Freshman Year

Hey guys! It's been a weird year for me. You all saw my growth from the beginning of the year to the end. If you remember, I started this blog as a school assignment. For my last blog assignment I am supposed to talk about my experience and growth through blogging so here we go.

image courtesy of A Boundless World

Where was I when I started my journey? I was literally no one. No one knew who I was or where I came from except for my ski team. It was weird to have such a small group of friends for me but it is where it is. I also was six months post op of my first ACL reconstruction and I had just started working out with my team again. I had a new coaching staff that I needed to get to know and I moved up a year in skiing. Overall it was a pretty rough start to the beginning of the year.

But that start pretty much resembled the entire year. So the question is, how did blogging help me grow? Well, I guess you can say blogging made me more mature. If you look at my posts from the beginning to the end, my topics have changed so much. I went from blogging about Halloween to blogging about staying positive after injury. Documenting my writing progress has really helped me to see just how much an individual grows in a year. In a way blogging has also helped me cope with tearing my ACL a second time. It may seem like the only thing I talk about here but shoutout to those other four kids on my team that just went through the same thing. It's a hard process that you have to deal with and this blog has helped me to stay motivated and get out of my previous lazy patterns. It's helped me come to where I am now.

Now I have a workout group that I started between five other girls and I all with the same injury. We go to the gym together to stay motivated and work through the difficulties of injury. I've been more responsible for myself and my actions, for example documenting everything active I do in a day so that if I start to have pain anywhere in my body my coaches and I can pin point exactly what caused it. I've taken my first AP exam and maintained good grades throughout the school year. I've been voted the sophomore representative, branching out and making more friends and acquaintances, And finally I've grown as a person throughout my experience. It might even be hard to say goodbye to blogging.

I would encourage anyone reading this to try blogging. Here's an article about how it can help grow your business for any of you older people. This whole journey started as an assignment and now here I am at the end of it. I don't know if I will continue blogging or not but if I do I'll keep you all posted. It's been a great experience and I hope all of you readers enjoyed watching my first year of high school. So I guess this is goodbye for now! Maybe I'll see you soon!

Student Council

Hey Guys! So I recently decided to run for the Student Council elections this week! I am running to become the Sophomore Representative! I thought that I would tell you how I'm running my campaign and ways that may help you win if you are ever interested in running for Student Council! Let's get started.

The first thing you should do is make posters. It is important to show the students who you are and making posters can help you with that. I wrote pretty much the same thing on every poster so that everyone knew that I was the same person which leads to my first tip: do not create posters that look too different and unrecognizable from each other.

the picture I used on my campaign posters

If your posters don't look similar in anyway other than having your first name on them it may be hard for students to realize you are the same person. Also, make sure to hang your posters in the most frequently visited parts of your school to ensure that the majority of your class or your voters see your poster. For my school this means that the candidates for Student Body Vice President have two schools to cover because the ninth grade is at a different school. This leads to my next tip.

MAKE SURE TO GET TO SCHOOL EARLY ON THE DAY YOU ARE ALLOWED TO START CAMPAIGNING. This is especially important in Park City because there are so many different sections of the school to cover in such a little amount of time. I would say to try and hit the main traffic ways of your school first and to have friends help you hang posters in different areas as well. This will ensure that you get prime space in all areas of the school and not just on one wall. However, the most important part of your campaign is your video.

Your video should be your number one priority after your posters. Although some schools don't allow videos most do and many videos are the reason candidates are elected into their positions. Even though it is kind of sad, most high school elections are still popularity contests and having a funny video is an essential part to a winning campaign. And again this leads me to my next tip, don't make your speech too long.

If your speech is long and boring people won't vote for you. Try to throw in some puns and hold your audience's attention. If you make them remember you they will most likely forget about the other candidates and vote for you as they remember you the most. If you want more information on how to write a good speech and presenting it click here.

Be clever and have fun with your campaign! Most schools also have positions you can apply for so don't worry if you don't win! I would still encourage you to make the most out of a Student Council experience because it can be a really good opportunity and a fun time! Hopefully you all enjoyed that post! See you soon!

Update 5/5/16: I won the election! Thanks to all the students at TMJH who voted for me and congratulations to Matthew who was elected as well! Good job to everyone who participated I encourage all of you to apply for positions! I look forward to working with all of you next year!

