Monday, May 19, 2008

Team America - Update

Bode and Team have been busy getting ready for next season. We just got an update from Warner Nickerson who just returned from Austria where he did some testing of new skis with Bode.

I've been home for a few days now, but that trip was pretty wild. We only ended up training three days, but not because of the weather. The weather was absolutely perfect for our entire stay. For Bode the main objective was to find or help develop good slalom skis. And after two days of slalom training he was psyched with two models. The days we skied slalom we'd drive up the 30 minute access road to arrive half way up Kauntertal by 6:30 AM. Just in time for a warm up run or two and a slip run before we dove right into training. I was skiing on four different pairs of slalom skis taking two runs in the course on each pair. Bode had 6 different pairs so he only took two runs on a couple pairs of skis, if any, since he took a few runs on his speed skis before Rainer and I finished up in the course.

Either way, it was a great set up. We were lapping around on a snow mobile and those guys were hammering. There were a few times when I was getting pulled on a relatively flat section where we were easily doing high 60s (mph not k's) the only thing I was thinking was don't catch an edge… please, don't catch an edge. With GS skis it was pretty moderate, but with slalom skis it was certainly squirrelly. We were able to get 8 runs in before the mountain opened at 9:00 and we were off the hill by 10:00 when it started to warm up a little. The snow was great and the training was better.
We're heading to New York tomorrow to meet up with Bode to take care of some planning for next season and then attend an event that his sponsor SuperFund is hosting. We'll be updating throughout the trip on twitter. Follow us here.


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