Chapter eleven: Celebrate all small victories

Boots are off, skis are strapped and packed, and I am home. It was a very… interesting way to finish the year, from a ski racing point of view at least. I’m calling it “interesting” because I think it’s the word that suits it best; I mean I could easily have used words like Brutal or, a Grind, but that’s not the way I want to look at it. Not the way I want to look at it anymore I should say because yeah, that’s how I spent a good chunk of the past few weeks seeing it. Just a rough, harsh, crappy reality that I was stuck in and I forgot to take it in stride, the good with the bad, and definitely did not find the silver lining. I’d have to say the biggest reason would be that my silver lining never seemed so shiny when the guys were putting gold around their necks… jealousy? Needing a reality check? A firm slap upside the head? Yes, yes, and…probably. Now looking to the title, I didn’t just have an epiphany one morning and boom, make a realization. It wasn’t some song playing on my ipod that gave me inspiration either, nor did I jolt awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat just knowing. What happened is that I spent a lot of time listening to people around me give me support, and I realized that they were telling the truth. A year in ski racing is made up of more bad days than good ones and more importantly the bad ones will disappear into nothing while the good ones will last and last until they get overshadowed by something just a little bit better. It also made me think that every year has rough patches, and the key is that I had to actually think hard about it because come spring series all that’s left are the memories of the good times. This all leads into the fact that I have started to celebrate the small victories when they come my way; taking the little personal wins and setting aside a moment of inwards celebration for them. Nothing crazy, no extreme fist pumps or touchdown dances but a bit of a reserved “well done Morgan”.


(aaaand here are some photo... all of which are pretty unrelated to skiing)

The same principal as bears stocking up before hibernating 

Warm and cozy... and also the view from our spin bike

Giant hands... or tiny bananas?

Just rolling some dice in the alley. A great group of guys to be on a team with.

I will be suiting up again in the New Year and this time racing overseas, thanks for stopping by. Hoping you all have an amazing holidays, all the best from me to you.

-Morgan

Chapter ten: I fell in love with a girl

So here is what’s happening, a long time ago back then I was still only yeigh tall (feel free to make the hand gesture somewhere around the height of your waist…unless you are really short or really tall, if so adjust accordingly) anyways, back in the day I fell head over heals for this girl named skiing. She was great, absolutely amazing actually. All I wanted to do was go up the hill and hang out with her, and when the weekend ended I still thought about her constantly and wondered when I would see here again. Maybe Thursday or Friday if I was lucky, but whenever if was I couldn’t be more happy to ski again. I’m sure this story sounds familiar to a lot of you but bear with me. Years went by and I grew up… well… okay I got older anyways and skiing was there by my side all the way. Soon I found that there were things about her that I loved more than others, not that I disliked anything but there were traits I found myself drawn to. At first it was the speed and remember I was still young so the exact thought that was going through my head was I get to go as fast as I can, there would be no boundaries. Now it came to my attention that I needed to be doing something more with this urge, not just straight lining the ski out each day. I also liked competition, so two and two together and boom, I was a ski racer. Trust me, I am going somewhere with this. I wont lie, I loved the feeling of winning and it was something that only her, only skiing could provide for me, and that was the point I gave her my heart, fully and completely. I wrote that all because I want to give you an idea of how I feel about this sport, and I made skiing a “her” because a dude couldn’t break my heart one day and make it all better the next. Mind you, so far this has been one of the longest fights I’ve had with skiing, its been weeks and she has yet to show me any love back, but I go out every day anyways and do everything I can to make her take me back. Now this blog really hasn’t filled you in on how the season has gone…so ill give you the short of it. It could definitely be going better... a lot better. I am now at the point where I need to get some redemption and honestly until I do I won’t be able to move on, and it’s a little silly because even though I’ve had more bad races than I care to count, just one result makes it all good again. So all I am looking for is two runs, one after the other that I can be proud of. A race I can hold onto and know I gave it everything. My quest for this starts tomorrow, and will continue until I’m successful, plain and simple. 

Oh dear!

This and the one below are a couple reasons then when its bad...its really never thaaaat bad

There will be more photos to follow, but for now you'll have to settle on three.

