What goes through my head on race day?

Race day: just thinking about it makes my heart beat a little faster. The day of a ski race is a day that I both dread and eagerly anticipate. On the one hand you get to charge down a steep, icy pitch on your best and favorite pair of skis. On the other hand, you have to wrestle with laws of physics that don’t really care who you are and what happens to you. Plus, it’s usually quite cold and skin-tight suits are not designed to be warm.

But for me, the hardest thing is the anticipation. As any ski racer (and especially their parents) can tell you, there are long hours of tedium involved with ski racing.

An all day long affair boils down to about two minutes of actual racing. That’s a lot of open time where it’s easy to worry about silly things like how difficult the course seems to be, or how badly I want to beat that kid who always picks on me, or how I really don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of so many people. Yikes! It’s pretty obvious that these thoughts don’t make anyone a faster ski racer and can sometimes work to the contrary.

My grandmother used to always tell me in her best grandmotherly voice, “don’t worry about the outcome Jimmy… just focus on the task at hand.”

Sure, just ski, relax, have fun. That’s a wonderful goal. Especially since skiing is just a very fun sport after all. And that idea is the basis for how I try to approach the sport.

But, I still get nervous sometimes. I can’t help it. It just sneaks up on me. That’s when I reach into my handy bag of tricks and pull out my magic method of completely disposing of stress.
I would really love to explain how it works but there’s just one problem: THERE’S NO SUCH THING!

That’s been an important realization for me. Nerves are a part of the process. Sometimes I will be edgy (ha) at a ski race. Sometimes I will be scared. OK. Now what?

Here’s what I do. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does help to keep those inner demons at bay. First, I go free ski. Free skiing distracts me from the race itself, gives me a chance to get used to the snow, light, etc., and it’s fun.

Some world cup racers like to save every bit of energy for their race run. They “relax” in the lodge right up until race time. I think the extra effort of going out and hustling down the hill a few times is worthwhile even if it means I’m a little tired for the race. I just get too antsy sitting around.

The other way I reduce anxiety is by picking one simple thing to focus on during my actual race run. This could be something technical, like arcing the beginning of every turn, keeping my hands up, or pole planting. It could also be something tactical, like making sure not to sit back going onto a steep section of the course (I’m pretty sure Bode never uses that one).

By giving my conscious brain one task, I distract it and thus allow my subconscious brain the freedom to handle the much more complicated part (actually skiing… but sometimes I wonder if it forgets now and then!).

One last thing: If for some reason I find that at the end of the day I didn’t quite achieve all that I had secretly hoped I would (like you skied on the wrong side of every gate and just thought the course was really straight) I try to remember what Linus told Charlie Brown after he misspelled “beagle” in the spelling bee. He said, “I suppose you feel you let everyone down. And you made a fool out of yourself and everything. But did you notice something Charlie Brown? The world didn’t come to an end.”