Physical Testing Completed and Now on to the White Stuff!

I came to Park City on the 25th after an awesome month at home. It was great to have some time to work, play baseball, lift, and just wind down. I think it is so important to have that time at home with family to just relax and get things done. Now I am packing up to head to Mt. Hood after and awesome week of lifting and testing. I improved my strength in all the tests and am really happy with my progress. Can't wait to feel the difference in my skiing next week!

 After lifting yesterday 4 of us D-Team guys went out to Walt Evans' house to help him buck some hay. It was only about 2 hours of work and afterwards we were paid with as much of his wife's cooking as we could stomach; It was so great! Tonight I'm packing and am heading out for Hood early tomorrow morning. Getting ready for snow!!

Mt. Hood

I had a great camp in Mt. Hood, OR! It was the first true camp of the 2011-12 season  and I'm already feeling a lot of progress. The weather was awesome for the most part and the training was great. We were training down on "The Mile," which is a pretty mild pitch and good for working on fundementals and tactics. The coaches experimented with some different brush drills in the course and I think they found the perfect one for what I'm working on. I was really pumped on the power I was getting out of the ski in the top of the turn and through the transition! The other guys are awesome and a blast to hang out with so I'm looking forward to getting back together with them at the end of this month. For now, I am at home working my job and lifting hard getting ready for testing in Park City and skiing in Hood again starting the 25th!     

High School Finished!!

I graduated from High School this week and am pleased to have a little break from school.  Being in the Idaho Virtual Academy since fifth grade, I had never met any of my classmates. Graduation gave me the chance to put some faces to names and I really enjoyed it.

I've been in school year round for three years in order to accomodate my ski racing.  Last year I was the only guy on the Team still in High School, which was sometimes a real pain.  Now I can select courses and adjust my own workload as I nibble away at college.  This year I'm going to focus on languages and knock off some elective credits with on-line German courses. Should be usefull on our Euro-trip as well!

Tryout Camp

I just got home from a seven day training camp at Mount Bachelor.  The camp was quite large (16 athletes) since it doubled as a try-out camp to fill vacancies on the Team.  I'd already made team criteria, so was able to focus entirely on my skiing without preasure. I felt like it was a very productive camp. 

The group of guys was great.  I was already good friends with the 8 guys from the West, having raced and travelled with them a lot over the years. I got to room with some the East guys and really liked them as well.  The team nominations were announced last week, and all the guys on the list are pretty awesome.  I'm looking forward to a fun and productive year!

And it starts again!

Well, its time to start packing once again! After an awesome two weeks at home I am getting ready for 3 days of strength testing in Park City, UT followed by 8 days on snow in Mt. Bachelor, Oregon. I have been lifting a lot of weights and digging a lot of ditches for the last few weeks and am feeling really strong and ready for testing. I know a bunch of the guys I'll be with down there too and can't wait to spend some time with them! Should be a great camp!

Winding down

The last 10 races of the year did not go as well as I had hoped. I didn't have any results that were scores, but felt like I figured some things out that I struggled with throughout the season from a technical standpoint. I didn't "pinch off" the line nearly as much as I had been early in the year, and really could feel the top of the turn working for me in GS. Also on the positive side of things; the snow was great! It was exactly the surface I had been looking for since the start of the year. Not quite ice, but hard enough not to leave a track. Not a bad way to end the season! :)

I got home two days ago and have been getting back into normal life with tons of lifting, school, and shooting. I leave on the 9th for a training camp at Mt. Bachelor, OR, but for now, it's great to be back in my own bed!

US Alpine Championships

I had a great time at US Alpine Champs in Winter Park, CO this last week and skied really well. It was the first time the whole team has been together since November and gosh it was fun to see the older guys around! The last day was pretty bad weather, but the Super-G and GS days were sunny and beautiful.(much nicer than skiing in the rain like last year! :-) The GS was a minute thirteen seconds long, bumpy, and at eleven thousand feet in elevation was one of the highest GS races of the season. Needless to say I arrived at the finish out of breath, and with burning legs. That said I still skied pretty well and wasn't upset with my result. The SG day was a pretty big dissapointment. I woke up in the morning ready to go, inspected the course and was pumped with how it was set, and felt great on my skis during warmups; I was ready. After the second intermediate time I was only 1 second out of the lead which would have put me in the top ten, things were going well. Then, four gates from the finish, I pushed the line just a little bit too far and caught my outside ski in some bumps; that was all it took. I was basically sitting on my inside binding with my outside leg fully extended with no pressure on it. That move for half a second was enough to make me miss the next gate and end my race. I had to remind myself to keep looking at the positive, "I skied well and I was going fast." Things could have been a lot worse. I ended the week up with a pretty good slalom race in really tough conditions. That was followed by two GS races in Breckenridge, which brought with them my first score of the year in GS. It sure feels great to have that pressure off my back! I am now home for a night before heading on my way to spring series at Mission Ridge, WA. Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight!