Last day in Austria: Race Results

Today was the last day of this circuit of World Cup’s in Austria.  Today’s event the Classic!  The classic is a very testing, grueling, painful race.

The race organizers gave us an hour and half to inspect the course and I opted to use every second of inspection.  Inspection is a time memorize or visualize the course so that when it is your time you know every roll, blind turn, crevice, bump and everything else in the way.  We all were surprised to see how long the skate section was….it was a whopping 1 minute plus just of skating.  To put that in comparison, yesterday’s race was 1 minute total!   This course was surely going to be a true test of your fitness.

Long story short…my fitness did not pass the test.  Haaa.  But that is ok.  I have rehabbed the knee to just be able to get to this point of actually competing.  Next up… is my fitness as I found out today.  During the skate section of today’s race my legs completely just gave out…seized up and said “I’m done.”  And they were as I fell mid skate.  Yep, just flat fell over.  Was able to get up and finish to a 37th out of 47.  Not good.   But that is OK.  I will continue to get my legs back into ski shape over the next few weeks back in the states and prep for the US Nationals.  Then after the US Nationals are the World Championships.  Which is the biggest even of the year no doubt.

Until then…..Train.  Back to the states on Monday.  Looking forward to a cheeseburger.

 

 

My season officially begins!!!!

It has been 188 days since I had reconstructive ACL surgery. Tomorrow I will be competing in the Telemark World Cups in Steamboat Colorado. This was the goal…to get back to racing within 6 months to be ready for the World Cups. There has been a ton of hours spent rehabbing and hitting the gym and tomorrow we get to put everything to the test.
This past week has been awesome being able to train gates everyday with standout coaches. Makes a big difference when you have a coach observing every run you take with feedback waiting for ya for at the top of the next run. Also too, watching my teammates rip as well is a great visual aid for me as well. With that being said, it’s been a great week of training in Steamboat. But…now its time to race. Today was an official training day for the World Cup…. it was cool for to reconnect with some of the familiar faces from other other Countries that I recognized. It was not cool, to see how good some of these cats where though. The Germans, Swiss, and Norwegians know how to ski.
Who cares right….time to ski.. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. Nervous in the fact that I have knee that needs to withstand the World Cup conditions, and excited to be competing at the highest level tomorrow.