Thanks again for stopping by

Chapter nine: Using it all, keeping focused

Alright, well. Things have not gone to plan thus far, and looking back at it I think it has a lot to do with myself not having a plan. I’m not saying I just went out there and shut my eyes blindly hoping for the best, but I certainly didn’t go out these last days with a clear mission in mind. I pushed out of the start four days in a row, eight runs and thought more about the final goal, the finish line, and the points even instead of the process. Ultimately this left me without the points, results, and a few times without actually reaching the finish line, so although this was a rough week it came with an important lesson for me. Moving forward I need to make a game plan, keep my focus as I do in training and still find the extra little edge that separates race day from all the other ones. Beyond that it was very good to get the first starts of the season out of the way; I find it makes the rest of them run a lot smoother. That takes care of “keeping focused” and hopefully gave you a little insight into just what happened, and just in case you are more into visuals ill toss up a photo or twelve. That leaves me with the first part of the title still. Okay so imagine yourself in any sport, or doing anything you care about for that matter and it doesn’t go well. You get left with that feeling, disappointment maybe or anger, or sadness, or a sense of unfinished business perhaps, and if it’s something you love you might get left with all of those things combined. I could easily mope the days away, but I aim to take those things, be it from personal or professional parts of my life and use them as fuel. Something to feed the fire until I get back that feeling that keeps me doing what I’m doing. Alright so, I didn’t mean to get all emo there but each chapter has to be inspired by something and as much as I want things to always be awesome I have to take a break every now and then and make sure to save some awesome for later.

For those visual learners, thats exhibit "A"

...and thats Exhibit "B". feel free to take notes.

Checking out the menu... clearly we beat the rush

Burrito domination, everyone is excited to eat, except Erik, I think they built his wrong.

Some days dryland doesn't involve much equipment

Back at it, Vail CO. 

No words needed.

Thanks for stopping by and bearing with me for this one…and if you just scrolled down to see the pictures after the first line that’s alright too. 

Morgan  

Chapter eight: Searching for ignition

When I left you last I was Colorado bound and heading to my season opening races. Since then I have successfully made it to Colorado…which really wasn’t that tough and, I have kicked off the year with two slaloms…these on the other hand could not have been tougher. Well I guess they could have been more of a challenge technically, but it would have had to involve wrestling a bear or something. I could go on for ages and complain about how hard life is, but let’s get real here, racing isn’t all daisies and I knew that going in. So now I am turning my focus to turns that are a little bigger and looking to find the spark I need to ignite my season.

   

So, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of separate paragraphs; it’s not exactly my style. I like keeping it as one run on thought, or at least a jumble of ideas all in a row. Today however I’ve broken up the blog into two sections, the reason being that I didn’t finish it last night and with another day under my belt it wouldn’t be right to leave it out. Anyways, I’m still here and still battling as best I can but it was one of those days where things didn’t come together. Of course this is not the result I am looking for and not exactly what I like blogging about, but it can’t always be good times…no matter how much I want it to be. The summary of my day was good turns followed by bad tactics, and then sending it riiiiiight out of the course. Usually I am the first person to drop f-bombs and break a pole or twenty but I was kind of just sad more the choked so I didn’t make a scene. Then when I got back to the hotel I took it all out on a small bit of wood by throwing it into the ground as hard as I could… yeah I know, very mature. Sometimes it’s the little things though that make the day a tiny bit better. Tomorrow I get another chance to put the pedal down and I think it’s about time I do it.

Great form, great bell bottoms, welcome to Colorado

Cold and stormy, perfect.

Ghetto #nuffsaid

Sponsor shot, but damn they look good.

I always seem to be driving into the sunset.

Thanks for following my progression through the year, i'll post some more ski related photos next time, probably mostly of me, but hey its my blog so I can do that.

