Today I will be walking you through what a common day in the life looks like while skiing in El Colorado, Chile.
We have been here for almost two weeks now, which have absolutely flown by. Our schedule is usually train for three or four days in a row and take a day off. This is what we did yesterday and is what a normal training day looks like!
Wake up and Warm up: 6:00-6:45 am
First thing in the morning is warming up the body. I started to do a daily warm up this summer, and loved the consistency of it. While I’m skiing I incorporate more activation exercises (with the bands) and core work to get ready for the training day, in addition to my morning stretches and yoga.
Breakfast
After warming up the body, I make sure to eat a big breakfast (oatmeal, protein powder, berries, peanut butter) and drink some caffeine and lots of electrolytes because it has been quite warm and sunny here!
Morning Session
Our training has started around 7:15 or 7:30 am each morning. We take a few free ski runs, do some drills, inspect the course and then start training. Yesterday, our first session was GS with the Norwegian Tech WC team. The conditions were awesome!
We are training (and sleeping/living) at 10,000 ft at El Colorado, so it’s important for us to manage the training load more during our sessions here, especially because we plan to be here for four weeks. Our GS course was about 50 seconds long yesterday and we were lapping on a T-bar (not a chairlift), so our legs didn’t get much of a break. The Norwegians were testing their lactate levels at the bottom of the course and at the top of the T-bar and they were almost the exact same, which means the rest time at the top before starting the next run is super important. We made sure to take some time between each run to sit down, hydrate, eat some snacks, and make sure our bodies were as recovered as possible in between runs. We took seven runs in total, and Stef and I both felt pretty gassed at the end. (Not something I like to admit because I’m usually the one trying to push the volume!)
Second Session
We have mostly been doing single sessions, but yesterday, after we finished GS at around 11 am, we switched to DH skis to do some jump training.
El Colorado is in a valley in between two other Chilean resorts: Valle Nevado and La Parva. All three have some awesome terrain and great training. The back side of El Colorado is where the more intense speed lanes are so we skied around to the back side, where they have a big jump built up to do some jump training and free-ski on our DH skis. We are planning on racing on the 30th and 31st, and wanted to get some laps on our DH skis before the first DH training run.
We did a couple free-ski runs and then started jump training, which essentially means we straight lined into a jump in our tuck, first from 40 m and then 60 m and then 100 m. The jump wasn’t very big (and we never got very far off the ground, we just flew for a long ways), but straight-lining in your tuck for that long is always a bit scary. It was also the first jump I’d done since the WC’s last season, so I was a bit rusty on my technique.
Lunch
After jump training, Stef and I were both pretty tired and extremely hungry! It’s been super sunny down here, which always makes me more fatigued than I realize. I try to drink as much as possible (and usually go pee 3-4 times on the hill each morning as a result), but by the time we finished DH at 12:30, I was quite dehydrated and hungry.
Nap Time / Dry-land
I’ve been doing a good job of powering through the afternoon fatigue to do work, but yesterday I was exhausted, so Stef and I both enjoyed a good 1.5 hr nap (luckily it was the weekend so I didn’t have work). We then did a quick lift. We do some sort of post skiing workout every day, but usually only do an actual lift the day before a day off, and then use the day off to recover fully.
Afternoon Chill Time 2:00 - 6:00 pm
After dry-land is when we all do our own work, computer stuff, chill etc. There isn’t much to do in El Colorado other than ski because the resort and apartments are all at the top of a mountain road. Other summer ski locations like New Zealand or Switzerland, have a lot more to do outside, which is why Chile always feels a little bit more like a grind. But we’ve all stayed quite busy and spirits have remained high! Stef is starting school in two days, Thomas (our coach) is doing med-school applications, Ale (our ski technician) is finishing his exams, and I am continuing my summer internships. Plus we have a lot of planning and logistics to figure out with the team:)
Dinner 6:30 pm
We’ve been cooking all our own meals which helps a lot with staying healthy and happy. The food in Chile is notoriously not awesome, so it’s been great to have a little kitchen to cook for ourselves. Stef and I alternate making dinner and the boys will help with the clean up.
Bedtime
Then we hang out, go over the schedule, watch some skiing video, discuss future plans, and get ready for bed. As I mentioned, living at altitude can be very taxing when you’re training super hard, so Stef and I have been going to bed around 9 pm, and I usually read two pages of my book before I’m passed out!
Q & A
My Uncle asked me last week: if real winter snow is better than glaciers, why aren't more WC skiers with you in Chile?
The answer is that a ton of WC teams are down here. There is hardly any snow on the glaciers this year as well, so almost every national team changed their training plan to come to Chile (either one of the three resorts in this valley or Portillo), Argentina (Ushuaia), or New Zealand (lots of small ski areas and resorts down there) this year.
All our welcome to ask any questions!
Stef and I will be racing in the South American Cup Downhill and Super-G’s on the 30th and 31st, mostly for training purposes, but we’re both very excited. It will be the first time in a DH course since last March! Here is a live timing link if you want to follow along. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/alpine-skiing/live.html
Excellent! I will be reading. Love to hear about your training, successes, failures, etc. Definitely explain your process, what worked, what didn’t, equipment, funding, etc. Why you did something, why you didn’t , etc.