Welcome Winter

Hello again everybody! Yes, I’m finally back. It seems like winter is here already, marked by this Wednesday’s start of training at home. We are headed over to Vail, CO for the next couple of weeks to get ready for the opening World Cup slalom on November 13. It’s getting colder and snow is starting to fly so we should be ready for some good water injected training in the days ahead.

Summer prep in New Zealand was amazing as we had some near perfect days of sunshine and hard snow. I competed in a few races down there and gained more confidence in my Giant Slalom skiing and put in a few solid runs to get my GS rank a little bit lower. The conditions degraded a bit when the island’s storm of the century rolled through, but still a very successful camp and great preparation for this season.

Unfortunately, I suffered a bit of a setback when we flew overseas to our October camp in Soelden, Austria. I was ready for some GS training and gearing up for my first World Cup start of the season, the Giant Slalom opener in Soelden that happened just last weekend. I injured my knee during dryland and strained my patella. I stayed over there and try to push through the injury to try and start the World Cup, but my knee still wasn’t quite ready for race time. Not worth trying to push too hard and risk further damage. I flew back to Park City to get it checked out and spent the week and a half rehabbing and strengthening my VMO, quads, and hamstrings to relieve the knee. I should be ready to get back on snow on Wednesday, and I hope to be full strength again for the Levi, Finland World Cup slalom in a few weeks.

Happy Halloween!