Colorado

So I am in Colorado for the whole month of November training in Summit and Eagle counties. I’m staying with the US team in a lavish hotel named Manor Vail right at the bottom of Gold Peak. I wake up every morning and walk 100 feet from the room to the bottom of the lift… how can you beat that??  The team injected the slope last week and the surface is about as good as I’ve seen. I think it’s helped my skiing a lot to get on a solid, icy surface that makes me work to hold an edge. It took me a little while to figure it out, but now I feel great on it. A good confidence builder for sure!


I’m really feeling good on my skis right now and am getting a lot of power in the top of the turn. “The move” that I have been working on the last 6 months is now automatic, but I still have to focus on giving my body room at the gate in order to get the full benefit. I’ve got this annoying tendency to pinch off the top of the turn and hammer the panels, (It feels way sweeter but it’s definitely not the fast line) so fixing that is one of my biggest focus points. There is a USST race next week in Vail for all the Team guys and a few selected invitees. It should be a fun race and hopefully a good points opportunity!

Back on the road!

Chile was great fun, but coming home felt really good. After relaxing and catching up on laundry I hit the gym hard for two and a half weeks. Unfortunately, I had my wisdom teeth pulled on the 15th, which brought all workouts to a halt. (I must say though, my mothers Chocolate shakes made that experience much more enjoyable ;-) The month ended with pre-season physical assessments at the COE in Park City, followed by a “Team Building” camp at Moab, UT.

We all loaded up for Moab on the 26th and spent four days camping and biking around Canyon-lands and Arches National Parks. What a great spot! Several of the guys had been there before and they led us on some tough rides in marginal terrain. I was on an “old school” bike, so my hands and legs took quite a beating. I had a great time just the same! We did a lot of bouldering and rock climbing as well, which I really enjoyed. Dad caught up with me on the 29th and we’re now in Colorado for 36 days of training and competition.

 
This next week should be a lot of fun. We’re going to ski with our Canadian friends, Matt and Michelle, at their camp for 5 days. They are a constant laugh and I can’t wait to spend some time with them again! On November 5th I join the team at Vail for on snow training. It will include speed training at Copper Mountain in the early mornings, and tech at Vail and Loveland. I’m really looking forward to the start of competition November 27-30!!

Home again, home again....

Well I must say there is no place like home! I had a great time in Chile, but I was ready to get out of the snow and rocks and back into the forests of the North West. J The last few days were GS and I really felt like I was skiing well. Having only two days of it didn’t give me a ton of time to get the feel, but I still felt pretty good, all things considered. After packing out on our last day, we got to spend a few hours down in Santiago. We stopped in a small “crafts fair” type thing with hundreds of little one room shops which openned into walkways that displayed their owners hand-made items. Things were pretty expensive, but it didn’t matter.  Anything bought there was the only one like it in the world, so I figured it was totally worth it.

The flights home seemed to take forever to me. That was partially due to the fact that my seats on the ten hour flight were located right next to the restrooms in the rear of the plane, and there were no complementary nose plugs. :P Not too much sleep for me! When we touched down in Atlanta, the first thing one of my buds and I did after clearing immigration was to buy a couple of huge Cinnabun’s each..  and honestly, junk food has never tasted so good! Mine disappeared in about two minutes. Then it was just eight more hours of travel to Spokane Airport and a hour and a half long drive home from there. It felt great to sleep in my own bed that night J

C'est finis!

The past two weeks have sure gone by in a blurr! With only two days left in the whole camp, I've been trying to slow time down a bit and reflect on how my skiing changed while here in Chile. I worked all summer on getting my new outside hip over the up hill ski in transition (an idea that gave me numerous fits in my last 8 weeks on snow), but I think I finally have it. It isn't evident in every turn, but that's just a matter of time. I can really feel the power it gives in the fall-line, and the resulting speed. It's a good feeling! I can also feel that all the strength training I did over the summer is paying off. I was in the gym 6 days a week and wow, was every second worth it!


I was sick with some sort of bug the past two days, and that's left me feeling a bit weak. Thankfully one of those days was a planned day off, so I only missed the first day of Giant Slalom this week. Today (the second day of GS for the team) consisted of three, 20 gate, sections on perfect, rock-hard snow. What better way to get into a new event?!? It took me a few runs to get into the flow, but I started to feel it by the end of the day. I hear we have a timed,two minute long, GS course tomorrow... Hopefully I'll still be standing on unlocked legs when I reach the bottom, but somehow that is doubtful at 12,000 ft. ;) I'll let you know how it goes!

Half way!

So today was the half mark of this camp here in Chile. What great training it has been! Speed in the morning and Tech in the afternoon, followed by GREAT food.. What more could I ask for?!

These next 3 days are going to be primarily DH and SL, but we might get to do a bit of GS as well. With the snow coverage diminishing, it is a very good thing we are getting speed out of the way now so we can focus on tech later in the camp. We are all working hard to keep our bases smooth, but its pretty rough right now! So as far as equipment goes, my Atomic Slalom skis are the only new items I have with me. Wow, they are something else! The turning radius is shorter this year, and that coupled with a much lighter binding makes them a pretty sweet ride! I'm feeling really good in all events right now and I'm looking forward to a great rest of the camp and hopefully a great season!

Chile

I am here in La Parva, Chile for the first “winter” camp of the 2010-11 season. What an interesting place! Upon arrival in Santiago, I noted that the sky wasn’t visible through the smog. Trash littered the sides of the large river flowing through the city; it was stacked meters deep. I was relieved when after travelling 45 km East and climbing 10,000 ft., everything cleared up and revealed a beautiful mountain with tons of terrain and no people! The photo above was taken at sunset from my room.


Today was the fourth day on snow and things are going great! I skied Super G really well these past three days, and am really feeling “the move” I’ve been working on since the spring. The timing system was broken today, but tomorrow hopefully it will be operational and I’ll be able to see where I stand compared to all the guys. I can’t wait! Oh, and tomorrow starts the first day of a 3-day celebration here in Chile, so there will be live bands and dancing all over on our day off. Should be a good one!

Mt Hood camp

I am now back training in Mt. Hood, Oregon. It's the first summer in 6 years that I've trained, and wow I had forgotten how much fun it is! It was hard to leave my baseball team back home to come out here, what with it being the middle of the season, but being here brings back a lot of good memories. This is a tech camp with 4 GS and 3 SL days. We just finished the slalom portion and gosh, I am feeling a little bit rusty! Today was a day off because of the poor conditions up at the mountain, so the team and I went down to the Columbia for some windsurfing and had a blast! Tomorrow starts the GS training block, which will last through the end of the camp on the 23rd. Warmups start at 5:45 in the morning, so I'd best get off to bed!