Quick is fine by me. Two chances at the hill, then out before the mountains decide they’ve had enough of us.
***
Before the second run, the world has gone two-tone: dirty snow underfoot, flat grey sky above. The light on the slope is worse than in the morning, all contrast sucked out, and the track through the middle has hardened into a narrow, shiny ribbon where thirty pairs of edges have scraped the softness away. The kind of surface that either feels like you’re flying or like your teeth are going to rattle out. I was a little too cautious in the first run, but this time is better. This time, I know I can survive the ice, the ruts, the course. I can go full in.
I stamp my skis once, feel the blades bite and chatter, and pick one thought to hang on to. Patience at the top of the turn. Let them come around. Don’t stomp. You race, you’re a racer. Race the course in front of you. His line, my hill.
The starter leans out of the little wooden hut, calls my number, then that familiar “Ready… start!” and my body moves before my brain can offer any objections. I kick out, smash the wand, poles scraping on the polished start ramp, lungs already burning cold air.
The hill hits back faster this time. First gate and the track is a frozen riverbed, ruts running like rails under the thin crust. I force myself to wait that extra half-heartbeat at the top of each turn, feel the skis travel just over the fall line before I pull. When I get it right, the edges hook and slingshot me across the hillinstead of smearing; when I rush, they skitter and my whole skeleton buzzes, but I keep my hands forward and my weight on the outside ski, refusing the old brake-slam reflex.
A third of the way down I drop into a rut so deep it feels like someone dug it with a shovel—my outside ski drops, hip jerks, the world yanks sideways. Run one, that’s where I panicked, stood up, did a full hockey stop and donated half a second to the hill. Now I grit my teeth, let the hip go low, trust the edge. The ski claws its way up the far wall of the groove, shudders, then spits me back out roughly where I meant to be.
My quads light up, my brain offers a helpful little scream, but the next gate is already in my face, so I keep going. By the last five turns my breathing sounds like a dying accordion inside my helmet, tunnel vision closing in, but it’s a clean tunnel. No wild scrubs, no oh-shit recoveries, just tired legs doing roughly what I asked them to.
The finish banner appears out of the flat light like a cheap magic trick. I drive through the last red, let the skis run for three desperate meters, then cross the line with my arms still low, legs shaking. The world rushes back in all at once—music from the pub, someone shouting splits, the crackle of the cheap loudspeaker—and I stab my poles in just to stay upright.
I don’t even need to look up to know it was better. My body knows: no single huge mistake, just a long, grinding argument with the hill that I mostly won this time. When I finally tip my head back to squint at the timing board, my time is a tiny green sliver faster than first run. Nothing anyone will write home about. But it’s mine, carved out of ice and stubbornness, andfor once the voice in my head that usually sounds like Peter is blessedly, beautifully silent.
***
Jana barrels into me at the fence, skis skidding, arms already open. We crash together in a clatter of armor and poles, both of us breathing like we’ve swallowed sandpaper. Her grin is wide and feral. “You bitch,” she wheezes happily into my shoulder. “You got me.” I wheeze back that it was only by a few tenths. We argue half-seriously about what’s better—each of us nicking a win in our own age group, or the old days when we fought it out straight up, bibs one after the other.
“Enjoy it while I’m still in this category,” she says, poking my chest with her pole. “Next year I move up and come to terrorize you from above.”
Snow starts while we’re still laughing. First a few lazy flakes that everyone ignores, then enough that phones start coming out of jacket pockets in unison. People squint at weather apps, swear under their breath, tip their heads up to look at the sky like that will tell them more than the radar.
The organizers don’t need convincing. One of them grabs the microphone, which shrieks once with feedback, and announces they’re doing prize giving now, not later, before “we all end up spending the night together in the car park.” There’s a chorus of cheers and nervous laughs. Someone from the pub drags a plain wooden chair out onto the packed snow, legs scraping,and plants it in front of a sun-faded sponsor banner. That’s the podium.
The microphone crackles like a campfire every time the announcer talks. They start with the oldest women, voices bouncing off the pub wall, calling names that make half the field clap harder because everyone knows who still races at seventy. One by one, flushed, wrinkled faces climb onto the chair and stand there in race suits that have seen more decades than some of the kids. Medals go on, cheap wine gets handed over, goggles pushed up for photos. The applause is ridiculous for how small the prizes are, the kind of wholehearted racket you only get from people who know exactly how hard it is to get out of bed for an eight-a.m. inspection when your knees sound like castanets.
