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Park City camp – 16 days and only rained on once!

By October 14, 2012 No Comments

This is why I love going to Park City for October camp ever year – the weather is so awesome it makes for incredible training! While it’s starting to get rainy and gross outside in most of the US once the leaves have changed and fallen, PC has been sunny and reasonably warm. Although I’m such a hot-blooded creature that it’s been much warmer for me than the rest of the team 🙂

Classic roll up a canyon (Whitcomb photo)

After allowing some time to acclimate to the high altitude, we’ve moved to putting in more speed and intensity sessions, including some harder L4 intervals.

Hammering out the first part of a L3 interval set up East Canyon (Whitcomb photo)

So, this weird thing happens to me every fall. I start to worry that I’m not going fast enough in speeds, not long enough in intervals, and I lose confidence and worry that my season is going to be a disaster. But then the season goes just fine and I feel silly for stressing so much about it!

However, yesterday we did a 6×4 min L4 bounding session, and although I went as hard as I could, I was just out of it and ended up being pretty hard on myself. I figured sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield, and that day I was most definitely the bug. And it felt pretty bad.

But then my coaches and teammates reminded me…they’re not going to kick me off the team, or think any less of me, if I don’t perform 100% every single day. In fact, it’d be impossible to have a perfect training session or race every time! It’s normal to get nervous before the start of the race season…that that’s something that might never go away, just something I need to get better at dealing with.

So why am I going on about this? Because everybody has those days when, for whatever reason (bad session, injuries, sickness, bad day at work) they feel like the bug. Sometimes it just sucks! And it’s good to be able to admit when you’re feeling down and simply ask for a hug. I feel so lucky to know that I can get one anytime from such a great group of teammates and coaches. We’ve got each other’s backs!

Throwback photo from 2 years ago...we're a goofy crew! And we don't have hops. (USSA nordic photo)

But today was a rest day, and I think this cartoon (forwarded by Soph) pretty accurately sums up a skier’s day off: it’s never really as empty as we say it is.

Today’s day off consisted of chilling at the SMS team house and then finishing part 2 of a photo shoot for One Way Sport with Reese Hanneman (Engine Room Media – check out his site here! http://engineroommedia.net/ ). Reese took some good shots and was super fun to work with, and I can’t wait to post some of the photos in a couple days!

We took photos all over different parts of Park City, but my favorite spots included skiing up Main Street at night, climbing a rusy tower at an old mining site, and skiing over Guardsman Pass.

Doing the shoot on Main St was really cool because of all the lights and people but also a little sketchy; we’d wait for the street to clear and then I’d do a sprint up the middle of the street, and Reese would take some shots, then I’d scoot down the side of the street and do it again.

We got some great comments from the peanut gallery of pedestrians, too. “Ski like you MEAN IT!”…”Where can I get some of those wheels?”…”Whoa. That’s a lot of neon”…”so, uh, do those things mainly roll uphill or downhill?”. Luckily, it was dark, so although my face went red whenever people would stop and stare I don’t think anyone could tell!

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