“I would expect this to always be packed properly and ready to use,” he told the group. “But things are never how you expect them to be, are they?”

Low-angle rescue training on Saturday at Whitetail.

In January 2011, I never expected I’d tear my ACL on my first day of ski-and-toboggan (S&T) training, and that I’d spend the season limping around the ski-patrol clinic in a blue windbreaker rather than learning fun skiing stuff with my husband and my friends. I never expected I’d end the season jealously coveting their red jackets instead of earning my own.

I never expected I’d spend March learning how to make my quadriceps muscles on my injured leg work again after surgery, or that I would spend weeks in physical therapy working on agility drills intended to make me less afraid of one of my great passions in life.

I never expected that I’d get to ski on the Fourth of July, only two days after I was medically approved to ski again, and never expected that I would totally forget about my knee for hours at a time, thanks to diversions such as crazy, costumed skiers partaking in mid-summer snowball fights.

Your brain cannot worry about your knee and pose with a dude in a skin-tight tiger costume at the same time.

I never expected that I’d carefully coordinate my ski-patrol training for December, clearing my work schedule for a couple weeks to let me crank out my training early in the season, only to experience the warmest December on record, leading to Whitetail’s latest-ever opening day.

I never expected I’d then join this year’s candidate class in their regular, every-Saturday training schedule, and that I’d leave Steve alone in our new home in Virginia Beach for most of January to accommodate that schedule. I never expected that I’d spend weeks working on frustrating, seemingly simple drills intended to work out all my bad habits, like sitting in the backseat during my turns and pole-planting at all the wrong times, before getting to touch a sled, and that I’d spend hours on rainy weeknights working with a team of generous, talented instructors to master those drills. Also unexpected: The way I’d have to overcome my own perfectionism and impatience along the way.

I never expected that this more-rigorous path would be so rewarding, and that mastering those simple drills would so drastically increase my confidence in my skiing, and in myself. I never expected that running a sled would feel so natural and simple—thanks, of course, to the fact that I spent weeks mastering those drills.

My first day working with sleds was actually much easier than I expected.

And I have to be honest and tell you that I never expected that I’d get my red coat last Saturday. I spent the morning learning to run a sled through the bumps, which you do by guiding the toboggan through the troughs of the moguls while you slide forward and backward through the troughs on your skis. I picked it up fairly quickly, and got great feedback from the instructors I was working with, so I knew I wasn’t far off. Still, it was a happy surprise when my name was called with two other patrollers, and I got to trade in my candidate jacket for a bright red patroller’s coat. Also a surprise: The fact that Steve had purchased a vest for me months earlier, and had even gotten me an NSP nametag and pin to put on it. The best part: The real victory was mastering the skills, and overcoming all the obstacles that stood in my way. In the end, the coat was just icing on the (red velvet) cake.

Shiny new jacket.

My awesome new vest. Yes, I am holding an ice axe (which is another story for another day).

Oh, and one more thing: I never expected to respond to my first wreck as a full patroller while playing with my friends on Whitetail’s expert terrain on Sunday. A 10-year-old boy had hurt his lower leg while taking a spill during a ski lesson, and his instructor called for help after they skied to the bottom of the trail. I’ve responded to lots of wrecks previously, but never with the ability to pull a sled after providing medical attention. I’d expected—or at least hoped—that my first one would be simple and straightforward, on Whitetail’s easiest terrain. Instead, it was on a part of the hill that required a snowmobile to pull the sled (along with a patroller in the handles) across a flat stretch between the expert terrain and the clinic. It was totally not what I expected—but it was totally fine.

When I started my OEC (ski-patrol medical) training in August 2010, I couldn’t have imagined things would go down the way they did. So it’s true that things are never how you expect them to be. But I choose to believe they happen exactly as they’re meant to.

Pictured above: Me wearing a coat that doesn’t say “candidate” on it. I passed, and can now officially say I’m a ski patroller! I’ll write a longer post with details as soon as I can steal a few minutes to breathe during an unusually busy work week, which might be later Monday, or might be Wednesday. But as a teaser: I learned how to pull down a sled in the bumps, which is awesome and challenging and maybe the best workout I’ve ever had. The feeling of doing that well—which is to say, the feeling of having *earned* that red coat—is the only feeling in the world better than actually getting to wear it. (As you can tell by my gigantic grin, getting the coat is pretty rad, too).

