As I sit in Seattle airport preparing to buckle down for a long night sleeping in the airport I’ve decided this is a better time than ever to do my first blog post. So if you are wondering why this is so long and boring its because I am fighting my own boredom. If I were you I wouldn’t read this….
Last year I was talking with E-Town about the options I had to take advantage of the extra season of eligibility I have from a red shirt year I took due to a back injury when I was a freshmen. It came down to deferring for the next two fall semesters so I could return in the spring just in time for the start of carnival season. Once we realized that this was my only option I got my creative juices flowing so I could make the most of my time off. My good friend at the time was taking time off of school to ski with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation Olympic Development Team so I got Rick Kapala’s phone number and after a few weeks the plan was to meet the Sun Valley team in lake placid for their annual two week camp in late September. I was a little bummed because I had already committed to teaching sailing in Martha’s Vineyard and as a result sacrifice solid summer training. Then again I was going to Martha’s Vineyard to do what I love most in the summertime so I was hard to be that upset.
My summer training started off biking home from St. Lawrence to Cumberland Maine, which also resulted in a good knee injury from the two day, 335 mile suffer fest. Thankfully my dad met me half way and got me a hotel room, big dinner and freezing cold ice bath, a combination essential to making it all the way home. Some people ask me why I did it and I say 95% of it is so I could say I did it and 5% was because I’m currently banned from driving in NY…for some reason. Two weeks later I was back on the road running, rollerskiing and totally avoiding my bike. Post injury I was able to put in some good hours even though I was busy getting my family’s boat up to safety regulations and driving to places like Newport Rhode Island to get last minute parts so we would be ready for the Newport to Bermuda race. We were off racing on June, 20th for the 4 day 6 hour off-shore yacht racing adventure. We didn’t get into any crazy storms, which was unfortunate but we had our fair share or sail changes and mishaps, which was exciting. Once we landed in Bermuda training was the last thought in my mind. We cleaned the boat as fast as we could then ran to the moped store, got our 1 minute instructional session and just before we set off we were warned that 1 and every 3 people that rent mopeds get into accidents. Well there was 5 of us and all but one crashed. Anders crashed while racing down main street weaving between cars, George crashed trying to do donuts, Ben crashed attempting wheelies and I crashed while off-road rally racing but it was all TOTALLY worth it.
The day I got home I had 12 hours until I had to be in Martha’s Vineyard to begin my 5th year as a sailing instructor teaching kids to sail/race 420s. I was super excited to get into a daily routine of work and good solid training. Like every other summer of training I started off super strong with morning jogs, double sessions and steady gym workouts and by they end I found myself struggling to get out of bed in the morning and was wasting money on a gym membership. I was able to get some decent hours in but my fear of flat terrain before getting to the island became a frustrating reality. There are good hills on Martha’s Vineyard but just on the opposite side of the island from where I lived. My roommates were also on the opposite side of the spectrum as far as our summer goals were concerned. My goals of the summer were to get a good base of training built up and have a bomb-proof core so my back would be able to handle another season of hard ski racing. My roommate’s goals were to have a “good time” which means party your face off. They enjoyed bring the party to them, meaning our house. It got to the point where our house was nicknamed the animal house both figuratively and literally. Between the 2-6 parties per week, the beer lake in the basement where the beer pong table lived, mold in the bathroom, the beer can garden in our “lawn”, multiple police break-ins, food/dish/mold pile in the kitchen and….my all time favorite, multiple raccoon/skunk/whatever break-ins in the living room and basement from people leaving the sliding glass door open as they left the party. To make up for it all, my house did have an outside shower to which I am officially in love with.
Once I got off-island and after my short visit to SLU I was exhausted. I wanted to do a 3000 TT to see where I was compared to last year but had to stop 3 laps into it…I was spent. The latter end of sailing camp I was working 60-65 hour weeks and desperately trying to get into good shape so I would be able to survive the fall training with the Sun Valley team and was just burying myself deeper and deeper into exhaustion. Thankfully two days after my trip to SLU I got my wisdom teeth pulled which forced me to take 10 days completely off and really think about what I needed to do to be ready in the 3 weeks I had until I planed to meet the SVSEF in Lake Placid.
I had never met Travis Jones who was the ODT coach and had only heard of the people on the team from going onto FasterSkier and looking at the top of results pages throughout the years. I felt awkward and out of shape since the team had been training together through the summer but I made friends quickly and slowly got the hang of training twice the hours I logged this summer. We logged some 40 hours those two weeks which was a big change from the 10 hours per week I was struggling to get in the summer but when all you are doing is training and resting its amazing how many more hours you can log without getting tired. The climb to the castle marked the end of the camp and was a result that I was happy with.
Training in Sun Valley was awesome. The paved bike paths have a good amount of flats for the easy distance days and hilly terrain for intervals and such. Sun Valley is surrounded by mountains and hundreds of miles of mountain bike paths where you can switch it up and easily go for a 4 hour running od without running on the same trail twice. I lived in Ketchum, which was perfect because I didn’t have a car and it wasn’t a big deal biking to practice or if I was feeling lazy there were plenty of people on the team to bum a ride from. I also ended up not getting a job, which I am not proud of but I feel like it was a good decision because otherwise I would not have been able to put in the hours I did. I also found that everyone that did work got sick at least once when I was there and those that were fortunate not to work had a way better chance of staying healthy. On the harder weeks I would get into a routine of waking up around 8, eat, meet team at 9, come home anywhere from 10:30 to 12:30, eat, stretch, shower, eat, nap, go to grocery store or library, eat, pm workout (run, ski or gym), eat, shower, eat then hang out until bed around 10 or 11. I was living the dream. People would ask me if I got bored but I found that I am very good at keeping myself busy so I was rarely bored.
I was in Sun Valley for about 7 weeks before we left to travel the west for virtually the rest of my time with the team. We went to West Yellowstone for a week and Silver Star British Colombia a two-week camp. I raced 6 times in the 3 weeks we were gone and wasn’t able to pull a good result which was disappointing but at the same time I have two months until I want to be racing fast. Had I been racing well I would have been worried that I was following the same path I was last year of peaking early and burning out in the heart of the season.
Every year before race season I evaluate the 6 or so months or training that I have done. Biking home cost two weeks of training, the Bermuda race cost another week and a half and Martha’s Vineyard was a Nordic skiers training nightmare. Training with Sun Valley allowed me to train and race with some of the top skiers in the US, got my butt into shape, allowed me to learn much more about training but I am officially dead broke. I guess the big question is if I were to do it all over again would I change anything? Absolutely not. Sure biking home was dumb, racing to Bermuda cost me, Martha’s Vineyard was stressful training and Sun Valley sucked my bank account dry but I have loved every second. Had I been in Sun Valley for the summer through the fall I would be in much better shape and probably have a better season but to me its not worth giving everything else up.
Some people tell me that this week marks the end of my fun and I have to go back to reality but truth is that I am not. I tell them that I get to be home for Christmas, see my family then I am off to lala land training in Canada and then going back to SLU to see some of my best friends ever and to the school that I love.
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