Reflection Day

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

When I get ready for a race our training gets a little easier so we can all taper and hopefully perform well. This means I have more time on my hand. And I always end up looking into the past. I do it for multiple reasons. Sometimes I am just looking to remember what held me back before so I can avoid it this time around. Sometimes I want to see exactly how far I've come or what my mindset was the time before. This is as much for me as it is for anyone else to read.

With all that being said, Tuesday I leave for my first world cup trials after the Olympic trials. Last season was pretty taxing on my mentally and I wasn't sure this was something I wanted to keep doing. But I understood myself well enough to know I wouldn't be able to live with walking away just yet.

Heading into this week I am fully aware there are five US Olympians that are not competing, but that is outside of my control. What has been in my control, the last five and a half months of torturing myself for my failures, in order to keep the complacency at bay. The last five months of training while constantly reminding myself of the failures that occurred just last season. Reminding myself there is no redemption. Four years from now I can try to redeem myself but until then I live with the burden of failure.

Realistically, this season is all about experience and gaining ground. Instead of an Olympic year where you take what you have and go with it, this season is about creating something you don't have. If you can lay the ground work now to improve drastically you set yourself up much better. Then of course, the last couple years I have been trying to learn on the fly. Trying to develop the skill in a season or two that the people I was aiming to beat had years to learn. Now, especially with some of them taking time off, this is the perfect opportunity to gain some of that experience and skill and learn.

As of right now, I am the oldest male athlete signed up to skate trials (or within a few months of the oldest).  I am only 23 years old. That kind of shows how young we are and how much we all have to learn.

Backtrack four years ago and I had yet to move to SLC. I knew I was about to but I didn't get here until after the world championships in November. Coming out here I had pretty realistic goals for myself. I wanted to learn as much as I could the first half season. The first full season I just wanted to race trials and hopefully learn something in the process. Following that the goal was to gain some experience the following season and hopefully finish top 5 in the final race. The next season I wanted to win the Am Cup series and I thought if I could do that I would put myself in a position to be competitive at Olympic Trials. Looking back, I qualified for trials in my first month in SLC, the next season I finished 3 at Am Cup Final, the next two seasons I won the Am Cup series and barely missed each world cup team. I went into Olympic trials with a legitimate shot at making the team, not a favorite by any means but I would be in the mix.

But what hurt was getting so good so fast and then stalling out because of the lack of racing skill and experience. Don't fool yourself there is nothing you can do on a pair of wheels that gives you any experience for pack racing on ice.

It's been a long journey so far. And with four years to come it's only going to be harder and longer. But I've been my biggest critic and now as I would expect nothing less, I am going into a race week feeling better than I ever.

The success is nothing without the journey. The struggles of today make tomorrow's victories vindicating.