Desire

I desire to be the best skier I can be..  And that is just the beginning..
I desire to be the best person I can be..  And that is a change..
I desire to be a good memory to everyone that meets me..  And that is hard to imagine..
I desire to be remembered..  And that is something I'm willing to fight for..
I desire someone to read this and know all this before-hand..  And that is up to them..

Round two: Enter Maine

As the last season ended with three weeks of non stop racing from Wyoming all the way to California it was time for me to take a vacation and plan my next move.  I asked around to see where would be a good place to resume my training for the start of my second season  and get prepared for the possibility of going to Sochi, and in the mix Maine Winter Sports arose victoriously.

Why Maine?  There's many reasons but the main reason that made sense to me was the opportunity to belong somewhere in the Nordic world where all my questions can be answered and I could train without the question of "am I doing this right?", which last season I found myself asking many times.

Well, after literally a week worth of driving across the country I finally have arrived to this very new land that they call upper Maine.  I arrived and I was very welcomed by my new teammates to the famous farm house in Caribou, I put my stuff down in the room that they had recently painted prior to my arrival and I proceeded to feel comfortable.  The very next day I met all my new coaches and ran a very "hello!! Here's Training!!" 5k race in downtown Caribou.

Now it's been almost a week since I have been here and I'm still getting used to the mechanics of it all but I can already tell its going to be a very hard and fun summer, and I'm totally ready and excited for all of it.

Stress

Just went through the two most stressful weeks I have had in a long time.. Races, events between them, driving, and the lack of training time and recovery made me a ticking bomb.

I don't know if I can diffuse myself or just explode.. I need some time to find myself and go on with my journey. I know what I should do it's just a matter of executing it.

These are trying times.. I must move on, I must survive.

Innocence

Life can bring us down sometimes.. That's what everyone says at one point or another.. Today I realized that is not really life that bring us down but it's the things that we fill our lives with that do, not life itself.. As I was getting ready to race, a bunch of 6th graders started cheering for me and my teammates.. I couldn't help it but to go and get them even more excited that they already were.. I took a picture with them and that's when I shared a part of their innocence.. It was very liberating and my mind was completely clear.. See, those kids have not filled their lives with greed, hate, jealousy, or materialism.. They truly want to be there for the experience, the chance to laugh and enjoy themselves.. It felt good to be free of all that.. It's a feeling I will look forward to.

Patience

Carl Jung wrote "Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."
As much I want things to appear such as medals and happiness I must be patient and realize that those things can not be accomplished in a couple of weeks. One step at a time, forward, knowing exactly why is it that I am going that way.. That's the formula to success.
Patience, however, can diminish the passion.. If I don't have the mental strength to balance patience with personal achievements then the passion will become stale. I will be patient, but I will be strong every time it is demanded out of me.. Especially if I am the one demand it.

Fear

As I'm looking at a beautiful lake, reading about the birkebeiner, I can't not help to think about the big picture of all the things that I'm going through.. I should be scared.. I should be buckling at my knees when I see at what I am against.. But I am not.. I am learning, I am evolving, I am becoming what I will be in a couple of years.. I see fear and I laugh and they know I'm coming.. And if they don't know then they are the ones that should be afraid..

Lifetime..

Most people usually have many paths to follow and many ways to follow that path in their lifetime.. Some people just follow one.. Either way, some of us do not care to know where other people come from and how their path has come to cross theirs.. Here we all are, if you're reading this it means our paths have crossed at some point in our lifetimes.. Are you asleep at the wheel or are you aware? Do you care to know where I am going? Do you know where you are going? Are you racing through your life time to win whatever it is that you're rushing for? Here we are..