Just Breezin': Off to Mammoth!

Well here we are. Back around to the beginning of the end. It’s all out now to the finish line—literally.

March starts the cluster of races leading to the end of the season. J2 Nationals, Western Region Champs, U.S. Nationals, Junior Championships, Spring Series, Nor-Am finals, World Juniors. We all start to look towards the end of the season in nervous anticipation of “those races.” We have done the work but will it be enough? Do we have what it takes when the cards are down and the stakes are high? Those butterflies that start to show up about now begin to eat at you so often you might find yourself holding your stomach in Biology. Yes, I know the feeling. Ski racers have short seasons, miniscule compared to other sports, which means that these races are even more important. We don’t have biannual state finals; We get only one shot.

So I am off to J2 Nats next week and I feel those butterflies. Most are good but I can feel them slowly building. With a close-knit group of kids and 1 week devoted to racing it should be fun. That never stopped those butterflies though, and I anticipate almost everyone on the West team will have them. Competition will be good and everyone’s been getting ready all season. It’s time for Nationals. See you in Mammoth…

 .)) Breezy Johnson

Breezin: Copper SuperG NorAm

Well I talked about it a lot. You, you probably got pretty sick of me. Well I am going to talk about it again. The season is almost here, tomorrow to be exact. Tomorrow I will throw myself out of the start of the Copper Super G and trust me. ‘Me’ does include my coaches and the people around me but I have to trust what I know. I have to trust my line that I have picked, my choices of spots to tuck, and most importantly my technique.

So here goes to all you guys who’s seasons are about to start. Trust everything you have done. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Take everything you have and throw it into your race. Most importantly though give it everything you have. It would be silly to train the best before the season and then not use that work. Give it your all and know that you couldn’t have given it any more.

.)) Breezy Johnson

Thanksgiving: Time for Racing!

Well snow is on the ground in Salt Lake and it is about time too. The resorts are opening up and the general public has officially given up their dreams of forever summer. Not that any ski racer ever wanted that but I know tons of people who did.

Thanksgiving is next week and for me that means that I just finished one final and I have three more to come. So in case you were wondering, yes, this blog is a procrastination tactic. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays of the year. It represents that time in between fall conditioning and right before the ski season. It also represents that cheerful spirit before Christmas—my favorite time of year.

So as I sit here getting ready to play some indoor tennis I though I would tell people about that nervous excitement that precedes the season. The nerves are building as races go from a month to weeks away. Rowmark finished their Loveland camp last week during which I had a ton of fun and made some really good improvements. I saw tons of kids from Whistler Cup and Pokal Loka as well as from the general ski racing community and it was great to catch up.

My first race is in December and I’m getting nervous about now. Don’t get me wrong; this is one of my favorite times of year. I think I just want the season to start already! So sit back and eat some turkey, drink some cocoa, go skiing, the season is here and my first race is just around the corner!

.)) Breezy Johnson

Loveland Bound!

So it is almost on top of us. The season is finger’s length away and with it comes excitement and nerves. The World Cup season opened in Sölden (congrats to Lindsey Vonn and Ted Ligety) and soon after that follows everybody else’s season. So Rowmark heads out to Colorado for a jump-start to the season we leave tomorrow and I could not be more excited. I just finished my two tests today and so I am finally ready to get out of this town!

This is the time where people realize how much work they have put into the coming season. It has been 30 weeks of training since Rowmark started preparing for the season and this camp is the culmination of that. Our second Loveland camp is my favorite of the entire year. First of all it is the most “winteresque” of any of our camps and takes place on a resort with real runs on it (sorry Hood). We also start to do a ramp up for our first races (mine will be Panorama) in December or November. This ramping occurs on the Loveland training hill, which is quite nice, and I enjoy a lot. The third and last thing is that it is Colorado, which is one of my favorite places on earth.

But with every great thing comes a but, and that but comes in the form of finals. Finals follow our camp less than a week from when we get back. The only drawback to camp is that—we have to go into finals trying just to catch up from when we were gone.

So in conclusion,s off to Loveland for my favorite camp and I am sooo excited. What is hard to believe is that after that comes the season, YIKES! But it is going to be a blast. And I cannot wait for camp and then Thanksgiving (not finals) and then my Beaver Creek speed Camp and then my first FIS race. Did I mention I was excited?

