Mental Toughness

As many of you know, I was a ski racer when I was younger. I loved it: being outside, skiing, competing, being with my friends. It was also a family thing in my house; 4 of us skied all day and my mom was always in the lodge waiting with lunch and warm hands to warm up our toes. I learned so much from ski racing. I learned time management, how to deal with disappointment, how hard work pays off, sacrifice, and mental toughness among other things.

One of the most important things I learned was to try all the way to the end. A race course can be anywhere from 25 seconds long to 2 minutes long (approximately). The courses are never the same although they have the same elements in them. The mountains are all different that we raced on, the coaches setting the course all had their own ideas, but the one thing in common was that there was always a little space between the last gate and the finish line. We were taught not to stop trying on that last gate, but to think of the finish line as the last gate. If we thought the race was over at the last gate, we just might relax enough to fall, stand up straight or just not push through to the finish line. Since everything is on a timer, gliding through the finish line could cost valuable tenths of seconds and be the factor between 1st place and 4th place.

This is an important factor to remember in any sport. My daughter, B, swims competitively. I try to get in her head and explain to her that sports are 90% mental, 10% physical. The girl is a power house, but sometimes she lets the girl swimming next to her psych her out. Yesterday, she said she glided into the wall at the end of a race instead of pushing. She is in high school and is just beginning to realize little things that could make her faster. She has made great strides this season and it is beginning to dawn on her that mental toughness and fighting for the wall at the end of a race is crucial.

Last night's Super Bowl was a perfect example of not giving up in the final seconds. The Patriots were looking at losing another Super Bowl. Did the defense give up? They could have. But mental toughness prevailed and they kept fighting. Malcom Butler made one of the most fantastic plays of the game. The winning play of the game.


Mental toughness is not something only for sports. It's for believing in yourself and all that you are capable of. I think it's time to take some of my own advice....

Sporty Weekend

It was a sporty kind of weekend.

There was lots and lots of swimming....

There was skiing on some challenging grassy backyard terrain...

And then, of course, there was football....

And to round it all off, a sunset beach walk....

How would you describe your weekend?

Throwback Thursday

In honor of the summer, I mean, winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (kind of warm there!), I am including 2 posts about how I was once a ski racer. (One and Two) Yes, I had dreams of making the Olympics, but then again, I also had dreams of being the first female to be on the Boston Red Sox.

I love watching the Olympics now and am excited to be watching new sports! Of course, in my house we are as heavy into the skiing as we are into the hockey watching. Did you ever aspire to be an Olympian?

Good News: She Liked Skiing....

K got the fantastic opportunity to go to NH this past weekend to celebrate her friend's 16th Birthday. The family took their 3 kids and 3 friends up to Loon for tubing, eating and skiing.

K skied when she was about 3. Then, soon after,  she switched to snowboarding. She decided that she was going to try skiing again this weekend. Because I could not take her for a trial run before hand,  I gave her lessons on how to put on skis and how to get in a pizza shape and how to keep her hands in front of her in our family room. That's normal, right?

Off she went on Friday . Periodically, I would get a text or find a picture on Twitter or Instagram of she and her friends having a blast.

Saturday morning, the texts started like this:

11:21 am We're on our way to the mountain! I am going to die....
11:40 am We are buying tickets.
11:42 am I am really nervous. I am going to die.
12:06 pm Wow, I am really good.
12:27 pm I haven't fallen once and I can stop and turn! I like this.
1:54 pm I am in a gondola!
3:39 pm Just got done and I hurt my thumb and it's a little swollen but I think it's fine.

Now, I have been around the slopes a few times. Need proof? Check out this post and this one. And I know that the most prominent injury on the slopes is broken thumbs/hands. My sister and brother had matching casts one year when they were in middle school. As she was describing her thumb through the evening, she mentioned how it was swelling and turning purple. I feared that when she got home, we would be taking a trip to the ER.

She helpfully sent a video of her thumb to me on her ride home. No, you do not need to see it.

