On Monday the first official day of the new training year starts. Of course, we all know that the training necessary to succeed next year started last April. In fact, it's been building on itself ever since we started exercising. But to make it easier to analyze the effects of our training we break it into arbitrary blocks. So Monday is the start of the next yearly block. In order to purify the mind of last year's thoughts and to prepare it for another 12 months of being a ski racer (and also and mostly because Erik pointed out that I should) here's my 2006-2007 season recap.

I fell into skiing this year almost by accident. It was springtime, I had no job lined up for the summer, no admissions letters inviting me to continue my schooling in the fall. In fact, I didn't know what kind of work I wanted to do or what I wanted to study. I did know that I loved to ski. So, with the blessings of my parents I decided to take a year entirely off and simply ski. Once that decision was made I forgot about skiing for a while, raced my road bike a little bit, graduated, went to Peru. It wasn't until the first week of July when I moved out to Wisconsin to join the CXC Team that I turned my focus to skiing. In Spring and Early Summer, despite being hectic, exciting, and eventful, I did no ski-specific training and a very poor job of training in general.

Once in Wisconsin and with the team I saw how far behind I was and got serious (remember, I had Compton and the boys team to use as yardsticks for my fitness). Guided by Bryan Fish, I thought a lot of things went well over the late summer and fall. I maintained a very consistent training schedule and kept up on interval sessions, endurance work, speed work, and strength training. I was able to rest well between training sessions and thoroughly enjoyed my opportunity to train. A couple of times after very tough blocks of training I started to feel worn down but I freaked out when I wasn't excited to train and was able to back down the training intensity until I was fired up again. By paying close attention to my body and how I was feeling, I was able to prevent getting sick, injured, or burned out. This year I would like to do more and longer intervals, more stretching, more adventure training, and learn how to do pull-ups. The Late Summer and Fall dryland period went well and probably contributed the most to my success this year. This is also the time when I most questioned the validity of what I was doing and if it was a justifiable indulgence.

We were in West Yellowstone for our first time on snow and, after a very nervous week of skiing, finally got to race and see how our training was going to pay off. Then it was full into the race season and from Nov until April I raced and traveled. I think I did a good job of keeping my racing in perspective and not getting too caught up in my successes to forget that I was only there because of a lot of hard work on my part and a lot of help from other people. I wish that my strength training had been more consistently maintained throughout the race season; it started our pretty well but by the second half of the season I hardly did any strength. I handled the travel remarkably well, I thought, and never felt too worn down from traveling or life on the road. I wish that I were better at taking naps, though. Mostly, during the race season I had a lot of fun and surpassed my expectations of how I would be skiing so there were very few disappointments to distress me.

Now I feel even more committed and ready to work hard than I did last year. I think that the training I did worked well for me and don't want to change too much. Being on the CXC Team was a huge benefit to me and I most assuredly would have foundered without the support and encouragement of my teammates, Bryan Fish, Yuriy Gusev, Scott & Kay Wilson, among others. This upcoming year I would really like to improve my distance skiing. While I'm certainly grateful for my seemingly innate talent as a sprinter, I don't see any reason that I shouldn't be able to bring my distance racing up to par.

I don't believe that my ski racing life exists in a vacuum independent of the rest of my life. I strongly believe, although this certainly may not be true for everyone, that in order to be a happy and successful skier I have to be satisfied with all the other aspects of myself and my life. While this year wasn't nearly as academically rigorous as my years at Whitman I did maintain intellectual growth. I read incessantly, practiced sketching, painting in acrylics, vastly improved my Spanish, increased my familiarity with French, wrote (if not high quality, a lot of quantity), scored well enough on the GRE to give me a fair shot at admittance into any grad school, likewise with the LSAT and Law school, and generally increased my awareness of myself and the people around me. This year I want to continue improving my Spanish and French skills, write to a higher standard, and pass the first two actuarial exams (May 15th and early Nov).

Phew, that's my season in review. Overall... AWESOME!