Life Outside the Comfort Zone

Hyndman is the tall pointy one in the background

Last weekend, my teammate Makayla and I set out to hike up Hyndman Peak, the highest point in the Pioneer Mountains. After about two hours of hiking, we got to the base of the mountain, and decided to climb straight up instead of following the trail up to the saddle and then up the side. So we started scrambling up, climbing over boulders and scree (a new word I learned, which I'm interpreting to mean rocks that could slide down the mountain and kill you at any second).

Now.  Let's not forget that I am fully and completely 100% Minnesotan. When I first got to Idaho, I didn't even know what "hiking" meant. I saw it on the schedule for the first week of training and had to ask my host sister Loni, "So, does that mean like, running?" (It doesn't.) And while I'm trying my best to get the hang of it, my body and brain still aren't used to hanging off the side of a cliff with about a four hundred thousand feet drop (or at least what feels like it) below me.

I'm exaggerating. A little. The point is, Makayla has grown up hiking and climbing around in the mountains. When she's put in a sticky situation, she gets excited and wants to keep climbing up. My natural instinct in a sticky situation? I've realized it's to get down or get out, preferably the easiest way I can.

Eventually we scaled across the side of the mountain and found the saddle, but by that time we had realized just how cold winter is when you're up that high. We peeked over the edge, took some pics (who doesn't look great in pictures with frozen smiles?), and made our way back down. The view was amazing. Not gonna lie, I was pretty relieved to hit flat land, but I was still exhilarated from surviving the death march, and I was happy we didn't turn around.

Following Makayla as we picked our way across the side of the mountain 

The hike with Makayla helped me realize something.

This entire experience (moving out west, skiing professionally, traveling around the country, spending lots of time with people I had never even met before, scrambling around on the side of mountains), it's ALL outside of my comfort zone. It's still a rare moment when I feel completely and totally confident and comfortable with where I am and what I'm doing. There are definitely some times where I feel like I'm barely holding on to the edge, and others where I have to catch myself, stop, breathe, control the urge to get out, and then find a new place to put my feet.  

But when we get to the top, the view is worth it, in all metaphorical and literal senses of the word. When we ski in places like Park City and Canmore, when I get a chance to train around Olympians and girls who are just as passionate about this as I am, when we have team dinners and end up laughing so hard our ribs hurt, and during simple skis where everything clicks and I can feel myself getting stronger, it's a reminder that someday I won't feel quite so out of the comfort zone that I'm used to.

It's not going to be easy, but it's just a matter of time, I think.

Told you the view was worth it.

Now for UPDATES! After an awesome week with the US Team in Park City, and a rest week at home in Sun Valley, we are currently training on Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta. It's a strange feeling to be on snow again, but we're anxiously doing the snow dance in hope that we can get off the 1.5k groomed loop by the end of the week.  I am counting down the days until West Yellowstone and the start of the race season!

On Overcoming Road Blocks

Any athlete will tell you that sometimes things just don't go your way.  It rains. You get sick.  Injuries occur.  Motivational blocks hit you.  Bad luck happens.  But for me, the main difficulty in any obstacle to training is the mental challenge that comes with it. We're trained to put so much value into our workouts, whether easy or difficult, that to sit out on any of them, especially in a professional setting, is no easy task.

Junior year of college, I sprained my ankle in October, got mono in November, and crashed and ended up with a concussion in January.  (We called it the trifecta from hell.) It was the season of bad luck, but out of the struggles of trying to train and race around sickness and injury, I learned to read my body and train based on how I feel. By the end of the season, I thought I would always be able to make the right call when it came to training while being sick or injured.

Or so I thought.

It turns out, each new season brings with it a refresher course on "making the right call".  Even though I learned some solid lessons the year of the trifecta, I've figured out that the first (or maybe even second) time I get sick/injured in a new season, those lessons aren't always the easiest to remember. 

That's when we need our teammates and coaches and family and our subconscious to remind us that not only is the training important, but the recovery is part of our job too. And it's better to miss a couple of days than be sick for a couple of weeks.

So, for stubborn, anxious, high strung people like me, here's a list of wonderful things to do while you are quarantined on the couch:

• Read a book. (or four)
• Learn to knit. (I did that when I had mono and made 12 scarves in 7 weeks. Your friends and family will absolutely love it.)
• Take advantage of the steam room. (It seriously helps with coughs/sore throats/congestion, no matter how claustrophobic it is. Just pretend you're in Hawaii.)
• Blow through entire seasons on Netflix. (Highly recommended: New Girl, Criminal Minds, and Gilmore Girls.)
• Stretch and roll. (You might as well be helping our your muscles some way while you're resting.)
• Figure out how to perfect fruit smoothies. (Recipe ideas here.)
• Color. (Kid you not, it's pretty therapeutic.)
• Call a friend - or your mom - to catch up. (Sometimes all you need is a conversation to take your mind off of being sick. And who better to do it with than someone who loves you right?!)
• Take deep breaths. (Yes, you're missing a workout right now. But would that workout be doing you any good if you coughed your way through it? Probably not.)

Basically, you can't get over the roadblocks in training by forcing your way through them, no matter what level of skiing you are at.  You just have to be patient and make the harder choice to wait until you're in the clear. And we all need reminding sometimes.