Sure enough, we went to the ER when she got home. This was our 4th? visit in the past year. She manages to do things on weekends. Soon we will be calling and requesting our favorite nurses.

Sure enough: Broken.

I am currently waiting for the orthopedic Dr. to call and the Principal of the High School to hunt me down because she will not be able to take her MCAS (standardized testing) this week because she cannot write. I swear, never a dull moment.

Ski Racing Part 2

So I found a box with some pictures and "stuff" in it that had to do with my skiing past. I don't have a scanner (HP don't you want me to review a scanner for you? please?) so I actually took pictures of pictures.

Now Melisa asked me if I won a gold medal. Although every ski racer dreams about being in the Olympics, it is not something too many succeed at. My brother skied in the Junior Olympics and I skied in the Bay State Games, which were like the Massachusetts Olympics. Actually my dad and I skied in the Bay State Games and both came home with medals!

(Please excuse the hair. I have no explanation for why I though perms were cool. Blech!)

Normally, we got engraved plates and bowls in place of medals. I am not sure why, but I still have a bunch of them.
Instead of a team helmet, we had team hats because protecting your brain at speeds of 25mph wasn't important in the 70/80's. Evidently I though it was a good idea to put pins all over my hat, too. Nothing says brain puncture like falling with pins in your hat.

Here is a picture from a sunny college race. These were 2 of my teammates. Look at how long our skis were. Now they are much shorter!
Here is my brother in a slalom race.

Here is a picture of me training slalom.
Here is a picture of me in a giant slalom race. Once again, what is up with the hair???

Here is a picture of my brother in a downhill. Yeah, very cool!

Now that you have gotten a feel for ski racing, the stories will come next.....

How I Became a Ski Racer...(part1)

That's right, how I became a ski racer. Not a snow bunny or a lodge rat, but a ski racer. FYI, snow bunnies dress to impress on the slopes, but may not be able to ski and lodge rats enjoy sitting in the lodge all day.....

Evidently my parents put me on skis at age 2. My mom once skied, but hooked my dad into marrying her and decided the lodge and a juicy book was more fun than freezing her ass off on the slopes. In my town, our elementary schools had Thursday afternoons off. In the winter, they would bus us to the local mountain( Nashoba Valley) for an afternoon of ski lessons. They would blast Barry Manilow from the speakers all over the mountain and we would have peanut butter crackers for snack. (Funny the stuff you remember). At one point, my friend Kerry asked me if I wanted to join the racing team at the mountain: the Nashoba Rovers. I was all over that! I trained and raced and raced and trained. Before that I had been strictly a NASTAR ski racer and would try and earn pins for my hat at different mountains. My dad and I would do it for fun.

When I got to 8th grade, I reached a point where I was getting too good for the local competition. (Sorry, I am not trying to brag). I wound up going to Mount Hood in Oregon that summer for 2 weeks to ski on a glacier! OK, that camp is a whole'nother post. Skiing on the top of a mountain when it was raining at the base lodge and there was lots of green grass, was AMAZING!

That winter was the first winter I skied against racers in NH. Eventually, with my younger brother and sister, I joined the Waterville Valley Black and Blue Trail Smashers (WVBBTS). I would go to school all week in Mass and on Friday afternoons, we would head to NH to our rented condo, train or race Sat and Sunday, and come home Sun night. This would happen every weekend from Thanksgiving to the end of March. To say I had no social life during HS would be completely accurate. Actually, I had many friends at Waterville Valley, but we would all be in bed by 9, so we didn't get into too much trouble. I dragged my brother and sister into the racing scene, my brother willingly, my sister not so much. She raced and all, but just didn't love it as much as Tommy and I did. She did like the social aspect more.

It is an unbelievable feeling being in the starting gate at the top of a race course. You're nervous, excited, and have an intense need to pee. Our dad wanted to understand what we were going through before, during and after a race, so he took up racing as well. He raced in a "master's league". He would be out on the mountain training with us, in the wax room tuning skis and sitting around talking about the advantages of one wax over another or who's fall of the day was the most momentous. Yes, through all the years of this, my mom's job was to support us, make us lunch and warm up our frostbitten feet when we came in at the end of the day.

