Welcome back 🙂
The past few weeks have been busy with tons of water ramping, jumping and skiing in Mount Hood, and exploring with friends and family both on the road and at home in Park City!
To be honest, much of these past days and weeks have been pretty straightforward. I’ve been chipping away at my consistency of all of my tricks — back full, cork 7, and cork 10 — both on snow and on water, as well as improving my ski technique to create a cleaner, more dynamic, powerful overall impression. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the latter is my biggest goal for this summer: the biggest part of my run I need to clean up in order to be able to perform the way I want on the World Cup Tour this winter! Below are a few of my favorite clips from training!
One thing that is new as of the past month or so, though, is our first on-snow camp with a couple of new coaches and the 4 rookies who made the team last season. The environment is certainly different this prep season, but is still efficient and productive all the same. Being a mentor for younger kids on the team, especially, is a role I value, as I learned tons from older athletes on the team — whether by observing or asking questions — not too long ago. For me, this new position on the team is a small way to give back that I’m excited about!
Below are a few more photos from my training trip to Mount Hood!
After Hood, my off week at home was largely spent resting and recuperating for the block of training ahead. That was largely because during my last day of skiing in Hood, I unfortunately sustained a minor concussion from an odd fall while skiing down to the lift. While frustrating in the moment (I absolutely despise sitting around doing nothing), it did happen at the best time possible — just before a week-long break for the entire team. That meant a week of complete rest — no reading, watching TV, exercising, etc. etc. — until all symptoms were gone.
Along with the rest (once my noggin was all headed up), I mixed in some hikes, sunset-watching, and star-gazing. My favorite event of the week, though, was Mikaela (a great friend of mine & ex-US teammate) and Bryon’s wedding! There was tons of dancing, laughing, and love to go around tenfold. It was pretty neat (but also wild!) to have the first wedding I attend be that of one of my good friends 🙂
Up next, after a little rest in Park City — where I spent an awesome 19th birthday with friends and family 🙂 — I’m currently in Chile for the first on-snow camp of the prep season where we’ll be on a training venue that combines both moguls and jumps in a run (not quite a full course, as we’ll only have 1 jump instead of 2). I’m looking forward to experiencing South America for the first time and taking my improvements from the past few months to a more challenging training situation!!
All the best,
Olivia
