Aplogies for the total drop-off in posts here; I re-enrolled in college this spring and things got hectic pretty quickly. I’m studying out in New Hampshire, like several of my teammates, at Dartmouth College. We’re fortunate because they run on a quarter system, so we can attend the spring term of school (10 weeks from late March until early June) with very minimal interference to our training programs. Basically, when everyone else goes home or goes to the beach to recover after a long season, we go straight to hit the books. I was in Sun Valley at US Nationals on a Saturday, caught a red-eye that night to Boston-Logan, and started school the very next day.

And showing up as a 25 year old freshman is a wild experience. I would show up to office hours to try and remember how to do math, except the kids would all start asking me questions, assuming I’m the professor or TA. Little do they know, last time I did basic calculus was close to 10 years ago. Right about the same time that they were getting ready to learn multiplication at age 8 or 9. So I started the term a bit behind and had to play catch-up, but all par for the course when you’re trying to do biomedical engineering and have a full-time career in sport outside of that. The end goal is to try and combine these engineering principles with some machine learning / artifical intelligence tools so that after my ski career I can help build something really impactful for people’s lives. Just the way so many people have helped me through my life and career so far; I would like to extend that to others in the future and use my education to do it. Although who knows if anyone is gonna hire a 35-year-old graduate, so we’ll see.

Through school we essentially have the first few weeks totally off from training to phsycially and mentally recover after the long season. It’s nice to try and feel like a normal college kid at least for a little bit, and to just relax and seperate yourself a bit from all the obligations that come with this job. Then it’s back to the gym, as always. I was able to work out at least once per day when I was at school and then came right back out to Park City, where I’ve been based for the last 6 summers to train with my teammates. So by now we’re solidly in our third month of working out and we’re feeling more than ready to get back on snow.

This is the longest non-injury break I’ve ever had from skiing, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. It feels great to have some sort of a life outside of skiing during these few months, and it’s wild how good your body feels after being allowed a respite from the impact of skiing for a bit. But it also feels like you’re missing a core piece of your purpose. When so many aspects of your life are structured around skiing, after a few weeks without it, it feels almost foreign and a bit like you’re living someone else’s life and missing out on your own. Rationally you see the need for it (both physically and mentally), and you can really enjoy spending time with friends and family that you just don’t have time for during the season. But it’s hard to do away with the feeling that you’re missing out on some sort of progress when everyone else in the world is training and you’re sitting at home.

Anyway, I’ll try to be more regular with these as we get underway with our regular training program again, and thanks for tagging along! Next post will come at ya from South America.