In my opinion it really depends on where the shads are "up or down" for your first couple of runs. when i was their this year the shads were down between curve 10 and 11 for the first weak we were their then about four days before the race, for official taring they diced to open the shads, completely messing me up along with other people. so if you remove the shads the few reference points that you had are now all gone. i think it is pretty surprising what little thing you can notice when you are going down the track, like the stupid red gas can in curve 9 in lake placed this year that i all ways thought was a coach.

Aaron Barge          

Christopher Carson <carsonchrisw@...> wrote:

When I took the passenger bobsled ride in 2003, in the "2" seat right
behind Stephan Bosch (driver), we clocked 82 mph. Even having spent 3
weeks at that course with various races, walking it and thinking I
knew it, everything was a blur after we got past that 270 degree turn
at the Junior start. Every time I thought I knew where I was, I was 2
corners farther. With the shades up maybe I could have seen the
corners better, but with them down it was like doing one of those
indoor roller coasters in the dark. No point of reference. I don't
know how they do it from the Men's or Bob start for sure--and from
Women's you have a big drop down to Junior's too. Good luck! I saw
someone from Women's hit the edge of the entry chute at juniors at
pretty high speed (where the board doesn't quite meet-up with the ice
wall); it was even someone who slid in the Olympics (for a foreign
country), and it wasn't pretty.
Chris Carson carsonchrisw@...