Park City World Cup

Yesterday was my second World Cup race this season… Park City. It was a strange week of training for two reasons. 1) I had limited training because Courtney and I had to split the runs. We were both racing as USA #3... She would be competing in the “make-up” race Wednesday, and I would have the last WC on Thursday. 2) It snowed every day we were there! Not just a little flurries here and there… it was heavy snow. It’s always tough to figure out timing on a track when you’re not running consistent times, especially with only 4 runs before you race! Luckily, I've had quite a bit of time here this season so I wasn't stressed over it.

Park City is considered one of my “home tracks” but it has never felt that way. I've struggled here in the past… especially during our ICC race earlier this year. I was excited to have the opportunity to race a World Cup here but I was a little nervous about competing against these girls. After such a great race in Whistler, I didn’t want to get blown away on my U.S. turf.

Speaking of Whistler... All week I felt like I was coming down from the Vancouver ‘high’. There was so much hype up there that I couldn’t possibly keep up the level of my enthusiasm. I had a completely different feeling on race day here in Park City. My mind was sharp but my body was dragging. To make a long story short, I had two of my slowest push times ever on race day but ended up having my personal best down time. There wasn't any down time to recover but that's how it is competing on tour.

After all the video training in Whistler, I was able to tweak my driving techniques to adapt to that track… apparently it works well in Park City too! I was surprised how comfortable I felt with my steers and was able to finish just out of the top 10 (llth). Although I was disappointed with my start times, I couldn’t have been happier with my sliding… I put down two solid runs on race day ☺ And, the snow held off just long enough which was awesome!