My brother William called me earlier this week and asked how I have been feeling during training. It felt like he really cared about the answer, so I told him honestly that I am in a very different mindset than I have been in the past. I think a big reason for this is that I switched skis from Rossignol, which I have practically skied on my whole life, to HEAD, which are built and ski completely differently. Because the skis feel so different, I don’t really have a base for comparing how I am skiing now to in the past. Everything feels new and different. This has proven to be a bit of a mental struggle when things aren’t going well and I feel a little off. But it has also been a blessing, because I’ve quickly realized that it is futile to try and compare my previous feelings on Rossignol skis, to what I am feeling now on HEADs. The result of this has been that I really take my training a day at a time. I come up with a plan and intention for a training session, execute as well as possible, reflect on my success at reaching my goal throughout the session, watch video, and come up with a new plan for the next day. As simple as this sounds, it’s quite easy to get distracted in training by a number of different things. But what I tried to describe to William is that I feel a lot more calm and focused in training than I have been in the past. This is definitely going to be hard to continue as the season gets closer each day, but I am learning to let go of worrying about things out of my control or irrelevant to the training session, and focus solely on each day, each run.
After four weather days (and one powder day!) in a row, we finally got some awesome conditions again at Hintertux for a great GS block. I definitely struggled a couple of the days when the rut and bumps (from 10 people running the course many times) started forming because the snow was super aggressive. This made it really unforgiving at the top of the turn if I dove into the turn too early, was too inside or wasn’t forward enough. But hard training is good because it highlights your weaknesses and shows you what is the most important thing to focus on when things get rough. I am slowly starting to figure out what my ‘go to queue’s’ are on my HEAD skis when conditions get tough. These are little things, either technical or mental, that help me get out of a rut and back to a solid foundation or baseline. The hard thing is that once you find a certain queue it only works for a little bit before I start looking for a new one to bring me to a higher baseline. But slowly I use these queues to take baby steps towards real progress. Or at least that is the goal!
Here are some photos from the last couple of days.