We just finished up an awesome 5 day block in the legendary Portillo Chile located in the Valparaíso Region of the Andes Mountains. The US Ski Team (and partner teams) have been coming to Portillo for decades, so it is a very special and storied training location. I was super excited to come and ski the infamous slope.
Our travel day was pretty seamless with the exception of the coaches’s flight from Milan to Santiago getting cancelled, so we were only able to train GS the first day with our Strength and Conditioning/ Assistant Coach Kip. This was actually totally fine for me as I like to start with a day of tech before jumping straight into speed, especially because I hadn’t been on skis in almost five weeks!
Kip crushed it as the solo coach setting the course, dying the course, and running timing all by himself and we had a great GS session.
The next day the coaches arrived and we were able to join the Norwegian men’s speed team for a day of DH. The speed track in Portillo can be pretty tough, so I decided to take the first day to ease into it and kept my pants on for a few runs to feel out the speed (slow myself down). Looking back now, I think I would have been better off jumping straight into the DH, because I ski much better when I’m in an aggressive, attack mindset, than when I’m just feeling it out. But hindsight is 20-20 and a lot of people have gotten hurt training in Portillo, so being a little extra safe probably wasn’t the worst call.
After the first day of downhill we had three awesome days of Super-G. Portillo is about 10,000 ft up, so training five days in a row was a little taxing, but I actually felt great the whole time, and was sleeping and recovering well.
We start skiing down here in Corralco tomorrow and are here until October 10th! I can’t wait to build on our Portillo week and continue to progress my speed skills.