Trip to Aspen

Recently, I spent a week and a half in Aspen, Colo., competing at J2 Nationals.
Three areas of the country were represented in Aspen: The Western region, which includes Utah, California, Washington and Oregon; the Eastern region, which includes New England, New York and a few Southern states; and the Rocky/Central region, which encompasses everything from Colorado to Minnesota and Missouri.

About 40 athletes were selected from the Eastern region, based on our results at a series of races held throughout the winter. Six other athletes from Stowe qualified: Bobby Farrell, Taylor Wunsch, Ryan Siegle, Taber Engleken, Dustin Martin and Brad Farrell. Unfortunately, Brad Farrell broke his leg two weeks before our trip, so he was unable to go.

I was really happy to make it to Nationals. I did not qualify last year. Until right before I qualified this year, I was having a mediocre season and struggling with my giant slalom skiing. I really worked hard this winter, but my times did not always improve.

I put the possibility of going to Nationals out of my mind, so that I would have no expectations and therefore no disappointments. I decided just to focus on my skiing and having fun each run in the race course.

Luckily, I had some good slalom runs in the last two races that counted toward qualifying for Nationals. I placed well in the races, which were at Sugarbush, and to my surprise qualified for Nationals. It was a great feeling after my skiing struggles earlier in the season. I was proud of my accomplishment, and I decided to go to Nationals with a “nothing to lose, just go for it” attitude toward my racing there.

All of the racers from the East flew out to Denver together and then drove to Aspen. We all stayed together at the same hotel. This was a fun experience because, being the only girl from Stowe, I got a chance to make new friends with other Eastern girls who were my teammates there, instead of my competitors, as they usually are when we race in the East.

At Aspen, we raced downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom, all on the women’s World Cup downhill trail. We spent the first three days in Aspen doing training runs for the downhill race. We did one run each day, and each day it got a little bit less scary.

The first time I saw the race trail, Aztec, I was terrified. It was nerve-wracking to know that I would be flying down it in a few hours. Although not my best event, once I got used to the steep trail and the high speeds, the downhill was exhilarating and a lot of fun, although a challenging course.

Over the course of our racing in Aspen, I had some good days and some bad days, and some in between in terms of my skiing. The third day of downhill training was my best run, but I carried too much speed into one gate on the final day (the day when the results actually counted) and lost a lot of time.

On the last day, on slalom day, a great first run ended when I had to hike on the third-to-last gate.
Sadly, giant slalom remained a struggle in Aspen, just as it had been for the whole winter.

Despite my below-par race runs, I tried not to worry myself and just have fun each run. As a result, the trip to Aspen was a blast, although I wish we could have had more time to ski the mountain.

The bad part about racing is that you spend all day inspecting the course and warming up and doing your race runs and you never get that much time to free ski on other trails. Unfortunately, that was the case in Aspen. I guess I will have to go back again soon to do that!