Photo courtesy of Shannon Bahrke

Today was one of those days that mogul skiing seemed easy. Now I know that for many of you that statement could never possibly be true, and to be honest, there are not very many days that I believe it myself. But for whatever reason, today just seemed to be effortless.

We only have a few days left at Steamboat for our training camp so today I was trying to get up to full speed competition runs. I’ve been learning the ins and outs of the jumps, where I could make up time, and find all of the tricky moguls over the last day or two, but now is “go time.” I need to prepare myself to ski as fast as I can and put down some quality competition runs.

My warmup runs felt really good at the start of the day. I was jumping big and skiing fast. So after three or four warmup runs I got into the gate and pretended it was competition time. Since our competitions consist of two runs, the first a qualification run and the second the final run, I want to practice how I want to ski for both of those runs. I try to get nervous and feel all of those butterflies like I would at a real event. All I have to do is just think about being in the Olympic gate and those nerves come rushing in.

As I pushed out of the gate for my first competition run I skied fast, aggressive, jumped big, and it just felt like everything fell into place. My coaches gave me good feedback and a few things to work on for my next and final run, the GOLD MEDAL RUN!! Again, I got to the top of the course, tried to make myself as nervous as I could, but mentally prepare to put down the run of my life. This run went even better than the first. I dropped about a half a second off of my first run time and skied it cleaner with bigger airs. As I crossed the finish line I knew that that was the kind of run it was going to take to get on the Olympic podium. That was exactly what I was hoping to do. When I was skiing it was almost like slow motion and everything that was coming at me, I adjusted to before I got there. These effortless days come few and far between, but it’s these days that keep you going when it seems too difficult to continue.

Today the sun was shining and the moguls were soft, just the way I like it! Let’s hope that Vancouver is the same. I highly doubt it, but hey, there’s always a chance!!

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