Here´s the background.
I went to Bolivia for the first time in December 2010. I traveled there from the U.S. where I was studying. I had met a Bolivian person and our plan was to travel in Bolivia and some other countries together. And later in 2011 I moved to Bolivia and got married that year. I probably thought about the possibility of representing Bolivia at the winter Olympic games as I found out that after getting married to a Bolivian person I would need to live in the country for 2 years to get citizenship. But still at that time winter Olympic games didn´t feel more important than studying, so after 8 months in Bolivia me and my wife went to Oklahoma for 3 years. In 2012 we did spend 3 months in Bolivia during the summer break.
I used to participate in local cross country ski races as a kid so I knew how to ski, and I always knew there are participants from even the most tropical countries. I thought I could be one of them if I´d be able to spend a few years in Bolivia. Skiing wasn´t the only reason we moved there. For example we wanted our son (and daughter) to grow up in Bolivian environment and to learn the language. There was also a good business opportunity for us that we didn´t see elsewhere. I really wanted to climb the Bolivian mountains and in all ways it seemed like an interesting thing to do. Of course there are some drawbacks to Bolivia too, but anyways it has worked well. I have been working online while in Bolivia, sometimes full-time and other times part-time. Since June 2017 I have only been doing 10 hours a week and I do keep doing that these days too.
Then in December 2014 we moved to La Paz, Bolivia and I got citizenship in March 2017. The first time I contacted Bolivian ski federation was in August 2016 just to let them know about me and my plan. They said there were people who were training on roller skis. A year passed until I contacted the federation again and now I was a citizen.
I needed a license to be able to race. In a lot of countries you buy that online for about 50$ and nobody cares, but the Bolivian federation felt like they needed to organize a roller ski event after which they´d decide who´s worthy of entering real competitions. Bolivia does have some history in alpine skiing and before these Olympics 13 persons had represented Bolivia at the winter Olympic games, mostly in the 80s. Those times there were invitations to the winter games for the not so traditional winter sport countries, but that´s not the case anymore. That´s why there has been no Bolivian participation since 1992. There are annual snowboard and alpine competitions on a mountain close to La Paz, but it´s a fully natural site with no facilities or anything.
I didn´t have roller skis, but I was told that roller skates would be ok. So I bought roller skates for about 170 dollars and went skating 2 times before the event. In the end there were me and 2 other guys, who apparently had tried roller skis before but they were not very good at staying upright. The federation has about 5-6 pairs of roller skis and we tried them and after that I was told I would need to pay 250 dollars for the license and fill out a paper. They lent me ski poles so I could keep training. Before going to Finland in November I was able to roller skate with or without poles 9 times (skate style only) and I also did 5 hard uphill training sessions with the poles without skis for classic style (I know that non-skiers don´t get this).
To enter the Olympic games, I needed to do well enough in at least 5 official, international competitions that were on the international ski federation (FIS) calendar. The FIS uses "FIS points". You get points from each race, and your FIS points are the average of your 5 best performances.
I knew that I was in the best cycling shape of my life in November. I have a power meter on my bike, so it´s very easy to follow my progress. So I was confident about my fitness, but in the end it turned out it didn´t really transfer over to skiing. Finland has a lot of high level races to choose from even early in the season, so I got there on November 20. I had time to do one real ski training on snow before a weekend of competitions. I managed to get my muscles sore from that first training and didn´t recover from that before the races. I did a skate style competition on Saturday and classic style race on Sunday. From there I just never really felt fresh during the 8 weeks I spent in Finland, but I thought that was ok because I was practically sure I could get the needed points anyway even if I wasn´t fully rested before every race. I believed it was better to focus on doing plenty of training. I did 6 races in total.
In skiing it´s very hard for me to actually know if I´m feeling good, normal, acceptable or bad. You can´t compare your performance in training much, because the snow and weather conditions change all the time. Some days I would do a 5k loop in 20 minutes at a basic heart rate, but if there were a couple inches of wet and heavy snow on the track, it could easily take 25 minutes, or even 30.
Then there´s technique. Mine does look good if you are not a skier, but when I go fast it´s not that great anymore. You just can´t replace years of ski-specific training in weeks. Especially during the first few weeks in Finland I felt it was difficult to focus on technique because of how the ski loop constantly goes over hills and has a lot of curves, and so on. Within the classic and the skate style there are about 3 sub-techniques that you use, depending on if you are on flat, on a slight rise or an uphill. I was used to more simple sports, like cycling, running and swimming. For example in freestyle swimming technique is very important, but at least you maintain the same technique the whole time! My greatest weakness is ski-specific strength. In races going uphill my mucles would reach their limits, while I was still not breathing very hard. That felt weird. I have to say I fully expected to be more competitive at the races, but the main thing was qualifying for the Olympics, which I did achieve.
I did 6 races quite soon after getting to Finland, because I wanted to make sure I´d obtain the necessary points fast in case I would get sick or hurt at some point. I was not used to cold weather, or the Finnish germs or anything, and for example a pneumonia could easily take 2 weeks to fully recover from. My last race was in mid-December and after that I focused on training. The last week in Finland was very difficult as muscles were fatigued. I was back in La Paz on January 17th and there I did cycling and a total of 5 roller ski trainings on skis provided by the federation. Roller skis are more difficult to ski on than real skis, so I decided to do hard trainings on the bike. I was surprised that 10 days after getting to La Paz I was able to perform even better in a cycling wattage test than before going to Finland, even though I did not do cycling there for 8 weeks (only one 40 minute indoor ride).I even did one 31-minute uphill cycling race on February 4th before traveling 3 days to South Corea starting on February 6th. Obviously I don´t have expectations of placing high, but my goal is to prepare in such ways that on the race day I´d finally feel fresh and ready to race. So hopefully on 16th I´ll be able to beat a handful of other competitors at least.
