Cross Country Skiing

Have some goals, a plan, and build a team. Having a plan and support network is important to achieve anything in life.
 
Transcript: "Hi, Joanne has some general keys to success that I found to be really helpful. Our first of all, have some goals, and a plan. So you wouldn't just get in the car with no idea of where you're going, or maybe. I don't know. But personally, I like to have a road map. I like to know I'm trying to get from point A to point B. Here's my plan. Here's how I'm going to get there. That really helps me to have some Direction, with whatever it is that I'm talking like, have a plan and then, Build your team. And so, I don't, I really don't think anything important in life is ever achieved alone. And so I think it's really important to know, hey, who's my support network? Who are my teammates in this? Who's my coach, you know, if it's whether it's a project work initiative, musical Endeavor, or a sporting thing, you know, you still want someone to instruct you and guide you and help you and give you feedback when you need it and you want teammates to have your back and support you along the way."

Outside of skiing, I love reading, cooking/baking, gardening, watching TV shows (The Great British Baking Show, Vampire Diaries, and Outlander), and hanging out with friends.
 
Transcript: "So outside of skiing, I love reading. I also love cooking and baking, I'm our team. Birthday cake baker. So that's a really fun thing that I do. I also love gardening. I have this tiny little garden and Stratton Vermont where this summer I grew ton of things, a ton of Swiss chard zucchini that were like a foot and a half long. It was weird and I also love watching The Great British baking show and Vampire Diaries. And Outlander. And honestly, I just love having dinner with friends and just hanging out and enjoying the conversation."

Racing in the Olympics after food poisoning was difficult, but I was able to stay focused on the task at hand and push through it with a positive attitude.
 
Transcript: "What was it like racing in the Olympics after having food poisoning the day before? That was honestly terrible. My body was in a really awful place. I felt super super drained. I wasn't really sure I would make it to the start line the morning before because I felt like going for a 20 minute jog. I felt like the wind was going to knock me down but I was able to rehydrate and refuel and make sure I got as much simple carbohydrates into my body. As I could and then I kind of took it really chill in the warm-up. I had, I tried to expend the least amount of energy possible in order to be ready for the race to give myself my best chance. And I honestly went into it with the mindset of, you know, I have nothing to lose here. I'm racing for me because I love it. Not because I have to and not because there's all this pressure on me, but I'm just here to see what I can do. And so, I just kept thinking one step at a time. You know. I'm just going to make it up this hill. This actually, How do I ski as efficiently as possible and conserve and then this section? And so, even when I found myself racing alone, because I went after johaug when she broke away from the pack, which may or may not have been a good decision by me, because I ended up alone and freezing temperatures, and high winds, and a body with very low energy. But I think it was the power of the Mind. Honestly, that kept me going because I was just really motivated to make to that finish line. And I just stayed in the here and now and even when my body started cramping, I wasn't worried. Oh what does that mean for me? 10K from now. It's well right now. I can still get up this hill right now. I can still move one foot in front of the other. So I'll keep doing that until I can't."

I think it would be great to replace the current speed and fitness-focused World Cup courses with slower, more technical ones that test athletes' technique as well as their base fitness.
 
Transcript: "Okay, here's the question. I saw a Facebook post that states to replace speed and fitness with slow, highly technical World Cup courses. Your thoughts? In the World Cup, fitness and speed is always going to be a huge factor, but I'm a big proponent of trying to make the courses more technical. I feel like now there are big highways and it really just tests base fitness more than technique. It would be great to have courses with more turns, more undulations, more terrain changes, things like that that really test the athlete's technical ability also."

A good wax to use for spring skiing is a mixture of old clisters heated up and mixed together. This can be adjusted depending on the temperature outside.
 
Transcript: "Any tips on what kind of wax to use for spring skiing? Well, of course, spring skiing, there are all sorts of different conditions, but typically you're going to have what we love doing here is crest skiing, and it's going to be freeze at night and then be granular snow and warm up to get warmer. One thing we used to do is we'd get a pot and put all of our old clisters in there and heat them up and mix them and then paint it on. So you'd have a little blue, purple, red clister, and you could kind of doctor a little depending on how cold it was, but just using up your old stuff and mixing it all up seemed to work quite well most of the time."

Going to Mexico helped me gain a broader perspective, become more tolerant and take a big picture view of the world instead of focusing on just my reality.
 
Transcript: "How did your time in Mexico shape your perspective on the world and the way you interact with different cultures? This must be from the question I answered before about what has been a life-changing thing for me and I said Mexico. I came from a small town of Putney, Vermont and grew up, that was my life, living in Putney so everything that happened in Putney seemed very important to me and when I went to Mexico I realized that everything that happened in Putney didn't matter to anyone in Mexico. So that really helped me gain a broader perspective and kind of burst my little bubble and I realized that everyone has a different reality, their actions are based on their own reality and hopefully it made me much more tolerant and much more likely to try and figure out why someone was doing a certain thing versus just calling them an idiot for doing a certain thing. So that experience I feel really changed me and made me much more of a big picture type of guy versus the little circle type of guy."