Summer

This summer has been great! It started with a super fun trip to Europe for mountain biking. Coached by Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter. I learned so much from that trip and became a much better biker. It is super cool to be able to see another sport at such a high level. I was surprised at how fast some of those girls are and how technical the courses are. I also got to meet some more awesome people on that trip and learn more about summer sports since I usually participate in winter sports.

After biking in Europe I went out to Park City for physical testing and some water ramping. I left for Lake Placid shortly after that. I worked with another Olympic gold medalist Eric Bergoust. He was a very helpful coach and my jumps were improving a lot with his help. His technical advice helped me to fix some of my problems. I love being in Lake Placid it is a great place to train. The OTC is so convenient, the athletes there are so fun to be around! I feel like I fit in with when I am there. I also love how close everything is. It is easy to focus and get productive training there. The fourth of July was really fun there too! I treaded water for about 45 minutes watching fireworks from the middle of Mirror Lake so fun!

I went back out to Park City after Lake Placid for some more ramping before we took a trip to Mt. Hood. I got my tricks ready to throw on snow again. I also did an aerials water ramp comp. It was a lot different than mogul skiing but it was fun to try out.

Mt. Hood was great. It is nice to ski a bit on a flatter course in the middle of summer just to slow things down and really work on technique. Jumping there was also really good. I figured out what things I still needed to work on when I got back to water ramps. We went on a really pretty hike behind a waterfall there. I also got to ski in my T-shirt and spandex there

which was really nice because it was so hot. It was also really funny to be skiing moguls and jumping with tight clothes. Some extra incentive to do it correctly.

I came back to Park City for some more training. Water ramping, trampoline and strength and conditioning. It has been really good here so far getting a lot of work done on my jumps and getting stronger. I have also been slackling here a lot. It is so much fun! I am defiantly obsessed. Thanks to Gibbon for giving me a line. I love to learn and throw new tricks on and off of my slackline. It is a great way to spend my spare time and my friends really like it too.

I did the show in Park City last week and it was really fun to jump in front of all of those people. The energy in the crowd is great. I love it when people want to come watch what I love to do. It is great to inspire others to try water ramping and skiing. I am doing the show again this week so if any one is in town they should come watch it is really fun.

Over all this summer had been great. I have gotten to be around lots of really inspiring people. I am so happy that I get to call my favorite thing my "job".

Heidi Kloser

New Skills

Thursday morning started out with attempting to do wheelies in the grass. It was fun, I am not very good at doing wheelies but I got up a couple of times and fell shortly after that. When the boys arrived we headed out for a relay ride. After we got warmed up we started the relays, it was a fun way to do interval training. Then we rode around the Black Forest on some cool trails. We headed to the bike park again and played on the obstacles for a while. I have learned how to do so much new stuff this trip. I learned how to ride over logs, teeter-totters and how to jump off of drops. It would have been nice to know how to do this stuff before the Offenburg World Cup but at least I know how to do it now. I still have a lot to learn but hopefully some of my new skills will come in handy on my ride tomorrow. The bike park is fun and by the end of our time there we were pushing our skill levels. Shortly before we left and on our way out we had a couple of crashes. I saw Wesley go off a drop almost had it and her bike jut toppled over her; she got up a little shaken and beaten up and rode down the hill. At the bottom of the hill Alisha and I both fell in the same spot, I rolled out of it but she scraped her knee up. It was hard to stop there with all of the people standing in the way. We took a break ate lunch and then headed out for a second ride in the afternoon. It was a nice easy ride into Freiburg on the bike path and then we turned around. It is crazy here you have watch out for cars on the bike path because they drive on it. They have little roads everywhere; you can just ride up the mountain on the road and then find a super sweet down hill on the way down.

Yesterday we went up a mountain road for about an hour and then found a hut and a field. The hut was closed this time of year but I bet it is packed in the summer. We rode up the field a little ways and found a really cool down hill. My hands started to cramp towards the bottom. The very bottom of the trail had crazy tight switchbacks. We came back changed and headed in to Freiberg. We walked around the city for a while. It was absolutely packed in there because it is a holiday weekend. We went in this really big old church. It was really big and had some cool paintings in it. Out side of the Church was a crape stand. We stopped and got some delicious crapes! We walked back to our meeting spot and then we left some of the girls in Freiberg to get their haircut and take the train back. They said it was a unique experience getting their haircut in a foreign country.

