Its been a long time since I last reported to you. In the last 5 weeks, I have been on three different continents, in three different countries, and skied in some amazing conditions.

After my crazy hiking adventure that I wrote about last, I was battling an infected blister on my foot as I got on the plane to New Zealand. Thankfully I didn’t have any more problems with that as I arrived in the country. Out of the four different years I have been to New Zealand, this year welcomed us with the biggest snow base I had seen yet, which provided for some great training. New Zealand is always a starter camp for our team, in which we ease back into full speed training after a good three months of summer workouts under our belts. Our coaches set up a really good progression and I felt balanced and confident each step of the way. At the end of the camp, we were back in the start gate again when we participated in some “fun” races that did not have a whole lot of meaning other then getting back in a race situation. I finished first in the first race, second in the second race, and in the third race I was third! More importantly, these races gave me the chance to work with the transition to my new technician, which is going great and I am very excited.

After returning from New Zealand to home in Mammoth, California for 10 brief days, it was out the door again. Destination: Chile. Our annual trip to Chile always takes us to the amazing resort of Portillo (you may recognize Portillo as one of the settings in Athleta’s current Holiday Preview catalog). We were blessed again with a ton of snow and an absolutely fantastic training. We had one jump built into our course that was by far the biggest jump I have ever gone off. We were flying almost 60 meters going about 100 kph. It was huge, and a little scary at first, but our whole team rose to the challenge and we were reminded that anything we encounter on the World Cup will now seem simple and small compared to what encountered during training. It was also very cool to be fully up to speed training against our teammate Lindsey Vonn, who is officially the number one ranked skier in the world right now.

I am now back in Mammoth resting and getting in one more short block of dryland training before the season kicks off in October. Thanks for your patience with my update. Talk to you soon.

STACEY COOK is an elite member of the U.S. Ski Team’s alpine skiing program. She competed in the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy and was a member of the 2007 World Championships Team... {more»}