Hey! Abby Jarzin here, checking in from Bozeman, MT. I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin originally but now live in Salt Lake City, UT and will be skiing for the University of Utah starting this fall! This summer has been a lot different than previous summers as I took a year off from skiing and training due to a bit of burnout and mental health challenges. The year off, at first, seemed like it would ruin all of the work I had previously put in and I would never be able to race at the level I was at before. However, the year off taught me many valuable lessons that I don’t think I would have learned if I had not taken the year off. The first valuable lesson I learned was that more training is not always better! It is easy as an endurance athlete to want to do more and more and more, thinking that it will help you excel, but often times it not only drains your energy physically, but it also exhausts you mentally. I learned that at some point, if you are dreading training, you are going to burn out. What I have found in my year hiatus was that you really don’t lose much progress from taking a break or doing less, and actually, I feel energized and more excited for training than I ever have. When you have your own back and truly listen to what you personally need, I think that you end up performing at a higher level since there is an element of enjoyment and fun in training again. The other important thing I learned was that rest is really really important. I mean really important. Taking your off days seriously, and even taking an afternoon of training off throughout the week doesn’t hurt especially when you are feeling really tired. I like to use the quote “you can’t beat a dead horse” to remind myself why training when exhausted is not very beneficial. Yes, maybe that is a cheesy quote but it does remind you that in order to absorb your training load you need to rest.
The BSF elite team has been great to train with and the group of athletes I am training with has made every workout not only fun, but has also helped me push myself in workouts. It’s pretty cool to have athletes from all around the country to train with everyday. Bozeman also has endless places to hike, run, and ski, so I personally never get bored of the training locations. This last weekend, since it was the fourth of July, we had the option to train however we would like. I know many of us did some long mountain bike adventures, and others were hiking and running in the mountains. I have been recovering from a running injury so I went for a few distance skis with my roommates instead. As we finish a volume week and roll into a new week of training, I’m sure we are all enjoying our off day today. This next week it looks like we will be doing max strength as well as some skis with speeds and a few distance runs. Andy always makes training fun and affective and has so much knowledge about training and racing that I know that each week I’ll learn lots of valuable things! I look forward to the next month of training in Bozeman before I head back to Utah for school.
