Alison Arians' Adventures in Finland

 Many of us recognize Alison Arians' name: ski racing classmate of Hashimoto's at Dartmouth, World Masters medalist, top-level masters racer, and friend of Rainey Hoffman, who forwards us this awesome story she told of her adventures in Finland, given at a Trail Tales meeting.

Trail Tales

March 19, 2024

 

Intro (Kikkan): 

Alison Arians will tell a story about her (mis)adventures traveling to Finland to ski race when she was 15, compared to a slightly different experience traveling to ski race in Finland again, just last month, at age 53. 

 

Alison was born and raised in Anchorage, and started cross country ski racing back in the dark ages before skate skiing was invented. She trains with Jan Buron of Alaska Winter Stars and loves all manner of ski racing, including our local NSAA citizens races, Besh Cup Junior National qualifiers, Masters World Cup competitions, and World Loppet marathons. Her whole family is involved with ski racing, including her husband, Dan, who times the races; her brother, Ben, a ski rep and wax & technique guru; and her daughter Meredith, who also loves to race.  

 

 

And here is Alison's report:

 

Recently I returned from three weeks of cross-country ski racing in Finland: first, the Masters World Cup and then, a week later, the 62k Finlandia-Hiihto World Loppet. The first time I went to Finland was when I was in tenth grade. 

 

In January of 1987, in between high school and Junior National qualifier ski races, I did a biathlon race for fun, borrowing a rifle and getting some cursory instruction (point this end downrange). Several weeks later, out of the blue, I got a phone call from a biathlon coach, explaining that the US Biathlon Association had paid for several junior racers to attend Nationals in Idaho, but the girl who was supposed to go from White Mountain couldn’t attend. Would I be interested in going? Of course, I would love to! 

 

So the week after Junior Nationals in Anchorage, I flew to Idaho, masquerading as Helen Anaktoolik (This was before 9/11, when anyone could use any old plane ticket to get anywhere). The first race was long format, which means that for every missed target, a minute gets added to your time. And I missed all 15 targets, finishing second to last. 

 

Luckily, we had two training days before the next race, and I soaked up as much as I could. Reviewing videos of our range procedure later in the hotel, the other junior racers laughed at my painfully slow efforts. Still, I was learning. 

 

The good thing about the second race was that we skied penalty laps—which I could ski in about 30 seconds. When I came into the range, I actually hit two prone targets!! I was so excited that I flew around the three penalty loops and the course, and when I came back to shoot offhand, hit one of the five targets! A 300% improvement! Elated, my skiing made up for my terrible shooting, and I ended up second overall. 

 

After the race, I learned that if I finished second again the next day, I would qualify for the trip to Polar Cup in Finland immediately after Nationals. Finland? Polar Cup? This opportunity was news to me, and also to my parents, who, along with their concern about how much school I was missing, also noted that I had not brought my passport to Idaho.

 

Inspired by the possibility of skipping two more weeks of school and traveling to Europe for the first time, I finished second again the next day. Great news! But since the team was to leave immediately, even if my parents sent my passport right away, it wouldn’t make it in time. 

 

The head coach said not to worry, I could fly with the group to New York, and his daughter would pick me up from JFK and I could stay at her house overnight while I waited for my passport to catch up with me. And then I could follow the team the next day. After waiting for seven hours at the airport, I was so grateful when the coach’s daughter arrived after work and took me to her house in Hoboken. The following day we picked up my passport from FedEx and she took me back to the airport. 

 

When I exited customs in Helsinki, I scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Who might be meeting me? Um, no one was waiting for me. And then I suddenly realized that actually I had no idea where I was supposed to go from Helsinki. So I got out my plane ticket packet (luckily this one was for Alison, not Helen), and there was a whole stack of tickets to different destinations in Finland. Where on earth was I supposed to go? Remember that there were no cell phones. No email. No laptops. No Googling for information. I went to the Finnair counter and tearfully explained my plight, and to my everlasting gratitude, they called all over Finland to track down the US Biathlon team. 

 

After an hour or so, they said they’d found them in Rovaniemi, and put me on a plane. But just as the doors were about to close, a Finnair gate agent rushed back onto the plane and said “You have to get off! This is not the right plane!” It turned out that the senior biathlon team was in Rovaniemi, but the junior team was training in Kajaani! When I finally arrived in Kajaani on a different plane, exhausted, thank heavens there was a driver waiting to take me to the sports school where the team was staying. The races went reasonably well and I learned SO MUCH that year (since I had so much to learn).

