POV video from late February training

Without further ado, I give you POV footage from the GoProCamera Helmet Hero camera. Two of them at the same time actually. These cameras are brilliant, and so is the company! The cameras are durable and produce fantastic quality video. Of course, YouTube compresses it pretty severely, but you can check stills from the original video below (minor jpeg compression).



(Click for the full sized images)
The ice was relatively slow this day, and you can see there is a good bit of snow on the track.


Even with slower ice, I am still moving just shy of 80 mph here and you can clearly see my coach with a video camera.

When using the cameras in the cold, it is critical to use lithium batteries. NiMH batteries lose their mojo rapidly in the cold, and alkaline are even worse. Even with the lithium batteries, I made a point of keeping them as warm as possible right up to the moment I used them because I didn't have the luxury of further ice time for retakes.

Here is a frontal shot of my jury rigged mountings.

I used the bike helmet adapter to mount the rear camera to my saddle, and you can see why the video is crooked. The front camera is actually attached to the flat plastic from the display case, which I covered with my sled covering and bound with a piece of wire for good measure. The track crew does not like to find debris in the track and they are wary of POV cams because they often become expensive debris. I was pleased with how secure the hardware remained after several runs and happily left zero debris in my wake. My deepest sympathies in advance if you are able to knock a Hero camera off of your helmet while biking, because doing so will likely cause great trauma to your head.

Yes, I cover my sled in a yoga mat. One of the great things about these cameras is how easy they are to activate. Even wearing gloves, it took only a few seconds at the line to press the power button and then hit record.



I received these cameras from GoPro back in early December just before leaving for Italy. I was totally excited to put them to use, but I couldn't use them while forerunning for the World Cup. Then I had zero chance in Italy because every run I took was either official training or competition. When I came home, literally every training session took place at night right up to America's Cup. Again, no electronic gear is allowed during cup training or competitions. I left less than two hours after the AC races to fly to Munich and again, we had zero runs outside of those for official training and competition. St Moritz would have been such a cool track to film, so I will have to go back when I am not racing. I found myself already into February without any opportunities to film, and of course our training sessions were once again all at night right up until a few days before our final ice time here in Park City for Western Regionals. I was able to get five runs shot - two on the first day and three on the second. During both attempts on my first day I managed to shove the front camera with my shoulder so that by turn four it was looking down at the ice. I adjusted the frontal camera position for day two and things worked much better.

Even though my noggin gets in the way here and there, I think it turned out pretty good. Maybe it's just in my head, but I was surprised at how the aft camera seemed to convey the speed more than the front. I tried a few different video hosts, but YouTube has recently upped their compression quality level and it seems to be better than either Google Video or Blogger.

Corporate marketing...

I received this envelope from Accenture a couple days ago. Just before I left for Italy, someone in the corporate marketing department inquired with me about using my image on the mailing label for a package to several thousand c level execs. It finally shipped, and so they sent a copy my way. Look carefully and you can maybe tell that it's a picture of me going through curve 6 in Park City. I guess curve six doesn't go the right direction for their purposes, so they flipped the image. The photo was taken by my friend Bruce Boyes.

Ending up on a mailing label was precipitated by my former manager, Sebastien, submitting me as the subject of an interview about my sliding. I provided the image for use with the interview and it ended up on the front page of the corporate intranet. This same article was then repurposed for a recruitment site. Meanwhile, another photo from that article is now in an Accenture image gallery online. I just sent a revised draft from yet another article based on a different interview for an outsourcing site. Pretty crazy how all of these marketing departments cross pollinate stories and images.

Farewell appendix

This past Saturday was friends and family day up at the park. I was up bright and early at around 5am because of abdominal pain. I was at the park around noon, and by this time I was verging on excruciating pain. I really wanted to see my friends go down the hill and take some pics, and in all reality I had planned on volunteering catching sleds or sending them down or something, but all I could manage was laying on the floor in the finish house and listening for their names on the PA. The moment my last friend got down the hill, we beelined it home.

First, a little history so you can understand my demented rationale for not going straight to the hospital. I have had several appendicitis episodes over the past year or so. The first one happened while I had a flu or something, so I figured it was just a really, really bad flu. It subsided after a day or so. This happened a few more times. Most recently was the flight to Italy in December. So, these episodes always passed within a couple of days. I figured this one would as well, so I waited through a sleepless Saturday night. By Sunday morning I decided that I wanted to know what was going on. I still wasn't sure it was my appendix because I wasn't showing some of the "classic" symptoms like nausea and vomiting. The fact that it had come and gone before didn't jibe with what I understood about appendicitis either. I thought it set in and didn't stop until you removed the appendix or it ruptured.

I drove myself over to St Marks just before eleven and was reeling in pain waiting to get checked in. A nurse took pity on me after about a half hour and brought me to an examination room to get things rolling. I've never had morphine before, and I can't say I am a fan. Makes me feel constricted in my head. My blood work showed an elevated white cell count. The cat scan confirmed appendicitis. They moved me to a normal hospital room to wait for surgery. Finally, they trucked me down to the holding room for surgery. I have a friend who is a colorectal surgeon, who had said he would stop by for the surgery. I was pleasantly surprised when he walked in the holding room ready for surgery. Nice to have a friend there for your inaugural surgical procedure. The procedure was a laproscopic removal, and my friend ran the scope while the other surgeon did the operation. I turned blue and thrashed for air while coming out of anesthesia, I think because the lubricant they use to insert the air supply tube into my windpipe clogged me up momentarily when they removed the air supply line. This caused one of the three entry point to bleed a bit, but apparently it is okay.

I am healing up well enough, and I have only good things to say about the process at St Marks. Luckily, my season ended naturally two weekends ago with Western Regional Qualifiers. I placed second every day, and consequently second overall. I am happy with this. At the very least, I am qualified for team trials again next season, which was my main objective. I used the same sled that had been squashed on the way to Europe, but set it up as straight as I could with shims and put a new saddle axle in place. I feel that it was still running slow, but I can't complain.

There is no more sliding available in Park City for skeleton athletes. Although there will be ice for at least another month, it will be allocated to revenue-rich passenger rides. Ice will be available through April in Lake Placid. Everyone that I will be competing against in team trials either already lives at the Olympic Training Center in LP or will be training for at least some, if not all of April in Lake Placid. This puts me at a disadvantage on several fronts for skeleton. I could really use some more ice time to square away equipment for next season, and I am not as strong a slider in Lake Placid as I am in Park City which stands to hurt my trials ranking. The reason I am not going is that more unpaid time away from work would jeopardize me in just about every other category of my life.