Growing Up

I have been ski racing now for a good part of my life. There have been a lot of great things that I have learned on the way…there are also many things I have learned about a dozen times, and every time I learn it, I vow to myself, that I will never make the same mistake again. Of course, if I followed my own advice I would never make the same mistake a dozen times. It is also apparent, with my repeated offenses of stupidity, that I am not learning a darn thing!

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, but unless you do EVERYTHING at 100% you will never reach your goals. Growing up my weakness was always equipment maintenance…I’d rather clean my house and refold all my cloths a 100 times over versus wax my skis, or clean & tune up my bike.

This past weekend I was reminded of my flaws while racing up Brandon Gap with a bunch of college youngsters. Girls that are about 10 years younger than myself, with their careers in either skiing or the work force ahead of them, some confused, and others with dreams bigger than the world.

I started to think of my UVM days, some of the best and hardest days of my life. As we started our race up the gap, I was reminded of all the mistakes I made growing up when both my pole tips came lose. For me that meant a long climb up the gap without poles! This made for a good long time to reflect while I watched a strong group of girls pull away from me…buh bye!

Of course I told myself…”I will never do this again; not check my equipment before the start of a race!” I should know this by now, and I think I have told this to myself about 4 dozen times.

Due to my hard headed, do what I want to, go day by day attitude…I tossed out a good opportunity for a great fall training session! All because I didn’t take five minutes to take care of my stuff…hopefully those other college girls noticed how I was wasting my time trying to ski up the hill and fool around with my poles every few seconds that they learned a lesson from me…do as I say, not as I do!

There is a lot more to racing well besides training well…taking care of your shit is a big part of being the best! Growing up, the girls that scared me the most while racing where the ones that did everything…not just the training but the equipment maintenance, the hard training, the resting…and funny thing…those where the girls that have made it to the Olympics.

So, if I am not going to learn my lesson, hopefully someone else will. To be the best you have to be on top of EVERYTHING! It’s ok to make mistakes but learn from those mistakes!