Today we went for a little pre-race ride. Rode some on the single track and then did some short efforts on the road. We rode to the boys house and practiced wheel changes. After that we changed out of our bike clothes we went to the Waffle house and got delicious waffles. Mine had applesauce on it and it was delicious. Most of the others got wild berries and ice cream, it looked really good and I might have to try it tomorrow if we go back. I chopped some potatoes with flimsy knives, seems like my designated job.

Post Race

The race was the hardest mountain bike race I have ever raced in as expected. These girls are so fast. I raced hard, but had some difficulty. My start was not very good, I could not get my foot in my pedal for a couple hundred meters and I had to avoid a pileup at the first corner. So I was pretty far off the back at the hill and I had some catching up to do if I wanted to stay in the race. I passed a girl on the climb and was pretty close to another right before the down hill. I made it over the drops no problem, jut take it at a comfortable speed. I was pushing the speed on some of the other stuff and crashed quite a few times (not to hard, just slow). I got passed back when I was running down one of the technical spots after I crashed. I kept crashing and lost a lot of time, I raced hard but got pulled at 80% on my second lap. I was bummed that I could not finish all of the laps, but also happy that I did not have to run down the technical spots any more. I think that I learned a lot from the race, about how to ride technical stuff and that I race better at the end of the summer when I am in better shape. It was really cool to watch the pro men race and see how fast they were and how they handled the technical stuff.

The next day we went for a nice ride up in the Black Forest (Schwartzwald) we found some fun single track to ride down, it was dry and loose. The down hill was fun and I defiantly think that riding the Offenburg course helped my technical skills and I feel like I am improving each day. We found a little practice park in the forest with some logs, drops and other boards to practice on. It was fun to go there and just practice on that equipment and learn how to handel the stuff in a controlled environment. I think that it helps to be able to practice skill where you feel comfortable. It was nice we also had Heather there to give us some pointers too.

We went out for a pretty long ride with the boys yesterday and got to ride an awesome section of single track up past St. Petersburg along a ridge and by some giant windmills. They may not look that big from far a way and like they are moving slow but they are huge and generating a lot of power. The down hill was loose, turny and dropy. It felt like I was riding stuff similar to the rides in Colorado. I definitely have gotten a lot beter at riding sine I have gotten to Europe and ridden one of the toughest mountain biking courses in the world. I would not have wanted to ride that section if it was in Colorado before I came here. I only fell once on it and it was a silly little mistake. This trip has made me better at riding my bike. We also got to see the skills of Wayne the mechanic when Wesley broke her brake and he fixed it with a camera cord and electrical tape. Very Cool! After the ride it started to rain, which was nice because it has given me some relief from my allergies which have just been killing me this trip. We took some short naps, I stretched and we went to dinner at a pizzeria to celebrate Heathers birthday. I love European pizza!

Today we went for a rainy ride! It is fun to ride in the rain. It looked so cool up in the mountains with all of the mist and the green trees. The trails are not dry any more. On the way up the mountain we saw a black and yellow salamander just standing in the same spot, we rode by and took pictures and it did not move. Our whole group saw it in the same spot just chilling in the middle of the fire road. We also saw lots of huge slugs on the trail, they were really grows if you accidentally rode over them, they exploded and left slug guts all over your wheel. There were also some really big snails on the road too. On the sides of the roads are the cows, sheep, goats, and horses of corse. After our nice rainy ride I hopped in the shower and warned up a bit. We wanted to do some laundry so we drove in the town and tried to find a Laundromat. Apparently the everyone that does not have a washer and drier must do their laundry on Friday from 12-2 because the lady told us that that was the only time they were open for laundry. I walked around in the town after that and tried to find the playground that I had my 3rd birthday at, I had no luck. It was a while ago so some things may have changed. I guess that I cannot rely on my memory from when I was 3 to help me find the playground. I walked around the town a bit more then headed home to stretch and have some dinner.

