Mind over Matter

“Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.”

– Laird Hamilton

This weekend the athletes up here at Panorama took a well deserved break. Battling long days and cold weather for the last week the athletes earned some rest time. We finished up nice and early on Friday, athletes had Saturday off and half of Sunday. The break from the cold weather was very welcomed, however throwing ourselves back into "the frozen abyss" as the athletes refer to it was quite shocking - for everyone.

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.”

– Arnold Schwarzenegger

The athletes have been introduced to several new things on this camp. Especially for the newer athletes to the team. We have done a lot of yoga related exercise, timing in training runs, we have quizzed them on recent and past alpine ski history. They have done some relaxation and breathing techniques we have also talked to them about practicing visualization to enhance confidence and increase their visualization accuracy especially for inspection purposes as well as positive self talk and the power of a strong, mature young mind.

Please take a look at the video of Marcel Hirscher as a 16 year old  (the same age or just a year older than the athletes on our U16 team) - he exhibits great talent, with that comes a very passionate, committed and mature young mind.

“Your biggest opponent isn’t the other guy. It’s human nature.”

– Bobby Knight

LKM waiting patiently for
his Huckleberry breakfast

On Saturday the athletes met us at the van at 8:30am we drove into town for groceries to make due for the remainder of the camp and the popular Valley Breakfast at Huckleberry's. Pancakes, Eggs, Bacon, Sausage, hash-browns, taters, french toast, eggs-benedict filled our plates, but not our stomach's. This group is full of generous eaters and there were many that could have gone for round two. We were back up the mountain by 10:30am in time to watch the Mens WC super-G and Womens WC DH.

We have discovered 2 really great live streaming sites to watch coverage of Alpine events:
Eurosport (UK - Chemmy Alcott is a phenomenal commentator - it may very well be her English accent)
SportLemon (streams from Eurosport and other portals as well)

“If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.”

– Ronnie Lott

This was the scene for the ENTIRE day on Saturday 10:30am - dinner

Tomorrow we start the GS portion of our shootout. Athletes will compete in 2 runs of GS in Marty's set and 2 runs of GS in Kat's set. Their best 2 runs, 1 from each set will count toward their final GS result and be combined with their SL result to reveal a shootout champ. Please see the bib order below from our draw at dinner time...

WOMEN

1. Nicole Clarke CFSC

2. Rebecca Cook MSM

3. Jillian Lynott MSM

4. Nora Fripp MSM 

5. Abby Thomas VOR

MEN

1. Nick Caves CFSC

2. Ben Beaudoin MSM

3. Hunter Watson CFSC

4. Lake Korte-Moore CFSC

5. Michael Power CFSC

Results from Day 1 to be posted tomorrow. 

“You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation.”

– Homer Rice