Cookie's Corner: What I did with my summer vacation

Cookie’s Corner: What I did with my summer vacationWhile most skiers spend the summertime hiding from the hot and counting down the days till the first predicted snowfall, I actually have a hard time with the idea that summer is already over. My summer was filled with lots of fun in the sun and on the snow, and I really got just too used to it. Of course what summer will not start out perfect when the day after your last race is spent on a plane to Hawaii with the family!

That was just how mine started, and just like every tourist there I kept trying to find a way to ‘accidentally get lost’ and left behind. But I am glad I did make it home on time because not two hours after getting back I got a phone call saying ‘are you ready to go?’ Well my natural reaction was… ‘If you are talking about going to bed, yeah I am on my way right now.’ But that of course was not what the caller had in mind. The conversation continued by the caller saying ‘Oh, you didn’t know? You have to be ready for a camp in Mammoth by tomorrow morning.’ Anyway I thanked them for the early heads up, and started do my laundry right away. I had been moved up somewhat unexpectedly to the World Cup training group as opposed to staying in my previous place with the Europa Cup training group.

And so, the first camp we had was in Mammoth, my home mountain before I made the USST, but not my hometown (sometimes that really confuses people). This camp focused on Speed Elements. This includes stuff like jumping, tucking and absorbing skills that sometimes get ignored when you are in race mode. This camp happens to be one of my favorites because it is not as serious, and there are no timing or comparing of athletes going on. It is just a chance to become a better skier.

From Mammoth, a teammate and friend of mine, Bryna McCarty, headed down to San Diego with me. We went to the Olympic Training Center for a two-month physical conditioning camp. We also learned how to surf. Actually it kind of turned into a two-month surfing extravaganza with some conditioning on the side. (I am just kidding, but we did take to surfing and tried to do it as much as possible.) We did have a great time at the training center though, and we both left feeling much stronger.,. Also, our roommate there just happened to win a silver medal at this year’s Olympics in Athens in the Women’s 200-meter sprint. For me it was really fun to watch the Summer Olympics and follow my new friends I had met at the training center on their quest for success.

We took four days off in the middle of the San Diego training period to travel up to Mt. Hood for a very short GS camp. This camp was a focused, intensive, productive camp in which both the speed and the tech teams came together to push each other. It was really the only time this summer that the two teams got to spend some time on the hill together.

After our stint in San Diego, both Bryna and I returned to our hometowns for two weeks with our family before we headed off to Chile. In these two weeks, I got the chance to train with a very talented football player named Brian Urlacher. His trainer showed me many of the exercises that Brian does, and I found that being a linebacker in football is very much like skiing. Well, the training for the two positions is similar at least. Many of the abilities that will help make a skier better, like being stronger, faster, and more powerful in both the legs and the core is exactly what Brian was trying to achieve also.

The next summer adventure took me to two different places in the beautiful country of Chile: Termas de Chillan and Portillo. I get asked all of the time what my favorite place to ski is, and it surprises most people when my answer is Chile. I am not exactly sure why I like it so much. The atmosphere in Chile is just so much different then anywhere else in the world. Chile is defiantly in a lower economical class then most places that have skiing and ski resorts, and I think that is what makes it so different. The skiing is fabulous, the powder is never tracked out, and the people would stop at no lengths to help us out and make us comfortable. The camp in Chile was also a speed camp, with the focus moving away from the drills and into running full-length downhill and super G courses. We worked hard on jumping skills and did quite a bit of GS also. I even did one day of slalom just for fun, which was a first in about to years. (In the last two years I have only raced slalom, not trained it following the idea that I will go off of my natural slalom instincts because I tend to get worse every day I train).

After recovering from yet another case of jet lag, we hit the physical conditioning hard, as this was the largest time span we had all year to do this. We had about five weeks off of snow after the Chile camp before we headed to Europe. I have no fun stories for this moment in time, no working out with football players or rooming with Olympic medalists, just time at home. I did get a chance to go to Vegas to see my older brother play football. And even though they lost to Air Force, I got to spend some time with him, which is always nice.

Then it was off to Europe for three weeks to Zermatt, Switzerland, and Pitztal, Austria. I did not know until I got to Zermatt that the town was at the foot of the Matterhorn. It was an absolutely beautiful place and I recommend it to anyway looking to go somewhere cool. The training in Zermatt was very difficult for me being a West Coast girl; the snow was really hard and icy, and there were crevasses that were crossing our course. While we were in Pitztal though, we had a powder day and I started to ski better when that glacial snow was covered up a bit. I would have to say that by the end of this camp I was ready to come home to America. These summer mountains cram so many teams and courses on to such small places that the idea of having personal space is completely thrown out the window. They really don’t care if they are stepping on your skis in the lift line or scrunching you up against the window of a tram. I even saw on girl get stepped on when she accidentally dropped her boots while trying to get on a train.

So, it is nice to be back home for two weeks before I head off to Colorado, where the season really kicks into high gear! Also, keep sending in those questions. You’ll never know unless you ask, right? Coaches and parents, encourage your kids to write questions. It is good for the sport to let younger people know what they have a chance to do. You know, it’s not like the ski team is a big black whole; Anyone has the chance to make it here.

This week’s question:
This week’s question comes from a master’s racer in Park City named Cress Bohn. He wanted to know what was more important to be a world-class ski racer; inate ability and skill, or hard work and dedication?

This is a very good question that would probably get a different answer from everybody on the US ski team. In my opinion, a world class ski racer definitely has to have some sort of ability and skill – you can’t deny that – but being a dedicated, hard worker is more important. One trend I have seen is that in the beginning of a young person’s career, someone with more skill will overtake someone with less skill but a lot of dedication. If being dedicated is someone’s strong point, it will take longer for that to start showing through and paying off. But in the end, being able to put in the effort to achieve a goal is more rewarding and beneficial, therefore allowing that person to stay in the sport longer, and have greater success. In other words, there are very few people on the World Cup that are there simply because they just happened to make it. Most people have worked extremely hard to get there and have dedicated their whole lives to doing it.

If you asked anyone who has ever worked by my
side I think that they would tell you that I did have some natural ability and skill, but that my hard work and dedication is what has gotten me to where I am today. In any sport, I always was able to do it well, but I was never the star. I have had to work for that.

Stacey Cook is the reigning overall NorAm champion. She will update her online journal here every two weeks this season, and hopes you’ll send her your questions about life on the U.S. Ski Team. Contact her directly at cookie@insideinc.com. Make sure to include your name and a note about yourself.