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezing into Fall

It is officially Fall. The goal sheets have been turned in, School is in full swing and racers are making their final approach into the season. With that comes, yes, physical testing. We all learn just how far we have to go before the season starts and we realize that lying by the pool all summer did not make us stronger.

School has started and for me that means that I have moved back down to Salt Lake City and have started my Junior year. Rowmark has started up too—with us taking our annual Rowmark trip—this year we went river rafting down the Green River in Southern Utah. The trip was relaxing and fun—I learned how to stand up paddleboard and even went down some rapids on one. We also are back to the gym, physical testing and lifting weights.

We now have a four-day weekend and we leave next week (snow providing) for Loveland for our first fall camp! Yes Fall is here and it is time to use all of the conditioning that we did in the Spring and Summer to really build up to the season.

Yes, the season—it does have a nice ring to it. Racers are getting ready for camps—our post-graduates left last week to train a little at Mt. Hood—and after that we I am going to jump (literally, I am going to a Beaver Creek camp right before my first race) into the season. So racers dust off your skis (assuming that they have even arrived), get down to the gym, and get psyched for the season—that is what I am doing.

.)) Breezy Johnson

A Summer in Jackson Hole

What do you love about summer? Most people love summer more than any other season. Ski racers don’t feel this way but I thought that today I would let summer have its day in the sun. Summer in Jackson Hole is not the same as summer in most places. Lots of places have had temperatures of above 100 degrees recently and I’m pretty sure last night we had temperatures of about 45. Along with cool temperatures Jackson also has a full array of outdoor activities. Even, if you’re willing to work for it, skiing.

So, all fun and games right? Well summer isn’t quite that simple. Because of Rowmark’s schedule I have to take online classes, which takes up a lot of my time, and on top of that I have summer homework (which I should probably start right?)

Though ski racers don’t ski all summer, they do train all summer. As my coach has told me multiple times “there is no off season.” And so I have been doing dryland training all summer, nearly every day. Of course a lot of that is fun too: trail running, hiking, slacklining, and so on. I also began taking yoga classes, which has been a blast. But the best part of my summer so far has been ski camp. Camps are an important part of all ski racers’ development. I will tell you that I make more improvement at camps than I do in the season—they’re that important.

So with all of these things to do I don’t think summer is long enough. Good thing there’s fall and after that…

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy's Blog - Whistler Cup!

SRD places 4 athletes at the 2011 Whistler Cup! Serina Kidd, Sam Morse, Andrew Hancock and Breezy Johnson.

Every year the world comes together for eight K1 and K2 “children’s” races (J3 and J4). Out of these, the U.S. competes in two. In the past it has been Whistler Cup and Topolino but this year the United States attended the Pokal Loka in Slovenia rather than Topolino. This was the third time that I had attended Whistler Cup (the first was when I was a first year J4) and this would be the last.

Though I have competed three times at Whistler, I have never seen a US team bond together as we did this year. Even before the racing started, we formed a rambunctious -- if slightly annoying -- group, generating energy that would continue through the races, allowing us to do our very best. Unlike the boring Europeans, we were quite loud at the start, cheering each other on, which brought us odd looks from our competitors and their coaches.

I firmly believe that it was not any special ability of our racers this year that allowed us to do well. We all worked together in great camaraderie, to make sure that any and all of us were capable of anything. The seven medals from the U.S. team were spread among six athletes from different start positions and all three regions. We took team spirit to a whole new level on the hill and in the village. This ‘anything is possible especially if it’s crazy’ attitude that we developed and shared led to our great results.

I hope that this is something that will continue in the future, for future Whistler athletes and those of us who are moving up to FIS age next year. I know that it takes a lot for these young racers on a new stage to believe in themselves. But as we learned this year with a crazy mindset and some yelling it is possible to win the K2 (J3) overall and place second in the team standings, even without a K1 (J4) team.

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy's Blog: JO's on the way!

Wait, I thought the season just started! Seems like winter just goes by so fast. That is what I have been hearing for weeks strait. Ski racing season is one of the shortest of any sport out there, partly due to the increase of winter sports inside, which unless in Dubai is impractical for true ski racing, can you imagine having a downhill inside, that one we can’t quite do. So due to the difficulty of putting an entire mountain inside a building our sport season is limited to five months at best. This makes the end of our season even more different than other sports, in other sports after nationals your coach tells you about practice on Monday, not ski racing. This increases the end of the season’s worth. I don’t want to go seven months on a bad end of year race.