Check out the other blogs at http://eurocamp2011.wordpress.com

Mountain Biking

I got to pre-ride the world cup course the past couple of days, it is completely different than anything I have aver ridden in my life. It is also way harder. I got to the course and started riding, we came up to the technical sections and stopped to take a look at the stuff. I got pretty scared. They told me to prepare for drops so I went out and rode some drops but nothing like this. I rode down the drops that are pretty big and skinny with multipul drops, just need to keep my hands off the front brakes. The roots here are also really slippery, but not the hardest part. I have to walk some of the course because I am not prepared for this at all. Vail has been a little snowy lately preventing me from doing the training I wanted to do. When I first got out on the coure yesterday I felt like I have never ridden my bike before in my life. I felt a bit more confident today, after I knew what some of the stuff was like, and I knew what I was going to walk down and just needed to find the best way down it. I though I was alright at bike riding until I got here. The other competitors all fly down this stuff with ease, and are super fast. I am just hoping to be able to ride it better than I have been in training, race the best I can and hope that my knee is not hurting to bad. I was really glad that I got to see the juniors race today and see how things were going in the race, and that I was not the only one running down stuff. I have never see a race this big. I am racing tomorrow, no more pre-riding on the course.

Checkout the blog Wesley Geer put together for the trip. http://eurocamp2011.wordpress.com

Start to Summer

After the skiing competitions ended I went back home for a week with Ashley Caldwell. We were lucky and got some nice skiing in that week. The weather was different every day so we got almost every type of snow condition. We even decided to try snowboarding. We probably fell about 20 times getting to the lift from the parking structure. After a few more runs of falling constantly we started to get the hang of it. Snowboarding was fun but I am defiantly a skier. Vail got hit by a huge storm and it was time to hit some huge cornices and rip some powder.

We headed to Charleston to visit Ashley's family and go the beach. It was nice to get some sun this spring since it has been stuck in winter mode in Colorado. We hit the beach and got some pretty awesome sunburns. You need a lot more sunscreen than you think when you used to winter weather. The warm weather was nice but the 85 degree days definitely put a hurt on me. We had some fun slacklining on the beach, playing in the sand and painting our selves with mud.

I came back home, back to winter. Skied some more while the mountain was still open. I went with my family to the desert and we did lots of biking and hiking. I finished up high school and started to train for biking. I got selected to go to Germany with USA cycling to train and race with the U23 team. I get to do a world cup and a racer cup durring my trip. I trained in the gym, on the bike and skinned up Vail mtn some. The amount of snow around this time of year is incredible. It is nearing the end of May and the mountain looks a lot like it does on closing day some years (other than the fact they plowed the roads). The trip to Europe this time should be different and hopefully exciting, it has been a while since I have been to Europe in the Summer. I am excited to race bikes and hopefully get stronger for skiing.

Skiing

I had a good competition in China ending up 10th. I was certainly ready to head home. The travel home was very long and the trip in Europe and China was getting long too. The travel home ended up being 56:30 hours +. That is a record and I hope I never break it. We went from China to Europe to U.S.A. it would have been much niceer to just fly direct from Beijing to the U.S.. I made it home in time for Christmas which was very good because I did not want to be stuck in Europe for Christmas with all of the snow storms. Christmas was nice we stayed at home for the morning, then we drove over to Aspen to see the rest of the family. We went sledding up at my Grandparents cabin.

I coached the kids at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail (SSCV) for their Christmas Camp. I had a good time working with them. It is great to coach the kids because it reminds you how far you have come and what a little hard work can do. It was also really fun to coach them because I skied some places I had not skied in a couple of years. Skiing the trees and moguls with the kids was really fun.

After I was done coaching I trained on the courses at Vail. I also got the opportunity to work on the airbag. The airbag was great because it is a good way to learn new tricks without having to wait for the summer and water ramps. I got some good training durring the break. I was also happy because I had consistent axes to the gym at SSCV (Center Of Awesomeness). It is really important to go to the gym because strength is a huge part of our sport.

I headed up to Mont Gabrial for a World Cup up here. Unfortunately it did not go very well. I fell after the top air and did not make the finals. I still have a couple of World Cups left over here so hopefully they go better. I am headed to Lake Placid tomorrow and I am really excited to go there. I had a great time at the OTC this summer and I really like it there. After Lake Placid I go to Calgary and I will see where I go from there.

Heidi Kloser