 

So I was excited 35 years later to learn that the cross-country skiing Masters World Cup races would be held in Finland in 2024. Last month I packed up my skis and set off for Vuokatti, by way of Helsinki and Kajaani again! But this trip started out quite a bit differently from that first one. I had my passport, a cell phone, a laptop, and my itinerary. 

 

Just as I remembered from high school, the Finns put on impeccable races, although the weather was -30 at the beginning of the week, so the first race had to be canceled, and the second race was shortened to a 5k. I was so happy to win my age group—I just never know when I go to these races who will show up; just because people don’t have any points doesn’t mean they aren’t fast—just that they’ve never come to World Masters before. And even if I DO know them from previous years, I don’t know whether they have had time to train seriously that year—after all, we’re all grownups and we have jobs and kids and aging parents. Our relay team came in second after the Finns, and I was very happy to win the 30k on the last day.  

 

I had met four skiers from Sun Valley, who, like me, were spending a few days in Helsinki after the races. They invited me to join them in their tour of Helsinki led by a friend of a friend a few days hence, and I gladly accepted. We met up with Markku Piri, an architect and designer, who gave us a fabulous tour of this amazing city. 

 

After four more great days in Helsinki, I took the train north to Lahti a few days before my final race, the 62k. I really hoped to get top 10 overall in the women’s division, even though the weather had warmed to 37 degrees and the course would be slow and slushy. My tiny apartment was great, but it was a bit hot, and the night before the race I woke up several times, each time drinking some water. In the morning, I ate and drank my usual hearty pre-marathon race fare, walked to the venue drinking my tea, and started the race in the drizzle with the first wave of 300 racers. An hour into the race, I had only gone 12k—in these races, you just have to be patient on the hills as racers ahead of you climb. I still had 50k more to go—by my calculations, 3 or 4 more hours. And… I had to pee. But I was securely zipped into a one-piece suit, with my race bib double-knotted by its strings in the front and back to ensure it didn’t come untied and start flapping around. There was no easy way to get myself extricated from my suit… it would take minutes to get the knots untied with cold clumsy fingers. And I didn’t want to give all those minutes up to my competitors!! WHY had I drunk so much water during the night? 

 

I thought long and hard about every possible option as I skied along for another hour, and then just… peed in my suit. Which of course all ran down into my boots. UGH!!! So. Disgusting. At least my suit was navy blue, so nobody could tell. But squishing along in pee-filled boots for 30 more kilometers was really just as unpleasant as you might imagine. 

 

When I finished the race, I discovered I had finished 9^th(and whatever you think of my decision, or my willingness to share this part of the story tonight, at least I had met my goal). Thank goodness I had a complete change of clothes waiting for me at the arena. I stayed for the awards ceremony, which started an hour late, and then hustled back to my apartment building where by now I had only an hour to pack and catch a train back to the Helsinki airport. 

 

I immediately went to the laundry room and put my disgusting boot liners and race clothes in the washing machine for a 60-minute cycle. You might not understand my decision to pee in my boots, but I’m sure you understand my desire to wash them before packing them for the flight back to Alaska. It was hard to focus because I was so tired, but I showered, crammed everything in my bags, and then went back to get my laundry just as I absolutely needed to leave to get to the train station. But OH NO! because of the boot liners, the machine had unbalanced and did not complete its cycle. And I couldn’t get the door open because it was locked!! I crawled around underneath it to unplug it—but it still wouldn’t open! I plugged it back in, and finally it cycled up and unlocked. But when I opened the door, my stuff was sitting in a pool of revolting gray water. 

 

I wrung everything out as best I could, threw it in a plastic bag and into my roller duffel, and then ran as fast as I could uphill on icy sidewalks covered in loose gravel to the train station pulling two 50-pound bags. And I was So. Tired. When I got to the station I saw up on the tracks that the train was there, but I didn’t know which elevator to take to get to the right side of the tracks. I knew I would miss the train if I chose the wrong elevator, so I asked a group of people for help. A woman with a couple of young kids took pity on me, and showed me to the right elevator, but as I waited impatiently for it, an announcement went on above us in Finnish. She said “the train is leaving, I think you will miss it—you must go up the stairs.” I looked helplessly at my two heavy bags. She grabbed my ski bag and hauled it up the stairs while I staggered behind her with my duffel. I JUST made it on the train before it left the station, drenched with sweat and shaking. 

 

And here was the common thread between my two trips to Finland. It wasn’t just the beautifully-groomed ski trails, or even of distress caused by bad planning. (Why didn’t I ask where I should meet my team? Why did I drink so much water? Or at least wear a two-piece suit?) It was that in traveling for ski races, as in everyday life, the extraordinary kindness of strangers—like my coach’s daughter, the Finnair agents, Markku, and the nice lady at the train station—can make all the difference.