First, I know that you’re shocked—shocked!—to hear that Steve and I have signed up for another nutty endurance challenge. On Feb. 13, we will join 23 other crazy skiers and boarders to attempt to ski 100,000 vertical feet in one day—roughly 107 runs at Whitetail—as part of the first annual 100k Vertical Challenge. The event aims to raise funds for and awareness of the Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation, a nonprofit adaptive sports program that services wounded warriors in the nearby Baltimore/Washington region, as well as civilian athletes with a wide range of disabilities.

Instead of describing why I feel this cause is so important, I’d like to show you. I dare you to watch this video of Todd Love, a Marine who lost both his legs in Afghanistan, on an adaptive snowboard and not get at least a little weepy:

There are two ways to donate: either with a flat donation, or by pledging to donate a certain amount based on the number of runs we complete. Since it’s a new and relatively low-tech event, you donate to our campaign by simply making a direct donation via the Two Top website (http://www.twotopadaptive.org/), then letting us know you’ve done so (so we can thank you and brag to our fellow participants). If you’d rather pledge on a per-run basis, all you need to do now is let us know how much you’d like to pledge per run. Then, after the event, we’ll let you know how many runs we completed, so you know how much to donate via the website. In either case, if you would prefer to mail a check, send it to: Two Top Mountain Adaptive Sports Foundation, Inc., 10914 Claylick Rd. Mercersburg, PA 17236.

Thanks for any support you can offer, financial or emotional.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that essay recently, as my own relationship with running is morphing into something more relaxed than it had been even a few months ago. When I started this blog in 2009, I was training for the National Half-Marathon, and used long, hard runs to regain a sense of control over my life and confidence in myself after moving to a new city and forging a new career path. Running was my release—from family emergencies, from a fear that my choice to become a freelance writer wouldn’t amount to anything—and I used each workout to remind me that I was fierce and strong. It was a different type of running from the long-distance escapes from loneliness and fear of deployment I’d experienced in Florida, which was different from the phases of my life and my running that came before it.

Me beaming after the National Half-Marathon in 2009.

I assumed that when I recovered from the various injuries that have stumped my running progress over the past couple years, I would be ready to go full-bore again, training for a warm-up half marathon, busting my half-marathon PR a few months later and finally tackling a marathon finish a little closer to four hours than my previous attempts. And in fact, my knee feels pretty close to 100 percent again, with my ACL reconstruction surgery a year behind me (happy birthday, little ACL!).

But instead, I kind of stopped caring as much about my pace and weekly mileage, and instead started focusing on other goals—the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim earlier this year, ski-patrol ski-and-toboggan training now. I’m still running, but my relationship to running is different.

Rather than using my runs to test my limits and build my strength, I’m using them to help my body recover and my mind relax. My regular workout: A five-mile run on the beach. No pace goals, no intervals—just a simple, relaxed five-mile run on the beach. The sand isn’t always packed, and sometimes, when I glance down at my Garmin, I see that my slog through the deep sand is clocking in at 10:30-minute-mile pace—and I don’t care. When I start, my quads and glutes are usually still screaming from whatever skiing I most recently did. By the time I finish, my muscles and mind are both happy and chilled out.

When I’m in Silver Spring, I use my group runs to chat and catch up with the friends I don’t see quite as much, not to push myself my trying to keep up with runner-friends who are faster than me.

So right now, running is less of a challenging but fulfilling teacher and more a kind, compassionate friend, the “come as you are” of my current workout rotation.

How could I not feel relaxed, with a view like this?

Once the ski season’s done, I’m sure that relationship will shift again. But for now, I’m taking a lot of comfort in the knowledge that I have a friend who will always be there for me, and somehow is always able to provide exactly what I need.

How has your relationship with running shifted through the years?

Guess what, guess what, guess what?

I got to run sleds! And I did good! And it was soooo much fun!

