It's a Hard Knock Life

The first weeks in Truckee have been rather eventful for the Williams California Contingent, consisting of Holly, Casey, and me. Within ten minutes on snow, I managed to snap a pole on a herringbone hill. At the time I thought that I had been the victim of misfortune. However this notion was set right when, on her first ascent up the very same hill, Holly was far more atrociously victimized—this time by a rogue Bates skier who crashed into her, in what can only be described as vicious sabotage directed toward the women’s carnival team. The resulting injury involved both a hurried trip to the regional hospital and a more than substantial 24 stitches. Fortunately for Holly (and more importantly the 2012 women’s Squad), the wound is healing nicely and hasn’t impacted training.

You don't want to see the pre-stitches pictures...

On a lighter note, training has been positively correlating nicely with tanning. Casey in particular has set his sights high—he hopes to blend in with the Cali natives by the end of the summer. Despite limited usage, my bottle of SPF 70+, courtesy of my parents and their continuing education about the dangers of skin cancer, is running dry; so if I don’t wear sunscreen for the rest of our stay, upon returning to Williams I may no longer be the whitest kid in the room. Away from this primary goal, ski training has been excellent. Brutal strength sessions with coach Martin Benes guarantee that next time Bud pops eight-minute plank reps on the team, we will be prepared. Altitude adjustment during the first week left Casey and I gasping for breath on anything but the downhills, but thanks to some hearty meals prepared by the Deeter family, and a minimum of 10 hours of sleep per night, we are feeling great and ramping up the training schedule. We cranked out a three-hour classic OD this morning, on snow. Oh yeah, did I mention that we are skiing in late June? There has been at least four feet of melt off up by Donner Pass in the past week and a half—largely due to the monotonous forecast for the Tahoe region, with 85 degrees and nothing but sun, day after day after day… But due to record snowfalls on the Sierra this year, totaling more than 50 feet over the course of the winter, we still have a few more weeks to go until we can finally get to running and roller skiing full time.

Domestic life has had its ups and downs. On the plus side, I have been spending 99% of my time within a four-foot radius of the illustrious Casey Jones; he assures me that as a consequence of rooming with him, I will be “house-broken” by week 7 (who knew that floor space wasn’t meant to have stuff on it?). Without our fellow teammates to shut us up, there have been a fair number of ‘heated’ discussions on topics of great popular interest. Despite a mutual decision to ‘take a break’ from being full time once the school year rolls around, we are living it up—in no small part thanks to Rick and Kim Deeter. California is amazing and provides plenty of opportunities for excitement, not limited to a real rodeo experience, replete with cowboy hats actually being worn in a serious fashion. All in all, if we can keep away from each other’s throats, this looks to be a great summer.

Some post-workout shenanigans

Castle Peak-- we're running it tomorrow.