December Recap

I’m sitting in the Boston airport right now and realized I haven’t updated this in a while so I thought I would…

Last time I wrote I talked about the Nor-Ams, since racing those I raced two Slaloms in Canada, raced three races in Maine, and the Dolphins have a legitimate shot at the playoffs with one week left in the season.

The Nor-Ams were a good learning experience. First of all they were changed from 2 Slalom and 2 GS to four slaloms because of the lack of hard snow at Winter Park. That was fine with me because I was feeling better in slalom anyway. They were good because everyday I became more comfortable around some of the best skiers in the world and realized what it takes to be competitive at that level. I can’t boast about my results time-wise, and I won’t go into too much detail but I had some good turns in there and more importantly I realized that in order to ski at that level I’m going have to ski out of my comfort zone. The 2nd run of the last day I said screw and just went all out. It felt completely different then all of my other runs. It was not even close to being a clean run but it was the first time that I actually felt fast in the course, I just happened to have lots of mistakes. The snow was very soft for the races, which combined with my high bib numbers meant big ruts. I’ve always struggled in ruts. While they are physically harder to ski in I think my biggest problem is that when I ski in a course with big ruts, I’m usually not “in it to win it,” instead I’m trying to move up a long ways. For whatever reason I thrive in the “in it to win it” atmosphere much more than in the trying to move up position. This mentality has proved a valuable asset in previous championship races, and I’m working on applying it to races like the Nor-Ams. Long story short I know what it takes to ski at the Nor-Am level and I’m excited to ski the next Nor-Ams I race with that confidence.

After the Nor-Ams I went back to school for a whole week before hitting the road and driving Val St. Come for two slaloms. Val St. Come is in Canada and about a 4 hour drive from Burke. It is a cool little hill, we only rode one lift and you can see all of the trails from the base. It’s not somewhere I’d want to spend and extended period of time but it made for a great slalom racing atmosphere. The first day I skied pretty conservatively on the top half of my first run but then realized what I was doing and let it run out on the bottom part of the course. My time was OK, and I was in a pretty good position after making the “flip” (top 30) to pin it second run. For whatever reason I just held back a little second run. My line was ok, but instead of really arcing the top of the turn and generating energy from the ski I skidded most of the tops of my turns which is not fast. Never the less I skied solidly and still scored, so I couldn’t complain too much. With the first score of the season under my belt I was ready to go fast on the 2nd day. I started off the very top of my 1st run like how I skied the day before: sliding the top of turn. I quickly realized what I was doing and really started attacking. I starting to ski well until about 20 gates from the bottom I started one turn just a tiny bit too early and hooked a tip and just like that I was done. Frustrated with my straddle, but happy with how I could ski we set off back to Burke.
Just four days later it was time to hit the road again for Sugarloaf for the first “Eastern Cups.” Ill keep the description brief but basically the first day was Slalom and I scored the best result of my life and was totally physced because I skied far from a perfect run and still scored big and got 5th which meant I scored East Cup points. The next day was GS and I was skiing OK, nothing great but I got a little late on a tricky section of the course and ended up missing a gate. I was bummed I didn’t keep my good skiing going but I was ready for the next day. The next day I skied about how I did in Val St. Come, perfectly fine but just not ripping, and throw a hip check in there and I didn’t personally think I skied too well. But I scored by over 10 points so I can’t complain.

After the month of December I lowered my points and had some good scores and I didn’t have an awesome race which makes me feel even better because I know I have room for improvement. I will hopefully be racing some more Nor-Ams in early January, but I’m not sure yet. Now its time for Christmas back home and hopefully some fresh powder..

Kieffer