The problem with these end of season races is also that they are the difficult ones. If your end of season race is J2 Nationals, Wistler Cup, U.S. Nationals, Western Region Chams, Junior Olympics, or simply IMD Champs there is always more people your against. They’re simply designed to be harder races. With this comes the stress and that feverish need for results. The problem is, only one person gets to stand on the podium and be the best (with the exception of ties) yet I can always find 20 others who would give their souls for the position, and half the rest of the field who were disappointed at their result.

So when I sit here, one day before Junior Olympics, listening to cheesy, moving music, a pre-big-race ritual, I have to realize that it has been an amazing ride. I can’t look back on this season with a sour taste, I already had a blast, I don’t think one race can ruin that! Do I want to win, yes, but I know to do that I just have to put it down the hill and have a run just as fun as this season has been. Athletes have to realize that one race is not going to make or break their careers, not one day. You have to think about whether this race, which is one day to a week, is really worth seven months of anger at your result, that’s what I have to think about going into this JO’s and hopefully I can pull it off.

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy at the Pokal Loka!

Slovenia, the perfect race day, NOT!

I have been to Europe twice in my life both for races in the Alps, one last year for Topolino, in Italy, the other, just last week for the Pokal Loka, in Slovenia. During my stay last year in Italy we were enveloped with the beautiful mountains of the Southern Alps and crystal clear blue skies and two wins from my friend Mikaela Shiffrin to top it off. This year we first jumped into the heart of the Alps in Austria and then traveled to the western edge of the Alps in Slovenia where were fooled with perfect weather the first day, only to be swamped by fog for the races.

We began our week-long trip in Kössen, Austria where sunny skies and hard snow made for fabulous training. For the time trials we traveled about an hour to the resort of Hintereit, where the Austrians were having a shootout for Topolino, and the Japanese/Russian national teams were training.

We then traveled to Kranj Slovenia where we would stay for the races. As we rode up to Stari Vrh, and above the fog, into crystal clear skies you could feel the freedom and happiness of the place. But, to our disappointment Stari Vrh would never show this side again as the fog rose the next day—right onto our race course.

Because all 190 J4s had to run the course ahead of me, the course at my start number of 6 was the bumpiest one I have ever run. The worst part was, because of the fog, these bumps were impossible to see. After some time I had to accept that I was never going to see these bumps, I just had to know they were going to keep happening until the finish. I crossed the finish line, amazed, with the 6th fastest time.

Luckily the J4s only run a one run GS and so we no longer had to deal with the bumps of the first run. Unfortunately somehow, on the cleaner course I crashed second run, coming out of both of my bindings, landing on my face and flying at unsuspecting skiers outside of the race arena. I actually remember going under the rope, at the side of the course.

The Slalom went by with even less success with the fog even thicker and timing problems. Through these problems my head got turned around and I finished with a disappointing 24th in the first run, only to DNF in the second run as well.

The thing I learned from all of this is never set your mind on how things are going to be, never want the setting of something big to be one way too much. Life has a way of flipping you off. You have to think about whether weather or other problems are big enough to inhibit you from your goal. Good luck to all.

.)) Breezy Johnson

Pokal Loka Shootout in Cali! From Molly and Breezy.

This past weekend we both competed in the Pokal Loka Shootout in Sugar Bowl California. All competitors trained both GS and Slalom on Friday 21st. Sunny weather welcomed us with a great opportunity to see other racers and get to know the hill. We trained a tight GS that threw many of the atheletes. Our Slalom course was watered, creating yellow ice that coated the race hill. Only a handful of athletes finished runs in training, even after three runs of each.

Then on Satuday the race began with slalom time trials. Molly began with a small detour to say hi to an outside gate. While Breezy placed just off the podium in fourth. The second run went well for both of us. Breezy won and Molly placed fourth. Breezy took another win in the third run and Molly had the lowest time with a solid DNF.

As the second day rolled around Breezy took first, sharing the podium with Molly in third. Breezy also placed first in the second run giving her a perfect score in the standings. Molly, through a series of unfortunate events took a pleasant vacation to the ski patrol room prohibiting her from getting a third run.

Another exciting weekend is soon to come with both of us going toe to toe at the David Wright GS’s at Park City.

