I just got back from one of the best camps ever. I travelled with the team from Challenge Aspen to Hintertux, Austria where we had two weeks of slalom and GS training on the Hintertuxer glacier. The conditions were great meaning solid glacial ice with tons of pre-made ruts. The glacier, it turns out, is rapidly melting. I was here about 4 years ago and we could ski much further down then we can now. There are many little streams running over and under the glacier, carrying away ice that probably has been building up for at least hundreds of years. Hintertux is still an epic place, but I think that it might have to advertise mountain biking a few summers from now instead of skiing.

I learned some very valuable lessons this camp, mainly that everything I have learned about ski racing is wrong. Allow me to explain. Usually there is a fine line between turning high and early enough to make sure you make the gate and are still able to make the next one and going direct enough so that you don’t travel an unnessesary distance from gate to gate. In reality, the more direct you go at the next gate, the faster your time will be, high and early be damned. I found that if I went super direct at the gates of a course and ripped a turn just barely before the gate, and put as much pressure as I possibly could into the turn, the faster my time was. Absolutely rediculous. If you have no idea of the fundamentals of ski racing, what I just described is usually what your coaches spend hours demanding that you not do.

We also spent lots of time going on very long pushes and doing workouts. The pushes were usually tons of fun, except the day we had to go on a road that went through a cow pasture (there are lots of cows in Hintertux), and our wheels and subsequently us got covered in bovine excrement. Delicious.

This is the view from my hotel towards the Hintertuxer Gletscherbahn.

The town of Tux. Everything is very green because it is sprayed every fall with liberal amounts of liquified bovine excrement.

Me at the Walfischmaul, or Whale’s jaws. This was along one of our long pushes up the mountain side.

My teammate performing surgery on his skis after he stripped the screw heads in an attempt to take the bindings off.

I just got back from a conditioning camp at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We had a week of gym workouts, strength testing, bloodwork, body composition analysis, and mentoring of young up and coming racers. I unfortunately have no photos of this camp, so I will try to explain everything.

The gym workouts are just what you might think. We go to the pumpatorium, reach our full pump-tential, then leave. It can be a bit intimidating working out with athletes from other olympic sports, especially wrestlers or female weightlifters. Not only can they do about 40 pull ups and not even be winded, but the girls look like they could snap you like a twig, with their pinkie.

Strength testing was to see how much weight or how many repititions or how far we could push ourselves in a variety of excersizes. I was happy to find out that I am doing better than this time last year.

Blood work is hardly ever fun, especially when the person drawing the blood can either not find a vein, or having found one, just can’t seem to stick the harpoon in there after the 5th try.

The body composition analysis was really fun. We got to go to the Air Force Academy and use their DEXA scan machine, which blasts you with radiation and can measure all the different types of tissue in your body and where they are located. You can also see your bones, and my bone structure still amazes me a little, as there is no connection between lumbar 1 and my hips. I did find out, however, that because of my 3ft height, I am less than 1 point from maxing out the body mass index scale, and therefore am morbidly obese.

The last few days of the camp overlapped with a development camp with young racers who were just beginning their ski racing experience. We showed them the kinds of workouts we do to get in shape and told them all about the trials and tribulations of skiing competitively. We all got to sit through yet another lecture from USADA (US anti-doping agency) where we were all given about an hour of propaganda explaining how USADA comes in at the elite level and dictates how you must notify them at all times what and where you are, as well as what you can and cannot eat or do to your body. I hope the kids know what they are getting into, at least the ones that didn’t fall asleep during the lecture.

I recently took a trip down to Bristol, Connecticut to do a couple of interviews with ESPN at their fancy smancy headquarters. The HQ looks more like a college campus, but with way more satellite dishes. I did my interviews on ESPN First Take and ESPN News, alongside fellow paralympian Erin Popovitch, a swimmer who had appeared to have won all the medals possible in the last paralympics (something like 7 or 8). We both got tours of the ESPN campus where we got to see where they record all their programs and do all the video and sound processing to make everything look polished and professional.

During the tour our guide was telling us about all the different programs on TV and all the commercials that were shot on their campus for the programs. I rarely watch TV, however, and I almost never  flip to any ESPN channel, so I had no idea what they were talking about. I think ESPN assumes that if you are a guy my age you watch ESPN religiously and are up to date with all the players and teams of American sports, especially football.

The interviews went well, meaning I didn’t freeze up and stop talking all together, but its very hard to get used to being in front of a camera that is recording your image and voice for millions of viewers.  The hosts of the programs were way too smooth in how they spoke and their hair was beyond perfect, which I found a bit intimidating, as I need to concentrate a great deal to talk smoothly and my hair usually puts Einstein’s bad hair days to shame. I got through it, though, and said most of what I needed to say.

I like pretending to be a big deal.

What the cameras don’t capture is a wiring disaster waiting to happen.

Another set, except this one has a lot of computer workstations in the background to show the viewers how hard everyone is working to give them up to minute updates.

Me posing next to some famous basketball player (he really is pushing 7 feet), the host of First Take, and Erin.

Me with Erin and Steve Raymond, one of the VPs of ESPN, co-chair of SkiTAM (US Adaptive Ski Team annual fundraiser), and chef de mission for the 2010 US Paralympic team.

Overall Standings

Whistler, BC – March 11 – 14

Kimberley, BC – February 3 – 6

Aspen, Colorado – January 25

La Molina, Spain – January 12-15

Sunday River, Maine – March 20-22

Soldier Mountain, Idaho – March 4-8