That’s how I’ve been starting most of my conversations since Saturday, the first day I got to work with toboggans during ski-patrol ski and toboggan (S&T) training at Whitetail. Now that my little outburst of excitement is out of the way, here’s how the day went down:

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, in stark contrast to the foggy darkness of Thursday night. The S&T instructors gathered us on top of the mountain at 9 a.m., then split us into a few smaller groups. As I stood waiting with my crew, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d just been picked for a team in middle-school gym class, and couldn’t help wondering if I’d been picked first or last.

Look, look, look! It's me, pulling a sled!

The instructor leading our group didn’t bury the lede, and greeted us simply by saying: “This is the sled group.” After a long season of getting hauled around in sleds after an ACL tear derailed my training last year, and after a long few weeks working on exorcising my ski demons before actually getting to pull a sled myself this season, it was all I could do to avoid letting out a little yelp of excitement. We headed to Whitetail’s expert terrain, split up into even smaller groups, and got started.

The instructors I’ve been working with have emphasized for weeks that if I worked out the aforementioned skiing demons (sitting back in my skis, not finishing my turns on one side, etc., etc.) before I got into the handles of a toboggan, life would be much easier once I did. They were so totally right. My first try with an unloaded sled felt really natural, not at all like the Herculean feat of strength and grace I’d been imagining it would be.

The other student in my group and I each took half a run with the sleds unloaded (with no one sitting in them), and then another run with them loaded (with each other sitting in them). That’s when the fun really started. Pulling a loaded sled is more exhilarating and empowering than I can possibly explain. It’s hard not to feel a surge of confidence when you realize you’re smoothly guiding a heavy, unwieldy object down a steeply pitched slope. It’s kind of like a roller-coaster ride you can steer and control.

In short, I felt like I totally nailed my first few runs, and that feeling was backed up by my instructor’s feedback. But perhaps more important was the fact that I totally wiped out on another run. The snow was getting slushy and heavy toward the end of the morning, and we were working on a new skill, transitioning from inside the handles to outside of them, which we’ll need to do when we learn how to pull a sled through the moguls. I was still getting the feeling of how much pressure to apply when engaging the chain—literally a chain on the bottom of the sled that acts as a brake—and fell when I misjudged it.

Grinning like an idiot after finishing my last run.

This was my greatest fear coming into the training—that I would wipe out, that I’d let go of the sled, that the sled would crush me and eject my patient, that I would be responsible for mass chaos and trauma on the mountain. What actually happened: I held onto the sled, engaged the chain, apologized profusely to my fellow student (who was a really good sport about it), and realized that my worst training fear had just happened. With that behind me, I felt like I could actually relax a little, and the second half of that run was maybe my best of the day. I’m not planning to fall in the handles again anytime soon, but I was grateful for the reminder that failure usually isn’t fatal, and is often the starting point for getting better.

On the ride up, as rain pounded on the windshield, I pouted and cringed and sighed, and generally approached the evening ahead with the excitement of someone in the middle of the Bataan Death March. I pouted more as I suited up, and kept pouting until I stepped out the door of the patrol’s boot room into the eerily warm, misty, foggy night.

What happened next: I remembered that the things we dread most are often the most fulfilling, and the most fun; that those dreaded things are rarely as bad as we imagine they’ll be; that it’s unfair to judge a training session of any sort before it’s even started. The snow was soft without being mushy, the kind of “hero snow” that makes good skiers look like great ones, and makes even the trickiest drills seem somewhat do-able. The mountain was all but empty, leaving myself, two other candidates and two S&T instructors wide-open slopes to work on. And the mist lent the whole mountain an air of fantasy and possibility, like we could accomplish things in the foggy darkness that we couldn’t in the daylight.

For the first time last night, I felt the beautiful sensation of being able to meld all the tweaks and changes and lessons of the past few weeks into one fluid run. I’m not sure what the conditions will be like during my next training session tomorrow, or whether I’ll feel quite as composed and relaxed when I hit the slopes with the whole class. I do know that a soaking-wet parka is a small price to pay for a ski night like that.