I want to throw huge props to my brother for making his World Cup debut and charging hard. Very proud of him.

until next time,

Morgan

Chapter seven: Stepping into the freezer

I have now journeyed from fireside at Nakiska over to…well fireside at Panorama. It turns out that I like to blog somewhere warm and comfortable, who knew. But based on the title of this chapter it clearly hasn’t been all warm fuzzy times, it’s been classic freezing Pano… Yes, I am being a tad over dramatic, its not thaaat bad but I thought it deserved to be noted. Moving on, I am still making my final preparations for racing and today I had a session of battle against slalom. It actually inspired me to write this chapter, that and I have photos piled up the yang that need to be seen or they will be outdated fast. So let me get this off my chest, battle resumed early this morning and I say resumed because this has been going on since I strapped on those little sticks way back when. It was a beat down. All I want is a healthy relationship with Slalom, something loving, but right now it’s not even making eye contact. Tomorrow I will be strapping on the armor and getting back at it, because what Slalom doesn’t know is that I never gave up on it, and I’m going to grind this one out until I get a victory. Assuming I survive tomorrow the countdown will continue, it’s now at five more days of training before I test my metal down in Colorado. 

Start the day off right, 24 egg omelet and bacon strips...and bacon strips...and

No, you're right, the stairs would have been way less fun

Checking out the hill

New Snow? NEW SNOW!

The boys at the bottom of our Super-G

My battle ground was eery today.

Good night Panorama, you done good.

I hope you are enjoying my story so far, the next chapter will be written states side and with the races in mind.

Morgan

Chapter six: Tune ups and an engine check

Today I am writing you from lovely Nakiska, Alberta. Well actually to be more precise I am writing you from a cozy fireside arm chair in the Delta, which just so happens to be located in Nakiska. Now that that’s cleared up let me get on with it. So far training has been great, it’s felt awesome getting back up to speed and having some wind in my face again. This camp… or maybe it’s easier to just say this month is dedicated to the final tune up before its time to race. Honing of skills, improving technique, taming any bad habits that still remain, anyway you want to put it, that’s what’s going on right up to race day. And to be honest it doesn’t stop when the bibs go on, but let’s leave it there because getting into that is a whole other thing completely. Along with being tune up time it’s also when I turn the key, fire up the engines and start to put the pedal to the floor. Even though I’m working to charge every run I personally think it will take until race day to hit top speed and really see how much I can push before the bolts start to come loose. Anyways, please do me a solid and forgive the analogies. From this point forward the future is still unknown and I’ll just have to wait for it to play out, but what I do know is that I’m excited to race and starting to feel ready. 

Alpineglow doing its thing.

Where snow comes from...and yes the angle is like that because I was sneaking up to take this one

Lift ride #hipster

Thousand km/h winds.

A nightly meeting, this is where we discuss...really important things...

A cramped parking lot before we got to skiing.

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by.

Morgan

Chapter five: The between time

I am back home on the west coast at last, sleeping in my own bed, eating home cooked meals, and all that jazz that people say they miss while they are on the road. The coming weeks, give or take a day represent the last little break before the season starts and it’s all systems go. Now let’s be real here, at first when I got back I was all like “heck yes! Whistler, good times” and so on so forth. Then one morning it snowed, not much, just a bit of a tease really but it stuck with me and now all I’m thinking about is strapping the sticks back on and parking some arcs up on the mountain. Anyways just thinking about skiing doesn’t make the time pass by any faster so I’ve needed to kill the time between. But since this isn’t a blog about detailing my every activity each day I won’t get too far into it. The only thing out of the ordinary I got after this week was shooting guns, and it turns out that its exactly as much fun as you think it would be. On that note I have a couple videos for you below, two of the clips are training footage as this is a ski blog after all. I didn’t bother to put any techno beats or anything with them because I don’t think it actually makes them any better…and as far as I know it doesn’t make me look faster either. The other two are just things I’ve gotten up to. 

I apologize for the crappy quality of the videos, I couldn't get a hold of steve jobs to help me out, weird he isn't returning my calls... Too soon?.. Well yeah, thats all for now, thanks for stopping by. The next chapter will be written on location in merry Nakiska AB. 

Ciao 

Morgan 

Chapter four: Bound for home

The sun returned at last, and even though it took its sweet time to get here I was happy as could be and stoked to start our three day Super-G block with the speed team. My impressions of the track were that it would be flat and easy, but after the longest T-bar ride ever it became apparent that there would be some challenges including snow that was…questionable at best. The day got my heart pumping though and was a good intro back to speed. My skiing and the conditions improved each day, in short I felt more like a ski racer and less like I was going to explode somewhere down the course. Being back on the hill made the days fly by and before I knew it I was looking at the last three days of potential skiing, I say potential because there was a big mother of a storm lurking somewhere on the horizon. GS kicked off no problem, and then slalom the next day and theeeeen that storm we heard about decided to drop by. It wasn’t nearly as bad as people had said but the 30 cm rule was in full effect putting an early end to our camp.

