Lea Ann Parsley, a 33-year-old on the U.S. skeleton team, a sport that is debuting at Salt Lake City, shares a bi-weekly diary on her preparations for the Olympics.

During my first entry, I took a little bit of time to introduce myself, as well as talk a little bit about the sport of skeleton. With the big day quickly approaching, I thought it would be good to introduce you to some of my equipment and the routine I go through in preparing it all the night before a race.

LEA ANN PARSLEY

Parsley Birthdate: June 12, 1968 Hometown: Granville, Ohio Sport: Skeleton Accomplishments: Ranked No. 5 in skeleton in the world, she won bronze in Igls, Austria, in November. She took silver at the 2000 U.S. National Championship in Park City, Utah. Also a summer sport athlete, she was a member of the Slippery Rock Handball Club that won the 1996 U.S. National Championships. Personal: A firefighter for 17 years, she was selected Ohio Firefighter of the Year in 1999 in part for her role in saving two persons from a burning house. She has taken a leave of absence to train for the Olympics. While attending Marshall University, she played basketball, threw javelin and high jumped.

First of all, it's important to make sure all of our personal equipment is ready. This includes such things as our speed suit, helmet, gloves and spikes. The speed suits that we wear are very similar to speed skating and downhill racing suits. My first suit was an old ski suit I purchased at a ski swap. The material was a bit thicker than the more aerodynamic suit I wear today, but back then I really appreciated the extra material as I crashed into walls while learning how to steer!

My favorite race suit today is actually a swimsuit made by adidas. They are very thin and skin tight -- therefore aerodynamic. I can assure you, though, they are not very warm when you're facing wind chills of -85 degrees on the ride down! However, the motto on race day is "Skin To Win," so we wear as little as possible despite the potential frostbite. If you're truly going all skin underneath, then one very important task is to make sure all the seams are intact because one little rip equals one big problem on a skin-tight suit!

My gloves also are provided by adidas and are very thin and form-fitting. They also don't provide much warmth, but they do provide good grip on the handles of our sleds. The helmets that we wear are modified ski helmets. They are equipped with a chin guard and face shield. Because our faces ride about 2 inches off the ice, and in some cases on the ice in high G-force curves, we bring the chin guard in close to our face and make sure they are securely fastened. The face shield is usually a motorcycle shield or a luge face shield that we have modified to fit our helmet. We often coat the shield with anti-fog solutions so that we don't fog up on the way down the track. Believe me, at 80 mph that's a very bad thing.

Our race begins with an all-out sprint before we dive onto our sleds for the head-first ride down the track. Therefore we need a shoe with good traction, so we wear a sprinter style track spike. Again these are very thin and formfitting but don't offer much in the way of warmth (have you noticed a pattern here?). The night before a race, we always put in new, sharp spikes and ensure that the toes of the shoes are nicely coated with "shoe goo." Because our sleds don't have brakes, we drag our toes after the finish line to stop and a goo-free shoe will simply disintegrate. It can be a bit rough on the toes, but it's a lot better than the alternative of running off the end of the track and into the trees!

After inspecting my suit, spikes, gloves and helmet, I pack them away in my track bag along with snacks and water for the day. Our races are run in conjunction with the men and can take almost four hours to complete. Those snacks come in handy about mid-morning.

The final and perhaps most important task is preparing the sled. The runners or blades that we run on are made of austenitic stainless steel and must be polished. We do this by using varying grades of regular sand paper to remove scratches and nicks in the metal that could slow us down. We are not permitted to use any kind of wax or grease on the runner, so the last thing we do is wipe each runner with acetone to remove any grit or other substance.

Once the bag is packed and the sled is prepared, I set them together by my bed until the next morning. After all this is finished, I take a few minutes to sit quietly on my bed and I mentally run through the track as if I were actually lying on my sled in competition. It lets me take one more run down the track before I lay down and close my eyes for a good night's rest. It's often hard to fall asleep as I think about the race over and over again. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the track and the race. It's like trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve when you know that tomorrow morning is going to be so much fun.

I can hardly wait!