I enjoy that view for the rest of my run, about three miles out and back on (mostly) hard-pack sand. I stop and stretch here before running the minute and a half home:

Walker said once athletes reach a certain level, their main struggles in the mental game have to do less with day-to-day motivation and more with confidence. “People get insecure,” Walker says. “You need to build that confidence, that sense of capability, that sense of being able to do things and do them well, in order to succeed.”

I plan to use the following tips and insights (some of which will be mentioned in the story, others which are blog-reader exclusives!) in my own training in the coming weeks:

The 80-20 rule: Walker says perfectionists tend to have the hardest time learning new skills or tackling new goals. “You make an 80 percent improvement, but the perfectionist wants more,” he says. “A lot of times, if the perfectionist can’t do more, that’s when they start to give up, and start thinking they can’t achieve their goal.” He says focusing on the 80 percent you’re doing right will help keep your head in the right place.
How I’ll use it: Clearly, this has no personal application. I know no such perfectionists. Ha! Seriously, I promise to focus on the incredible amount of new skills I’m mastering rather than obsessing about what I haven’t figured out yet.

Empty the dishwasher: Walker suggests harnessing the power of your mental game by emptying the dishwasher. Seriously—just emptying the dishwasher, with as little emotion as possible. Don’t give any traction to the whiny voice that comes out during household chores. If you can train yourself to do this while you’re emptying the dishwasher, Walker says the skill will translate to your workouts, too.
How I used it: I tried this trick while doing the dishes after arriving home on Friday afternoon after nearly two weeks away. It seemed absurdly simple, and I did fine until about halfway through, when I started scouring a pot Steve used to make chicken chili for a squadron chili cookoff. This is usually my job, and I usually win something if there’s judging. When I arrived home, Steve informed me that his chili came in last. I felt a pang of sad, wifely guilt as I scoured that pot. As I moved onto the Tupperware I’d been using for my meals away from home, my exact mental self-talk was: “This is stupid. Stupid dishes. Stupid.” Right-o. I’ll be trying this trick again.

Writing it down: Walker recommends keeping a small journal in which you jot down one thing you did each day that helped you progress toward your goal. He says you need to write about it with enough precision that “when you look at it six months down the road, you can put yourself back into that workout and realize how important that little success was in contributing to your overall development.”
How I’m using it: By noting a few pieces of progress from my last two times on the snow on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, when I struggled to master some one-legged drills in icy conditions, I learned a strategy for skiing on ice: Still set your edge (as opposed to sliding until the ice is gone), but place the edge gently, with a lighter-than-usual amount of pressure. On Thursday, I learned that to avoid sitting back in my skis during turns, I basically have to imagine I’m launching my upper body forward like an alpine jumper. I feel like later this season, I’ll look back on the latter especially and view it as one of those game-changing light-bulb moments.

How was your weekend? What little things did you do that helped you progress toward your goal (whatever your goal may be)?

Since Wednesday, I’ve had two good nights of ski-patrol ski-and-toboggan (S&T) training during which a few major changes have clicked, and have actually started to feel less like crazy drills and more like muscle memory. I’ve also had a few relaxing nights with friends, and have settled into what initially seemed like an impossibly chaotic schedule, which has in turn allowed me to chill out a bit and let the training process be what it’s going to be.

On Thursday, I carpooled to and from Whitetail with one of the instructors I’ve been working with fairly often. On the way back to D.C., I joined him and his family at Krumpe’s, a cult-favorite doughnut place down a back alley just off I-270 in Hagerstown, Md. The doughnuts are sold throughout the Hagerstown area, but true addicts (which I might officially be now) know to go to the store late at night to get the doughnuts fresh from the fryers.

Usually, I find doughnuts too spongy to be satisfying. But the chocolate-cake doughnuts from Krumpe’s are like doughnuts that want to be brownies when they grow up. Is there a happier state of being than munching on one of those sweet, dense treats on the way home from a good night of skiing while listening to Bob Marley croon that everything’s going to be all right? If so, I’m not sure I want to know about it.

A plate of Krumpe's doughnuts for Steve=my attempt to win back brownie points.

I’m back in Virginia Beach until next Thursday, when I’ll head up to Whitetail again. It’s safe to say I’ve lost some wifey-brownie points for being gone for such a long time. Good thing Steve likes doughnuts better than brownies, anyway …