Fog? ...what a surprise, but was I worried? okay, maybe a little.

An hour later, Boom, we were above it.

Of course not every day was so nice.

Skiing through tornado force winds

My "get away" car on the last day.

Thanks to the boys for a sick camp despite the weather. Also a Huge congrats to Sasha  for skiing his way to a WC start in Levi! (for those who don't know, he's the big guy next to Phil...and Phil is the goof throwing gun hands at the camera)

So to give you the most vague summary I can, I went skiing, there were good times and bad times, fast runs and slow ones, improvement and frustrations, and then we did some other stuff too. I'll check back soon.

Morgan  

Chapter three: Insanity

Picking up where I left off, weather had come in and there was snow in abundance. I had hoped to write how it was just a little storm and the snow had been traded for sun again…but no such luck. It turned out that the storm was actually fricking huge and treated us to four days of gnarly wind and every kind of precipitation you can name, I’m pretty sure there were even some kinds that they don’t have a name for yet. Needless to say when you make me, and all the boys for that matter sit inside and NOT ski we start to get a little nutty. Let me get the dictionary out and express too you just how bad its gotten, because let’s be honest, I’ve got the time. “Insanity” is when you repeat the same actions but expect different results. Now think about that as I let you know how the days have gone this week. First I wake up and right off the bat I lie to myself… I say, Morgan, it’s nice out there, you’re going skiing. Next I stand in the lift line and keep myself from being trampled to death. Now I am up the gondola and in the lodge, boots are on then, the pin is pulled on the day and I return to the hotel to continue perfecting cabin fever. Night comes and I repeat. There are some plusses though, the company has been great and at the very least we are all going crazy together as a team. 

The morning it all started..

Later that day

This is about the best I could see up there

Seeking shelter from the storm

The rain was so bad people just up and started crashing there cars...it didnt make the weather better though

I played games to pass the time (sorry no ones in it, its hard to photograph yourself)

With all our spare time Sasha learned to catch fire.

Sorry for dragging on about nothing, I’ll skip to the silver lining. I’m pretty darn sure we will ski some Super tomorrow and the days to follow are looking brighter as well. Keep your fingers crossed until next time.

Morgan

Chapter two: Sun, snow, and the time between

I have arrived and put my feet down in Europe at last. It took cars, busses, planes, escalators, elevators, luggage carts, trolleys, and when I had no other option my own boots to get me here but at last the travel is done. Luckily for me I got myself so tuckered that my body forgot all about jet lag and the transition was smooth as can be. The days started to blur together the moment they started and now a good few have past. During them I saw a whole lot of bluebird and sunshine, perfect tanning weather and for those of us in ski gear, perfect goggle tanning weather. In my hopes to keep this blog running smoothly I will keep the endless talk of explaining each and every run to a bare minimum. Unless of course it’s just the best run ever, then I might ramble on a while. For now I’ll say, my work on confident parallel skiing is coming along, my “French frying” is getting faster each day. That takes care of the sun, but I also mentioned snow in the title and that’s for good reason because as far as I can tell, the ice age has started. Snow is uuurry were. The storm has claimed a day of skiing but is providing the much needed base for the speed track so let’s count this one as a win. Enough with the talk for now, the time between is below. 

Our private training venue 

Ghetto agility...and no, those hurdles arent forgiving.

Turns out that when the farmers mow the fields here they also compete in death race

Town of Hintertux.

#loveselfies with the boys

Classic hipster sponsor shot...don't hate me for it

With snow came fog, I thought we would get above it...

...well we got IN it...so I was almost right

Thanks for checking in, i'll make sure to get some action shots to follow but for now thats a wrap, singing off.

Morgan

This little beaut is for anyone who made it to the bottom of this chapter, the boys checking out the product after a good gun run.