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!