Stay Positive Part 2

Hey guys! So last time I gave you a couple tips on how to stay positive and motivated through injuries and negative times! For the second part of this series I decided that showing you how I keep track of my progress, making sure I stay on track and how I prevent laziness. Hopefully this helps you guys!

So, how I keep track of my progress is by using sheets that I have created online and print out. I fill these out every day and every Monday I have a separate sheet that summarizes the previous week's progress reports. I find that these have helped me to communicate properly with my coaches, doctor and physical therapist about where my pain is, when the pain occurs and what type of pain it is. I can also take notes and write any questions I think of while filling out my sheet for the day. This takes up about ten or fifteen minutes of my day and it is definitely worth it. I found that last year, before developing this system, I was unprepared when speaking with my coaches. This made it extremely hard to differentiate between what I could and couldn't do and left me weak during the season. Overall I put myself in a bad place and by writing this I hope to prevent any of my readers from doing the same.

Another thing I want to prevent all of you from doing is getting off track. I found that coming back from injury took up a lot of my time and some days it didn't feel like it was worth it to bother putting in the work. When I got into this mind frame I went backwards in my progress.

a photo of Lindsey Vonn, an olympic skier who has had
multiple injuries and come back stronger from every one
photo courtesy of Ten Sports Club

As I got weaker, things started to hurt my knee more and more limiting what I could do. There was a time period when my doctor thought I was pushing my leg too hard and creating pain when I actually needed to do more strengthening. It was a bad time that left me weak as I mentioned before. I had to work ten times harder because I was expected to do a lot more and keep up with my team. It is SOOO IMPORTANT to stay motivated and keep yourself together. Injury is a hard mental game to play and beat. Sometimes you think you know better and that you don't need to put in the work, but you do. Remember this little rant when you aren't feeling motivated and think about re-injuring yourself like I did. It's unfortunate that it has taken me two surgeries to figure all this out but you can learn from my mistakes. This also leads into preventing laziness.

There are some days you just don't want to do anything. However, I have actually read an article that stated the the best days to go to the gym are the days when you don't want to. Some people say your body gets the most out of your workout on those days. How do you get yourself there? This is when these two posts come full circle. The answer to preventing laziness is staying positive and motivated. Sound familiar right? Here's some more information on how to prevent laziness. 

Overall it's hard to get over the bad days. If you haven't read part one of this mini series go do that for some more tips and tricks. Stay strong and follow the steps I've listed to take a more mature approach to your injury or bad attitude and you will be fine! Hopefully this has helped any of you that have had problems staying committed and motivated to your sport recently. Stay tough! See you soon!

Stay Positive Part 1

Hey guys! Knee surgery was successful and I now have another cadaver graft holding my knee together. Unfortunately it sucks, like really bad, but now that I've gone through this process twice in less than a year I'm more prepared for future injuries and I know how to take care of myself. So, I decided to give you guys some tips on staying positive, motivated, reaching your goals and mentally dealing with injury to help you guys out! I will be doing this in two parts so stay tuned!

My first tip, and one of the most important ones, is to stay positive and motivated! It's hard when you're in a slump or injured to stay positive but it is essential to getting yourself back on track. One thing you can do to stay positive is think about all the fun times you've had in your activity, this specifically works well for sports, and think of all the fun times to come when you get back! 

a photo of us doing our flexion and extension exercises at Silver Mountain Sports Club
from left to right: Maddison, Heidi, Ella, Natalie (the one behind Tasia), Tasia, and me

Another great thing to do is to work with a group. There were three other girls on my team, as well as two from other ski sports, with the same exact injury as me. I decided that getting all of us together in the gym would be a great idea since I started doing upper body exercises two weeks after surgery. I can not express how much more motivated I was this surgery than my last because I had my friends there. For me I saw being able to use the most weight as a competition and have thrived from the workout group we've formed. If you'd like to read more about staying positive and how it relates to your health and competition click here. This also kind of ties into my next tip.

