Lake Placid

[Damon]

Well, I made it up to Lake Placid and got a chance to have one hell of an awesome time there. I got to meet the man running the show there, Steve Peters, and the development coach Amanda Bird. Both of them are amazingly good coaches and hosts. I give them alot of credit of running their program, as they both wear alot of hats and of course dont have the budget they need. They are genuinely nice people and are doing a great job. I would suggest that anyone looking for Lake Placid info to email Steve.

My claim to fame now is that I was able to slide a 1:04 on the Lake Placid track after 3 days of training. Like alot of other people here now, I'm hooked.
I'm definately going to have to make the trip out to Utah and take a school there.

To everyone's point, relaxing on the sled is the main thing. On my first start from the top, I was too tense and lost the back end coming out of a turn. Smacked my helmet off the ice and thus, my face off the inside of the helmet. Lets hear it for mouthguards. After that though, staying relaxed on the sled, I used the coaches tip to simply "look" through the turns and the sled reacted accordingly. All in all, it was awesome and I cant wait to do it again. I want a :58 on that track next time I'm there.

[SweetHomeAlabama]

It sounds like you had one heck of an experience in LP. I did my first skeleton camp back in March in Park City. Like you, I was fairly tense and intimidated when I went down the track at first, but fortunately I didn't lose control and get beat up any, but from what I understand, the Park City track is much smoother and safer than the Lake Placid track. If I would have done Lake Placid as my first skeleton experience, I might not have liked it as much!

I'm planning on going back to Park City next season for the full-fledged skeleton school. From what I was told about the school in Park City, the first day you slide from the junior start (which is two-thirds of the track). On the second day you slide from the women's luge start (which is almost to the very top). On the third and fourth days, you're sliding from the very top of the track.

The main thing I learned from my first experience is that it is tough to keep your chin up so that it won't drag on the ice, thus slowing you down. I remember on my second run down the track, I went so far as to just look straight down at the ice for much of my run and not even look straight ahead. When I did this, I had my best time. You really don't need to look since the sled drives itself down. My instructor told us that the more experienced sliders oftentimes don't look up because they've memorized the turns so well that it becomes second nature.

[Damon]

Yeah keeping your head up proved to be quite a chore when you have 4 G's pulling you into the ice going around a bend.

[slace22]

Looking through the turns was the best that i finally figured out in Park City , once i started looking through them my times got alot better and i ended up with a best of 54.2 on my second day from the top.
Amanda Bird actually gave me advice about the Utah track that helped me alot.
RH