“An expert is someone who, over many years, manages to remain confident enough to keep trying and humble enough to keep learning.”
Reflection
My dad frequently likes to remind me that I don’t have a very good ‘governor’ when it comes to my own safety. This topic usually comes up before I am about to go mountain biking and my dad is usually quite serious and concerned (for good reason, as my mountain biking skills are sub par and I have many scars to remind me of that!) I think he might be partially right, because I generally don’t get very scared. I’ve always had an inherent love for taking risks and going fast, and I’m sure this has played a big role in me getting to where I am in ski racing.
However, last year I realized that I do in fact have some level of concern for my safety. This realization came after a couple of my first World Cup DH’s. I found that when I skied downhill my body position was a lot more defensive than it was when I skied the other events. My coaches would tell me “you look like you’re skiing scared.” This was interesting because mentally, I felt the exact same as I always do before a run.
Ultimately I figured out that because I was skiing much faster during DH (up to 80 mph) than in the other events, I needed to push into the front of the boot and be aggressive with my body more in order to counteract the increased forces of downhill. My body was subconsciously keeping me in a defensive position because of the increased speeds. The irony of the situation is that the safest way to ski downhill is to be forward and in an aggressive position, so I have to fight against my instincts to be forward and ski safety. Nice to know there is an ounce of self preservation down there, but unfortunate that it’s not actually helping me be more safe!
Now when I ski downhill, I know that I have to actively think about being super forward and aggressive with my body position. This is something I’ve been working on all summer, but ultimately we don’t really hit top speed in downhill until we reach the World Cup tracks, which brings me to the past couple days…
Update
We’ve had three training runs in DH at Lake Louise so far and they have been pretty tough for me.
In the first training run my edges ‘burned’ almost immediately on the cold aggressive snow. It’s been -10 degrees F every day here which makes base burn very common, especially if you’re skiing on speed skis with very little edge. Base burn is when the side of the bases ‘burn’ from the friction of the snow and the edge of the ski gets derailed (comes off the ski a little bit). When this happens, you can also immediately feel the edge start to grab like it’s constantly wanting to turn, which I can assure you feels terrible and quite scary at 80 mph during a DH training run.
I did luckily make it to the bottom of the first training run unscathed, but I was very shaken and unnerved. I immediately picked up my ski to see what had happened and the HEAD ski rep (who waits in the finish line for all the HEAD athletes during WC’s) confirmed that the skis were burned and broken.
Unfortunately though, all three of the dh skis I’ve been using this summer and fall in training have very thin edges, which has put me in quite the unfortunate situation. Long story short, I only have a very small quiver of dh skis ( 6 compared to all the other WC girls who have 10-15 dh skis), and so I have been forced to use new skis of a different model that I haven’t been training on and don’t feel super comfortable on the past two days in the training runs, and again tomorrow and Saturday for the race. This has been extremely frustrating.
My brother Andrew sent me this text this morning:
“What you’re feeling makes sense, this race weekend has large implications for the rest of your season so was going to be stressful in the best of circumstances and now you’re dealing with equipment issues that is seemingly out of your control, so just focus on what you can control. Learn the course and don’t worry so much about time today.”
He is 100% on point, and I will try to do exactly that for these next two dh races. You never know what can happen in speed so I will be skiing as aggressive as possible and giving it my all! And even if the next two days don’t go great, I will still use them as prep for the Super G on Sunday which is my best event anyway and I have fast skis with plenty of edge!
The races will be streamed on https://skiandsnowboard.live
I am bib 44 Stef is 43 (she has been crushing it up here so far!!!!) :) and the races start at 12 MST (friday), 12:30 (saturday), 11 (sunday).
wish us luck!
Over years of high-level racing (long ago) I found that my response to real and perceived disadvantages (sickness, minor injury, equipment, seeding, underdog, last chance to qualify, etc.) was increased focus during inspection and the race, which often produced my best results.
Great Race Tricia and even better Post. Thanks
https://vid.us/mqc7wr