You guys! It’s July. Not only the start of July, but….well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. How did time start going by so fast?
In the midst of all the traveling around, camps, family time and training blocks I feel like it can’t possibly be mid-summer already. Yet, here we are, so let me update you on how things have been!
After I got back to Stratton, I had a great training block out east. In between workouts, I was spending all my free time moving into my new Stratton home-away-from-home! I finally decided that “my suitcase” wasn’t a super acceptable address. Constantly packing up and moving place to place can eventually wear a person down (even if you’re part energizer bunny). So although I’m still a Minnesota resident, I now have a small condo up on Stratton mountain. I’ll be renting it out all winter long and in the summer it’ll be my home base between US Ski and Snowboard team camps. I’ll of course still be spending good stretches of time with my family in Minnesota because I couldn’t stay away to save my life, but looking down the road I realized I’m planning to be skiing competitively for a long, long time and I am committed to my Stratton team. It feels great to have my very own comfy bed to come home to after big training days, and I had a blast picking out all my furniture with the help of Slumberland!
Then I headed West for a series of fun events: my teammates Andy Newell and Erika Flowers got married in Bozeman, so I got to see that amazing place in the summer for the first time. I think we climbed a different mountain every single day I was there!
Then I flew farther west for our girls US team camp in the Methow Valley, Washington. It was gorgeous and we beat on each other in intervals every other day (in a good way, of course). I loved how we lived in these awesome cabins in the woods without internet and just, you know…talked to each other! Team bonding at it’s finest. I was soaking it all up.
Then, I headed back to Minnesota for a bit to get in some much-needed family and cabin time! Almost every summer of my life we’ve gone up to the family “camp” on Lake Superior in Thunder Bay, Canada. We cliff jumped, kayaked out to check out the sunken tugboat nearby, swam, took late night saunas where we ran out into the freezing cold lake, cooked tasty food and enjoyed camp life. I also got the chance to join the Canadian alignment camp for a few workouts, which was really fun!
Then it was time to get my butt back out east for a solid block of training. The next camp I go to will be in New Zealand, but that’s not until August 19th. Which means I’m about to set a new record for myself by being in one place for almost 6 weeks! That’s nuts!
I absolutely adore training with my SMS teammates here in Stratton. I don’t ALWAYS adore the weather when it gets super hot, humid and sticky. And when it rains in biblical proportions. The following gifs and memes (unapologetically borrowed from the google search machine) will explain to you the various ups and downs of daily training out here. Enjoy!
Ready for that rain. I think.
On second thought…
Finally, you get soaked to the bone and then you just kind of accept your fate. Might even start to enjoy it!
This is how I feel warming up in the gym for strength. Playlist on point.
And THIS is how I feel while lifting weights…
Planning out training with the coaches…
When the team gets back together after camps. This is actually long-lost footage of our reunions.
This sums up how I feel after just the warmup before intervals:
And this is the face of someone who forgot we had one more interval left.
But no matter how hot, sticky, sweaty or hard, getting the workout done as a team makes everyone feel like this!