I’m currently flying home from Oslo following the last World Cup of the season in Kvitfjell. I’m on a 9 hr flight from Munich to Newark, and enjoying the mid-day flight alone time to reflect on the last week in Norway and the past couple of months in Europe.
I have to admit that I’m a little bit disappointed in myself for the last week. I’ve realized that I let a few things fall through the cracks in terms of putting myself in the best possible position to succeed at the races in Kvitfjell. My number one goal for this season was to do everything I could to prepare myself as best as possible for each race (everything from equipment to logistics to mindset), and I am really bummed that I wasn’t able to accomplish this this past weekend. It wasn’t for lack of effort, it was more that I didn’t have the bandwidth to stay on top of the things I needed to. But hindsight is 20/20 and I’ve definitely learned some valuable lessons, AND I’m lucky that I have more races coming up that I can turn my focus towards now.
This season has been an interesting mix of trying to accelerate the learning curve as much as possible, while also giving in to the inevitability that sometimes lessons have to be lived to truly be learned. People continually say ‘speed takes time’ which I know is true to a certain extent. The intricacies of the discipline are hard to see, hard to describe, and even harder to execute, but I feel a certain urgency to push back and challenge that maybe these things can be learned quicker?
When I look back at my own skiing career, I see so many areas for improvement or mistakes I made along the way, mostly out of naivety, and this makes me motivated to educate myself (and others!) as much as possible moving forward. I think that in the past I’ve been afraid of committing 100% to my pursuit of skiing, but at this point in my skiing career committing 100% feels like the only option. It feels really good to know I’m doing everything in my power to be as fast as possible. I know this sounds intense and people always tell me to have fun and enjoy the journey. But the truth is that I love the intensity of the commitment and I’m enjoying every part of the journey!
And so the intensity continues :)
I’ve always loved the end of the season races because it’s usually when other people start to get a bit burnt out, or tired, or take their foot off the gas. I get extra motivated by this opportunity and double down on focusing fully to the very last race. It’s a similar mindset to why I love racing in bad conditions: I know it takes some people out of the race and this energizes me to do the opposite.
I hope to keep this focus and energy going into the final month of racing in North America. I fly home today for two days before heading to Kimberly for Canadian Nationals, then Whistler for Nor-Am Finals, Taos for the World Pro Ski Tour, and finally Sun Valley for US Nationals. If anyone is in any of those places or wants to come watch I’d love to see you :)
P.S. I started this blog on the plane and am finishing it two days later from Kimberly!
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