By the time they get down through the age groups to mine, snow is falling properly—thick, slow flakes that stick in my lashes and turn everyone’s helmets speckled white. My name comes close to the end of the women’s list; my legs are stiff, my hands going numb in damp gloves. I clomp over in my boots when they call me, calves screaming at the angle, no time to change or even unzip. The chair looks absurdly small and wobbly when I step up onto it, skis leaning against the pub wall behind me, race bib still crumpled over my chest. The announcer makes a joke about the “empty spots” on my podium today, voice warm and teasing
Before I can feel stupid about standing up there alone, two shapes peel out of the crowd—Johann in his ancient German national-colors speed suit and his Polish friend in something equally loud, both of them old enough to be my grandfathers. They trudge over, plant themselves on either side of the chairlike bodyguards, and face the imaginary photographers. Someone wolf-whistles, everybody laughs.
The medal is light when it drops onto my collarbones, cheap metal on a tricolor ribbon, but the weight of it still lands somewhere satisfying under my sternum. The bottle of wine they press into my hand already has a plastic shopping bag half wrapped around it, practical and a little tragic, so I can stuff it in my backpack without soaking everything in red later.
Johann and his friend each offer an arm when it’s time to get down, making a great show of helping me dismount safely so I “don’t break the glorious prize.” I hop off the chair, boots thudding. Everyone claps like this is the Olympics. A couple of tourists who’ve wandered out of the pub clap too, eyes slightly glazed, clearly no idea why we’re all so excited over supermarket wine. Voices from the back keep calling to speed up, because every single one of us is thinking about the road out of the valley, but nobody really wants to cut the moment short.
Once the medals are done, they bring out a plastic salad bowl full of crumpled bibs and line the prizes up on a folding table. No prize money here, just a raffle. A mountain bike leans awkwardly against the wall, still with a price tag flapping from the handlebars. Next to it there’s a cardboard box of Lidl-brand energy drinks, a manicure set in blister packaging, a mess of wax blocks and tuning vouchers from local shops. The announcer swirls the bowl like he’s drawing World Cup start numbers and starts calling. The bike goes to a guy who arrived in a tiny city car already full of kids and skis; the roar of laughter that follows is so loud he bows theatrically and shouts that he’ll just tow ithome behind him. I privately thank every god I can think of that my number doesn’t get called for that one.
When my bib does come up, it’s for the energy drinks and the manicure set. The crowd howls, and I hold the prizes up like I’ve just won a crystal globe. Honestly, I’m more amused than disappointed. At least the cans will be useful at some point when I’m marking tests at midnight, and the manicure set can go into the tuning toolbox for scraping wax off my nails.
Snow is falling thicker now, soft white layers on top of the scarred piste, on our helmets, on the sad little mountain bike, and on the table of cheap goodies. For a small, precise slice of time, I’m just...happy. Frozen, tired, clutching discount taurine and nail clippers, but completely, stupidly happy. I’m standing in a makeshift podium crowd where everyone smells like cold sweat and illegal fluor wax, and every single person here gets why I’m grinning.
Then the last prize is claimed, the bowl is empty, and reality snaps back in. The organizers are already half out of their race suits, folding B-net and dragging poles aside with their bibs still on. The car park turns into fast-forward: skis thrown onto roof racks with numb fingers, boots yanked off on bumpers, engines coughing to life one after another. I do the quick-goodbye circuit—hug Jana, clap Johann on the back, wave at the organizers with my medal still hanging crooked. We’re all thinking the same thing: beat the storm, get home in one piece.
***
The parking lot is already a blur when I climb into the car. Engines rev, reverse lights blink on in jerks, exhaust hanging low and white in the cold air. Snow fattens from polite flakes into proper clumps while I wrestle my boots off and slam them into the footwell, medal still around my neck, suit peeled to my waist. I throw the skis in, chuck the wine and the rest of my stuff on top, and for once don’t care how neatly anything fits. Beat the storm now, tidy later.
The first kilometers out of Pec are the worst. The road winds through the trees, narrow and mean, and the fresh snow is already filling in the tracks of the cars ahead like the hill is trying to pretend we were never here. No salt yet, just a vague suggestion of two darker lines where tires have packed the flakes into something slicker. We’re in the National Park, no salt allowed.
I drop into second, let the car crawl, hands light on the wheel, brain chanting outside ski, outside ski like that will help. A dark SUV looms in my rear-view, then another. They sit on my bumper through a couple of tighter bends, headlights too close, clearly itching to go faster. Old reflex from years with Peter says speed up, don’t be the boring one, don’t make anyone roll their eyes at your “kids’ driving”. New reflex says: absolutely not.
I watch the mirrors, spot a lay-by half buried under plowed snow, and put the indicator on early. The SUV’s nose twitches like a dog on a lead. I pull into the soft stuff, feel the car wallow for a second, then stop. They roar past in a spray of slush, another car tucked right on their tail. I lift a hand off the wheel in a little go on, then, hero gesture.
“If you can drive fast, go,” I tell the empty car. “I’ll just be safe.”