My next tip is to reach your goals. Try not to make goals too hard because otherwise you will end up discouraged when you don't accomplish them right away. One of my goals at the gym was to try to increase my weight by every two weeks. This is easier to accomplish for me because when you are starting out in the gym after having a strong muscle memory you make gains in your progress quickly. Of course as you continue you will need to update your goals as you are always changing. Also, don't be discouraged when you fail or aren't able to do everything you would like. With ACL reconstruction, ESPECIALLY a revision, it's a slow process. You can't run immediately after surgery. You need to relearn to walk, strength your surrounding muscles and make sure you have given the graft enough time to heal and become part of your body before you can start to pound your body again. This can take three or more months. It's a slow process that you need to get through.

Alright guys, hopefully this has helped you out a little bit. I know it can be hard to come back from an injury or having a bad week but don't let it get you down. Next time I'll show you an effective way to keep track of progress and be sure you don't make some of the mistakes I made when I had surgery last year. See you soon!

Bogus Basin

Hey guys! So last time I left you I was in a pretty bad spot. Let me tell you, it has not improved in the slightest. Like really, not at all. If you haven't read my Sun Valley posts I recommend you read those before reading this one.

Unfortunately my prediction was true and I did retear my ACL. It turns out I need another reconstructive surgery. So that was just AWESOME. AGAIN. I LOVE MY LIFE. But it happens and the best mentality to have is that you'll come back again. Having a hard time with that but, maybe I will come back. The truth is I've been pretty undecided the past couple weeks. I guess we'll see.

Now, I decided it would be best for me to go watch my friends race in Bogus Basin, Idaho because why not. I have surgery scheduled for February 29th so I might as well do something to distract myself from the fact that they'll be cutting my leg open, yet again. 

It felt odd getting ready and packing for this trip for a lot of reasons. I didn't tune my skis for one part, usually the first thing I do. No poles to strap together. No ski clothing packed in my bag at all. Seriously, none whatsoever. It feels weird to be packing for a ski trip without anything related to skiing besides a jacket. It felt like I was leaving a part of me at home. 

When I got to the bus it felt even weirder. I handed my small duffle bag to one of my coaches and she threw it in the cargo van. Then I loaded the bus and was bombarded with questions, mostly from the guys on my team. "Wait, Maxine are you racing?" they asked. "Oh so you're just coming for the trip? Why? Did you tear your ACL again?" they asked. I can not explain how irritating that ten minutes of questions was. It was like I was being interviewed. Why do I need to explain that yes I'm here for the trip, no I can't race and yes I tore my ACL. Seriously aggravating. It only lasted a little while though and after that I was only asked maybe once or twice.

When we got to the hotel another one of my coaches announced that I was in charge of the wax room. I mean, it's not like I had anything else to do and I didn't have to do any heavy lifting because of my knee but you would be surprised how hard it is to get some of the kids on the team to cooperate. 

After that was over we just hung out. My teammates had to tune their skis but other than that we just lounged around the hotel. We also played with face swap on Snapchat which was pretty great.

as you can see we are very talented in the art of Snapchat's face swap filter

I have to say that this was probably one of the more fun ski trips I've been on, you know besides the whole not racing part. Although I couldn't actually see the race it was still pretty fun. The races got cancelled on Saturday so we all went to the movies as a team and that was fun. We played chess in the lobby and played Call of Duty in my room. One of my roommates couldn't find her way around the hotel and that was pretty hilarious. She had to call us almost every time she left the room so we could help her find her way back. A few of us went to the lake near by and swam in it completely disregarding that we probably could've gotten hypothermia or something. I'm not kidding my feet went numb as soon as I stepped in the water.

This was a great trip. It's just hitting me now that tomorrow I'll be having knee surgery and I'll be missing more memories like these. I hope next year we continue to make these memories. I love my team and I wouldn't trade them for anyone else in the world. I'll guess I'll have had knee surgery next post so wish me luck! See you soon!

p.s. sorry this was posted a couple days after I wrote it but for some reason it wouldn't post on the bus and then I forgot haha :)

Sun Valley Part 2

Hey guys! I'm back for the second part of the Sun Valley series. May I say, this race took an unexpected turn. If you haven't read part one go ahead and check that out first! Now, let's get started.

So the bus ride was fun as they always are. We played the game Psych! on our phones together. The object of the game is to come up with an answer to a provided question that you know is not the correct answer. Then you try to trick people with your answer and guess the correct one out of all the answers given by the players as well as the one correct answer provided by the app. It sounds complicated but you guys should try it out sometime because it's really fun. 

