A learning week in Chile
progress is certainly not linear down here...
Two weeks in La Parva, Chile absolutely flew by.
Admittedly, it took me a little longer than I expected to fully adjust to the intensity (both mentally and physically) needed to fully immerse myself in ski camp again.
Although I felt in great shape before flying down, I am notoriously bad at adjusting to altitude and felt a bit off and slightly ill the first couple of days living at 10,500 ft in La Parva. This made fully adapting to the mental intensity needed for training a bit trickier, and this, on top of my grandma passing, made the first couple days in Chile a bit of a struggle.
La Parva, Chile is a pretty unique training venue. For starters, there is not much to do other than ski, sleep, and eat. We live at 10,000 feet in tiny apartments on the side of the mountain with not much else up there! Because it is so high up, the snow is incredibly dry and aggressive, which isn’t something we ski on very often (it is also slightly different than the ‘hero’ snow that the Colorado rockies are known for).
On top of this, the La Parva speed track is incredibly flat which makes it a great place to work on gliding - one of my biggest weaknesses :) This is actually one of the main reasons I decided to come to Chile with the World Cup speed team (my team) vs. traveling to Ushuaia Argentina with the Europa Cup speed and tech team (like I did last year). My thought process was that this would be the best option to really dive in on gliding and finally make some progress on an aspect of my skiing I’ve struggled with for years.
Unfortunately things didn’t go according to plan :(
Every day we skied speed in La Parva, I would come up with a plan and think of different ways to think about gliding. But every day it felt like I was getting more and more confused, and I was getting slower and slower on the timing sheet. I tried everything from not thinking at all to thinking about as complicated or as simple a focus I could come up with and nothing seemed to be working. To be very honest: This was incredibly frustrating. And I made the situation a lot worse by getting pretty emotional at the end of each training session when it felt like I had made zero progress, and potentially had even gotten worse!
There can’t possibly be anything more frustrating than putting all my effort into figuring out this one aspect of my skiing, and simply having no idea why I am so slow or how to get faster. Every day that I thought I wasn’t making progress, I would think back to the frustration and disappoint I felt at the end of the races last year when I would lose so much time on the flats and have no idea how to fix it. It felt like this part of my skiing was completely out of my control and no matter how hard I worked at it, nothing worked.
It’s been one week since we left La Parva. I’ve had some time to reflect on this and here are my main takeaways.
Go back to what you know works. The first day we arrived in Portillo, Chile - our next training location, I decided to use my old race boots from last year and I IMMEDIATELY felt better. So clearly my new boots weren’t quite the same and my equipment was causing part of the problem with me feeling completely lost and uncomfortable on my skis.
Don’t focus on your weaknesses! This is something I’ve known for a while, but I was so optimistic about being able to address this weakness head on. My approach was to change the way I ski in order to be better at gliding, when in reality - I am never going to be the best glider in the world. So instead of trying to change the way I ski to be good at this one thing, I need to adapt my current strengths and the current way I ski to get a little bit better at gliding each day.
Remain positive. I was in such a terrible headspace in La Parva that I catastrophized everything. Yes, the situation was tough and frustrating, but I certainly didn’t make it any better for myself by getting so emotional and being negative. Looking back now I should have reached out to people I trust a lot sooner to help me feel a little bit less lost and alone.
Its okay to feel all the emotions. Through this whole ordeal, I felt so terrible about the way I was reacting to the situation. I hated that I was getting frustrated with skiing, and that I was letting it affect me so much. I constantly had thoughts like “why in the world are you crying about skiing” “you’re so lucky to even be here” etc etc. This is something I do quite often when I’m upset about skiing because I am so aware of just how lucky and privileged I am, and I feel guilty for getting upset about sport. But the reality is - I care a ton about skiing, I commit a ton of my time and energy to it - It would probably be a bad sign if I didn’t care. So I am working on allowing myself to feel however I feel and instead of getting worked up about it - just work on addressing why I’m frustrated and how I’m going to change it.
Although La Parva wasn’t the most productive camp skiing wise, I did learn a lot from it and things are already going WAY better in Portillo which is honestly a huge relief!
I’m excited to give you a recap of Portillo at the end of the week, but for now here are some photos of La Parva - more of the happy moments :)
P.S. Even writing this blog about being upset makes me feel quite guilty - so please know that I am very grateful to be here and doing my best to enjoy every moment of the journey. But at the same time, I want to be honest about the process, and the main purpose of this trip is to be 100% committed to doing everything I can to get as fast as possible!
No guilt. Take the guilt out of the equation. We are allowed all our feelings. I'm sorry about your loss. ❤️