.)) Molly & Breezy

Racer Ready!

And the season has officially begun! Following tradition, as a J3 in Intermountain division I raced the Eric Hayes memorial as the start to my season. As we began the race in the cold—single digits, colder than what I have skied in for quite some time, and ended the race in the rain, with even the best rain jackets soaked through, and a foot of powder around us.

With Christmas on the way I’m coming home for some much needed rest before I go back to school and training after Christmas.

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy's Blog

Winter has arrived!! Everyone knows what that means—skiing! Yes, ski season is here, what we have been anticipating since last April. Ski racers are running here and there to get to the best point races and then leaving their hearts on the hill as they fight for what we all dream of, Gold. As November turns to December ski racers, myself included, are jumping onto the hill and getting lap after lap of courses and powder. This is our time, as people run to Christmas shop, we set our edges in the hill and hope for the best.

For me, this is the time when I need ski racing most. In the craziness of life this time of year ski racing keep me sane, while driving me insane due to late nights, early mornings and homework. My first race is next weekend and like most racers I am nervous and exited for the time to prove what I can do. Lets get ready to lay down some race runs!

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy's Blog!

Winter has arrived!! Everyone knows what that means—skiing! Yes, ski season is here, what we have been anticipating since last April. Ski racers are running here and there to get to the best point races and then leaving their hearts on the hill as they fight for what we all dream of, Gold. As November turns to December ski racers, myself included, are jumping onto the hill and getting lap after lap of courses and powder. This is our time, as people run to Christmas shop, we set our edges in the hill and hope for the best.

For me, this is the time when I need ski racing most. In the craziness of life this time of year ski racing keep me sane, while driving me insane due to late nights, early mornings and homework. My first race is next weekend and like most racers I am nervous and exited for the time to prove what I can do. Lets get ready to lay down some race runs!

.)) Breezy Johnson

Breezy and the Rowmark girls hit the USST Center of Excellence

They say that you must endure the pain to see the success. My theory is that success can be pain. Last week on Sunday at 9:30am 9 Rowmark girls loaded the slowest, grossest bus known to man (or at least the Rowmark Ski Academy) and headed up Parley’s pass to get to The Center of Excellence.

Originally we weren’t going to go up that day because we were scheduled to go to Loveland Colorado for a four-day camp. But snow at Loveland was not on our side and so we did physical testing instead.

If any of you have ever done physical testing (which most of you should have) you will know that with each test you are pushed to your limits and then further. Beep Test (or shuttle run), run until you die. Box jump, Jump back and fourth over a box until you are incapable of jumping the height of the box and so you trip over it over, and over again. You get the idea.

The unfortunate thing is that I already did physical testing earlier this fall. Though I increased my scores in almost everything even though we were at altitude it was not the most fun experience of my life. Next time I will take camp!

Dryland this fall has been pretty great. We have been doing some new stuff because we have a new dryland assistant coach, Pat Purcel, who is just getting all of his ideas out. Slack lining, lateral squats, circle dodge ball and lots of other things have been added on to our normal weight lifting, running and jumping trend. I am exited for our upcoming Camp in Loveland in November and am hoping to see some of you there!

.)) Breezy Johnson

First Blog from Breezy!

Fall. Leaves are gently sinking to the ground, the air is getting colder, and the occasional frost (or if you are lucky, a dusting of snow) coat the ground. Fall is a time of anticipation and butterflies about the coming season. We are all full of hope and apprehension about how the season is going to shake out.

As the days get shorter, ski racers put on their athletic shorts and sports bras and hit the gym, track or trail, because in ski racing fall=dryland. Each school year starts off with physical testing (which Stephan explained pretty well). From there we jump straight into weight lifting, running, games, balance and core exercises, and yet more running.

At Rowmark competition dominates dryland with teams, yelling and competitive spirit. This peaks at the Bear Lake Challenge! (see Bear Lake above) It’s the ultimate physical test. Over three days, Rowmark bonds together as four teams battle it out through physical, mental, balance -- but mostly physical -- competitions to decide the Bear Lake champions (we even have a trophy).

But really we just can’t wait for Loveland ski camp and ski season after that. The sweat, tears and blood are all in preparation for what we look forward to all fall -- the prospect of snow and therefore skiing! From Loveland, Colorado to Hintertux, Austria, ski racers everywhere are getting ready to ski.

.)) Breezy Johnson