The past week has honestly gone by extremely fast. Every day I feel more and more excited to race, while also simultaneously feeling like there’s more and more I want to improve before racing. But to be honest, I don’t think anyone ever feels totally 100% ready. And if they do, they are probably a bit delusional because there will always be more improvements to be made.
I have had some good breakthroughs this past week in my speed skiing and GS. There are a lot of speed ’skills’ I am working on that I didn’t even know existed. Downhill especially is its own beast, but I am learning so much about what makes fast downhill skiing and then trying to execute this new knowledge. The learning part of skiing has always played a big factor in how I get better, because if you don’t understand a concept fully, how can you expect to do it? So, I have been asking lots of questions and watching a lot of video! I am gaining confidence in the repetition and consistency we have had so far with lots of speed training in Copper.
My GS skiing also feels probably the best it has ever felt which is a bit of a double edged sword because I am focusing on racing speed not gs, but everyone says good gs skiing makes good super g skiing so hopefully that translates to my upcoming super g races!
I don’t know exactly what has caused the improvement in my gs skiing. It actually reminds me of a Buddhism tenet that I learned about this spring in school. In Buddhism, they say that once you follow the steps of the ‘path’ and finally reach enlightenment, you have an epiphany that you didn’t need the steps at all and you always had the Buddha nature inside of you. This is kind of similar to my recent breakthroughs in gs. I have put in so much work, but the breakthroughs seem separate from that, like something just clicked and I finally understand what I need to do to be fast. Take this with a grain of salt because 1. I might be totally misrepresenting the Buddhist teachings and 2. It always feels easy when things are clicking, but right now this is the best way I can describe it.
Racing has always been my favorite part of ski racing, which may sound obvious, but you would be surprised. There are a large number of people who really really enjoy training and ‘the process’. But for me racing has always been where the most improvement and growth comes from. So I am excitedly anticipating the first Lake Louise training run which is officially one week away!
Kick Ass Tricia!!!
Buddha=Enlightenment
TrciaMangan=Speed
UD