Our Journey

Hey Everyone,

Chris and I are enjoying a day off before the race tomorrow.   Chris had a great result a couple of days ago in the Europa Cup with a 5th place finish.  He was the top American and it was almost a complete world cup field!  I had some trouble in my second qualifying run and did not make the finals but  I’m riding well and feel confident we will both do well in the World Cup tomorrow.  After my illness and missing the last World Cup I’m excited to get back in the start gates.

Here’s a picture that Missy Klug took from the start of the Europa Cup two days ago…the view does not suck around here!

Zac

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and very happy new years!  Chris and myself spent new years on the plane to Europe.  We toasted with a glass of champagne and then I handed him one last crushing defeat in chess before the new year.

Unfortunately, the AST wolf pack has been cut down to just two riders.  Josh and Erica did not qualify for the last three Olympic qualifiers however they are both in good spirits and stoked on all they’ve accomplished this season with the formation of AST.  They’re still heavily involved in helping with logistics and supporting Chris and I so we can carry the torch all the way to Vancouver for the team.

Anyway, we are now in Radstadt, Austria which is about a half hour south of Salzburg.  There’s not much snow here but a storm is expected in the next few days and we should be able to at least do a little free riding and some training before the Kreischberg qualifier on the 6th.

I must go now, I need to give Chris his first chess defeat of 2010 before we go to bed.

Zac

Hey Everyone,

We wrapped up our intense Copper training camp on Friday and our last week was by far the best and most productive.  We were able to train alongside the Swiss, the lone Swede Daniel Biveson and the Canadians for most of the week.  We set duel courses and even held a mock race one day with a cash purse that everyone chipped in for.  Klug represented well in the mock race placing second and just losing by a couple tenths to Silver medalist Simone Schoch. 

Everyone parted ways and went home for some much needed rest on Saturday.  I was able to spend a few days at home but had to pack up and head over to Europe on Wednesday.  I’m still in need of a World Cup start for the upcoming event in Limone, Piemonte so I needed to come to Austria and race in some Europa Cup’s.

Yesterday was the first race and my decision to fly over paid off, I started 33rd (once again a stacked field with a lot of the top World Cup riders) and ended up qualifying in 9th after two decent runs.  The riders in the finals had their work cut out for them as there were over 200 riders in yesterday’s race so the snow conditions looked like a war zone with craters and ruts you could lose a small horse in.

I advanced through the first couple of rounds and soon found myself facing Anton Unterkofler from Austria in the finals with Adam Smith and Manual Vieth racing for 3rd and 4th.  Anton had me by full penalty after I made a mistake on the 3rd gate from the finish in the first run.  However, he ended up making the same mistake at the very same gate in the second run and I was able to hold on for the victory!  Adam rode well both runs and took 3rd place. 

Today’s race had a little better snow conditions but that came with hurricane force winds.  I started even farther back today with the arrival of a few more good riders from the World Cup but I ended up qualifying 3rd and ended the day in 4th after they decided to cut the finals to one run duels because of the wind.  Overall a great weekend for me and a good confidence boost for the World Cup in Limone!

Zac

We had a good week of riding, but a couple if ill timed mistakes cost us the results we hoped for.  We’re all riding fast and loose – we just need to minimize our mistakes.  Despite the set back, the entire team feels well poised to make some noise this year.

Just a quick update on AST. We arrived in Copper Mountain, Colorado on Sunday and resumed our on-snow training on Monday. Tomorrow will be our fifth day on snow and the conditions are only getting better. There’s hardly anybody here right as they just opened for training and most teams haven’t arrived yet. So, needless to say we’ve been ramping up the volume while we have the place pretty much to ourselves.

On a side not, Josh had a little accident today. He dislocated his pinky on the base of a stubbie gate and it broke through the skin on his palm! I thought for sure he had compound fractured it…I mean it was poking out of his hand! But, miraculously, he not only didn’t break it but he also didn’t tear any ligaments. He went to the Steadman-Hawkins clinic in Vail to get cleaned up by our friend and one of the best orthopedic surgeons around, Tom Hackett. If all goes well, Hackett thinks Josh should be back on snow by Tuesday.

