet finally have a chance to thaw. My body is warming up too; at each of the first few CPs I’m removing various items of clothing until I’m down to my base layers and the new 2013 Alpine Shop jersey (still can’t believe I get to guest race on this team!). I don’t really remember much about this section except David nailing the navigation and the team moving very efficiently through the woods. We’re not sprinting, but we’re not stopping either unless it’s at a CP. Constant forward progress helps us make up time on our schedule and we are back at the bikes with a smaller deficit than when we started.
BIKE 3 (CPs 16, 15, 13, 40, 35, C. 11mi bike + 3.75mi trek. 10mi bike + 1.5mi trek. 2:00-3:30)
We return to our bikes that we stashed a few hours earlier and find that our spot has turned into a mini TA. Several other teams have left their bikes next to ours and it’s sort of humorous to see them all in this random spot in the woods. But there’s no time for laughing, AR is serious (ha!) business and we transition back into biking gear and back onto the fire road. Although less severely than before, we are still behind our self-imposed schedule, so we decide to drop CP15 and CP40, two CPs that would have required a longer out-n-back run from the road to collect. We’re all warmed up and we fly through this section. The boys tow me when the road is good. We even run into a few 8hr teams and exchange shouts and cheers.
TREK 3 (CPs 37, 36, 41, 42, 39, 38, 34, 30, 33, 32, 31, C. 9mi. 3:30-8:30)
CP C is a manned CP at a fire tower. As we arrive, we are finally ahead of our self-imposed schedule and ready to gobble up as many CPs as possible before the sun sets. We also get access to our gear drop bags which hold delicious treats – Coke, more sandwiches, and some EFS LiquidShot for me. I fill my pockets with calories and we jet off into the woods. The first 4 CPs are flawless. We are running really hard, spot on to everything. Things are jamming and we are happy (How happy are they, Jimmy? Happier than an adventure racer that doesn’t have to paddle any more!) So happy, in fact, that we start chatting and get distracted as we trek right past CP39. Like literally 10 meters away. Pretty soon David realizes what’s up and we take some time to relocate under the rapidly-setting sun. Thankfully, there is a fireroad we can use, but it’s still sort of confusing and it takes some time to get things straightened out. But, we soon do, and are more focused for the remainder of the trek. The sun completely sets now and we switch on our lights, but our pace through the woods and enormous calorie consumption keeps us plenty warm. We decide to drop CP30, because it looks really hard to attack on foot, in the dark. It is close to a trail and we plan to instead get it on our final biking leg. For all our worrying about CP30, David is absolutely spot on for the remaining controls, including a really tricky attack on CP33 that he just nails. Solid. Jeff starts singing a custom version of:
BIKE 4 (CPs 30, 29, 7, 9. 10mi bike + 1mi trek. 7mi bike + 1mi trek. 8:30-10:49)
Once we return to the fire tower, we are surprised to find out that no other teams left their bikes there like we did. We frantically consider alternate route options for a few seconds and then have to dismiss the distraction and focus on the business of transition. Everyone’s shoes are frozen and it takes extra time to cram our feet into them. The zippers on my shoe covers won’t work either, so I am just going to have to cross my fingers that they don’t get caught in my cranks. David, Doug and I finish transitioning just a few seconds before Jeff and are lured to the fire to warm our hands up. Approaching a warm fire in the middle of an adventure race is dangerous. Fires have magical abilities to lull racers into never leaving a TA. Jeff is aware of this and yells at us to get moving. We snap back to attention and depart the TA down a steep gravel hill. I chant IlovemybikeIlovemybikeIlovemybike because the windchill is really cold. We have a short bikewhack, then cross the Trace, then set out to get CP30, the one that we dropped from Trek 3. It’s a little tricky with some new singletrack being built in this area. On our way to CP30, we pass Bushwhacker riding the other direction and it scares us. What if they have a better plan? We hustle even more. David is fairly confident on our attack to CP30 and we strike off into the woods. He and Jeff thrash around for a good chunk of time without finding the CP. This is not a good sign. Finally Jeff takes a closer look at the map and sees that there are two similarly-placed gridlines. We might have used the wrong one when plotting the night before. We check the cluesheet quickly and his suspicions are correct – CP30 is misplotted. Fortunately, the actual location is only a few hundred meters away so we are able to fix our mistake quickly and are back on the bikes, once again behind schedule to make the final 11:00pm cutoff.
We blast down the singletrack and I start to get nervous. Racing against a team is one thing, but racing against the clock adds a whole ‘nother level of stress. We pick up CP29 after a short out-n-back run. We stop at the attackpoint for CP7 with 42 minutes left on the clock. We know CP9 is impossible at this point, and we estimate we need 30 minutes to get from here to the finish line. So we give ourselves 12 minutes to hike up the reentrant, punch CP7, and get back on the bikes. Let’s do this. We strike off into the woods, Jeff and David leading the way, until our headlamps ping the reflective tape of the control flag. Perfect! Jeff flies up to get the punch as we all start picking our way down the dark reentrant. We complete the out-n-back in 9 minutes. Now we have 33 minutes to bike the remaining few miles of singletrack back to Hillman Ferry Campground and the finish line. Those are some tense miles, I’m checking my watch every time the trail smooths out for more than a few feet. Pretty soon, we can see the campground lights filter through the woods. We use a short bikewhack to get onto the access road and start to hear Bonk Hard’s signature cowbell greeting. It’s such a relief and we cruise into the finish at 10:49pm!
POST-RACE
Carrie is at the finish line to greet us and we take lots of pictures in our new jerseys. I see a few other teams around but not as many as I expected. How did we do? I feel sort of funny asking but Carrie sees the question on my face and confirms that we won by a few CPs. Awesome! After the energy of finishing wears off, it’s clear we are all very tired and very cold. I feel more sleepy than anything – racing 18hrs is hard enough, let alone doing it on 2 hours’ sleep. So we all put on dry clothes and eat some of Bonk Hard’s delicious post-race food. I have been dreaming about those bbq sandwiches and baked beans for the last few hours! There is a great fire going too so we catch up with other racers while staying warm. I really start to fade about midnight, but we stick around for the awards ceremony since there are awesome prizes to pick from. However, when we are called up to the prize table, my brain can’t really make sense of anything so I pick a small red blinky light as my prize – completely passing over nice winter jackets, packs, watches, etc. That is race brain for you!
The LBL Challenge was a great race to kick off our season. It was a really unique format that allowed teams to push themselves as much as they wanted in the cold weather. We made a good plan, dealt with really horrible conditions at times, adjusted our plan as needed, kept our stomachs happy, and managed to finish on time. And we all still like each other. Win!
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