I went to a Division 1 skiing college and skied all 4 years. Our season started with dryland training the second week of September and ended in March. During the snow season, we would ski Mon, Tues, Wed afternoons, drive to a carnival (ski race at another college) on Thursday, race Fri and Sat, and have the day off on Sunday. It definitely made the winter fly by in snowy Maine. It was a huge commitment, but I wouldn't have changed a thing.

My favorite event was slalom (that is the tight, turny gates). The funny thing is, is that I started racing with bamboo gates. You would try to get as close to the gates as possible (as in the fastest way down a hill is a straight line) and if you hit a bamboo gate, it would hurt! But you wanted to get close and your coaches would ENCOURAGE you to hit them with your arms. Hmm, can you say bruises? Finally, rapid gates were invented which is what you see in the Olympics now. You can hit the gate and it bends, but pops back up. It allows the racer to practically go through the gate. These make for a much faster run (and less bruises!). Also, when I raced (crap I sound old), we never had to use a helmet unless we were skiing a downhill. Now everyone wears a helmet!

One of my coaches (he was such a hard ass, but looking back, it is what made him a good coach), would make you run a slalom course and for every gate you didn't hit, you had to do 10 pushups on the snow next the the course. My arms had never been so buff (or bruised!).

I'll try and throw in a few pictures tomorrow. I don't think I actually have too many of me racing. I have found a few, so I will add them in as proof for my Friday Fragments.

Skiing, finally!

We finally went skiing for the first time this year on Friday and Saturday. Friday we went with my family to Wachussett, a mountain in MA. We had lots of fun and then the girls and I drove to Newport, VT to meet up with 2 friends and 3 kids to ski at Jay Peak. Yesterday, we drove 325 miles home. Here is my ode to Jay Peak.

The day dawned bright and sunny,
The tickets were free and cost us no money!
The girls were dressed, one on skis, one on a board,

Down the slopes, they shussed
and roared.
One small attitude problem, led to taking a walk,
Moral improved after a stern 'talk'.
A wedding appeared, as I was sunning on the deck,
Girls in toeless high heels, in the snow, What the heck?
Weddings follow us, wherever we go,
Who knew we would see one in Vermont on the snow?
Our VT journey continues in tomorrow's muse,
It includes Canada, a party and stunning views.

Playin' Hooky

Unfortunately, I taught my girls at a young age that mental health days are crucial to their schooling. You have got to have a fun day off every once and awhile. Today was the day. DH and I took the girls skiing at Wachusett Mt. We met my sister,KK, up there and her bff from, forever, Missy, and her 3 yr old, Joey. The 4 of us have not been in a car alone for a long time. We have not been anywhere together in a long time. DH does horse stuff with K and I do everything else with B. It took us all awhile to let down our guards and relax with each other. After the first ride up the lift, things were back to normal and we were all laughing and having fun together. K is the only snowboarder. She is usually oppositional to everything. We like the Red Sox, she likes the Yankees. We like the Patriots, she likes the Colts. We like skiing, she likes snowboarding. I know nothing about snowboarding, but she did pretty well today.

My family had won a silent auction bid on a "deluxe room" at the mountain. This is like having your own living room with a waitress at a ski lodge. There is no sitting with the riff-raff. We have a private room with a deck, private bath and lift tickets. There are couches and a tv and a long table in our room. It's pretty much "the cat's ass". Because it is the end of March and it was overcast and a little rainy and a Thursday.... there were like 50 people on the mountain. This equaled lots of fun for us (and some very sore muscles for us tomorrow!). Here are some photos from our day....
K on the quad...
B on the quad....
B fell and K went to "save" her...
KK and B making a train...
The fam on our cushy couch...
K and B at the end of the day, still smiling!