That’s it for now,

Zac

Just a quick update on AST. We arrived in Copper Mountain, Colorado on Sunday and resumed our on-snow training on Monday. Tomorrow will be our fifth day on snow and the conditions are only getting better. There’s hardly anybody here right as they just opened for training and most teams haven’t arrived yet. So, needless to say we’ve been ramping up the volume while we have the place pretty much to ourselves.

On a side not, Josh had a little accident today. He dislocated his pinky on the base of a stubbie gate and it broke through the skin on his palm! I thought for sure he had compound fractured it…I mean it was poking out of his hand! But, miraculously, he not only didn’t break it but he also didn’t tear any ligaments. He went to the Steadman-Hawkins clinic in Vail to get cleaned up by our friend and one of the best orthopedic surgeons around, Tom Hackett. If all goes well, Hackett thinks Josh should be back on snow by Tuesday.

That’s it for now,

Zac

So, I’m sitting in my hotel room near the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam thinking about weather or not I’m going to be able to sleep tonight. I’m excited to fly home tomorrow and get a few days rest before I drive to Colorado for AST’s next camp but I also just woke up! Whoops…it’s 10 o’clock at night and I’ve been sleeping since 4 in the afternoon. This is not boding well for me. I saw the rest of the team off at the airport this morning and headed back to the hotel to catch up on some reading and do some emails. I thought I’d shut my eyes for a minute and next thing I know I’m scrambling to order dinner from room service before they shut down for the night! Haha, such is the life of constant jet-lag.

Anyway, I’ve also been reflecting on Friday’s race. It was the first World Cup of the season and I would say it was a success for AST, as well as the American’s as a whole. Unfortunately, there were no podiums but we did manage to get 5 American’s in the top 16 with Josh in 17th by only 6 hundredths of a second!!! I qualified in the 13th position with two solid runs but was knocked back to 14th overall after losing to Benjamin Karl (the eventual winner) of Austria in the first round. Fellow American, Vic Wild who qualified 16th ended up knocking Rok Flander (1st place qualifier) of Slovenia out of the first round to end his day in 8th!

Klug and Erica didn’t quite have the day they were hoping for. Both had very minor mistakes in their first run of the qualifiers, usually not a big deal but with this flat indoor hill the times and competition are extremely tight. Erica did get a second run and I must say she killed it! She was 6th overall for the second run but it just wasn’t quite enough to recover from her first run and she ended up 25th overall.

Snowboard racing is not a team sport in the traditional sense. On the surface it appears to be just an individual sport, one athlete racing for the podium. On AST this is most definitely not the case! Even though we are competing for individual results, we are linked to each person’s performance through the hard work and training we’ve done together. Each member shares in the good and the bad. I feel the pain of my teammates struggle with not performing how they expected and I also feel the elation when they do! This sharing of the good times and the bad helps each athlete on AST grow and become better as group. When one person doesn’t do well and has a short day they quickly put it behind them and step up to help the person who’s still competing, adding to the already incredible support we get from Rob and Ian. Both of whom, were amazing at this first race. Ian spent a solid 19 out of 24 hours in the tuning making sure our boards were as fast and sharp as they could be. Rob worked tirelessly to make sure we had the best training and accommodations we could get before the race.

I would also like to thank Annie (Ian’s girlfriend) and Tosh (Rob’s son) who went above and beyond to help out with the team while they were there!

Thanks guys.

Soooo, have I mentioned how hard we’ve been training lately? We thought we were going to have more time on our hands at home to relax once Ian showed up and started tuning and waxing for us…wrong! It’s still non-stop action and activities all day long. We actually got in a debate about how many calories we might be burning during the day. With no real way to determine the actual number at the moment we’ve decided it’s probably somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 calories a day based on some internet research.

Today, we also had the privilege of having Jeff Greenwood (our ex-teammate and 2002 Olympian turned director/producer for GO211) tag along with a camera to capture some footage of a typical day for America’s Snowboard Team in Mt. Hood.

I think the highlight of the day came when we had a post-dryland gainer (running back-flip) session at “The Punch Bowl”, a local cliff jumping and swimming spot about 15 min south of Hood River. I can’t wait for you guys to see the footage, Chris’s first attempt was…well…nothing short of hilarious. The only thing that topped it was his second attempt, which was the closest he’s come to actually doing a gainer. So, even though he didn’t quite stick it he made some progress and that’s what we’re all about here at AST, personal bests.