When we got to the hotel we all went to the wax room to scrap our skis. I unfortunately didn't get a table so I went to go get groceries for my roommate and I while she was in the wax room. Well guess who couldn't find the market? Yeah, that's right, me. I swear I probably would have been a good two miles off if the same coach that gave me that pep talk I told you about last time didn't find me and ask what I was doing. Talk about embarrassing. The market was literally like two blocks from the hotel. So that was just great. 

Ok anyway, it's the next day: race day. We raced GS first since it's easier and safer to go from bigger turns to smaller ones. It sucked. I skied like a little girl who just started racing. It was really awful. I thought hey, maybe the slalom won't be as bad right? Wrong. The first day of slalom was pretty bad too. I skied slightly better than I did on the first day. I did have a good second run and I felt pretty good about the next day. Well, I was wrong to think that maybe I could have done at all ok at this race. On Sunday, the first half of my first run was pretty fast, but it was sloppy. I was in back seat and before I knew it I was only fifteen or twenty gates from the finish. That's where it happened. Where I fell, and where I'm pretty sure I retore the same ACL as I did last year. I was devastated. Unlike the first time it happened there was no hope that maybe it could be ok. "Maybe it's just the MCL which has a significantly faster healing time," they said. But no, I knew right from that moment that I would be starting over again with same process I went through last year. I was crushed. Here's an interesting article on ACL tears in sports right now incase your interested.

a picture I took on the way back from Sun Valley

The bus ride back was quiet. My roommate also tore her ACL the day before me so it was a little weird on the bus. Although, somehow a guy on the team ended up in those compartments above the bus that hold your carry-on bags and that was pretty fun.

So here I am on Tuesday. It's been over a week since my crash in Sun Valley. I'm waiting for an MRI result that will no doubt prove I tore my ACL again. AWESOME. I JUST LOVE MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. I guess I'll keep you guys updated on how this all plays out. See you soon.

Sun Valley Part 1

Hey guys! It's been a little while hasn't it? Well, I'd be wrong if I said a lot hasn't happened over this small amount of time . . . how about I start with the Sun Valley race that my team is at this weekend. I've decided to write this in a two-part series where you hear the training portion now and the race portion in the second part. Basically, as I'm writing this I'm on the bus and it's been about an hour since we left Park City.

So this trip has started pretty bad for me. After our last race, the Wes Barron Super-G, a speed race, in Jackson Hole, my skiing had been really amazing. 

this is an image of a speed race, the wider and straight set turns are a characteristic of these events
image courtesy of Vail Valley Foundation

Now, speed is kind of my thing and last season I noticed that after we started speed my skiing in all disciplines improved tremendously, especially in slalom. For awhile training was great. Everything just seemed to fall into place. I didn't have any issues with confidence in training, but soon after we started training GS, a tech discipline, on CB's. I tore my ACL on CB's last year and as you can imagine I was not the most confident starting a course at the same exact place as the one from last year. Actually, I was terrified. For me fear = terrible, back seat skiing, and terrible, back seat skiing = bad training. So overall my technique leading into the Sun Valley qualifier was in bad shape.

Now, two days before our departure for the race we trained GS on Shamus, another run at Park City. At the start of training my runs were pretty awful, but as the session went on my skiing improved significantly. I started to look and feel like myself again. I felt like maybe I could do somewhat decent at this race, you know? Knowing I was pretty freaked out about how bad my prep for the race had been that week, one of my coaches gave me a pretty great pep talk. He told me how NCAA studs would go to NorAms, a series of races in North America, and be completely unprepared mentally to face these other skiers. They all have talent and the skill set to do well, but they get destroyed by the other competitors. My coach said that it takes some of them a few days to get over their "slump" and it takes others a few months. He told me to try and get a good day of training in tomorrow and see where it leads me. He said not worry if these results aren't what I want them to be because speed is where I perform. It felt pretty good to know my coaches were behind while I was in my own slump.

Finally, it was time to leave Park City for Sun Valley. We loaded up the bus and said goodbye to our families. My parents decided to come up to Sun Valley on their own for Friday's race so I knew I would see them soon. 

Alright guys, stay tuned as the race continues and I'll give you an update after the race is over! See you soon!