A day in the life: Race day with Olympic athlete Ali Nullmeyer
When I watch other sports on TV, I always wonder what the competitor’s preparations looked like for that day. Did they wake up early? Did they do their special game routine in the morning? As an athlete, I know they didn’t just show up and hop on the field, rink, track or hill without their pre-game routine. For alpine skiers racing on the World Cup, our first race run of the day starts at 10:00 AM local time, however, our day really begins at 5:30 AM when our race day preparations begin. For me, here’s what a typical race day looks like.
Our race mornings usually begin with a 5:30 AM wake-up. Once I’m up, I’ll get dressed and head downstairs for breakfast where the hotel staff is kind enough to get up early to lay out some options. I’ll try to eat some eggs or yogurt for protein and some bread and peanut butter for carbs and fats – although race day nerves can make it hard to eat first thing in the morning for me. After breakfast, I’ll start my morning gym warm-up routine. This includes a mixture of mobility exercises, stretching, breathing techniques, muscle activation and some quick agility movements that usually takes about 30 minutes. If I have any nagging issues in the morning, I will also see our team physiotherapist to tape my back or anything else that needs it.
After warm-up, our team hops in the van to head to the mountain around 6:45 AM. At the hill, we help our servicemen carry our skis to the hospitality tent. Hospitality is the designated spot for the athletes and team staff for the day. It is equipped with seats, tables and some food and drinks. On race day, I have five pairs of skis with me -one for warm-up, one for inspecting the course, one for each race run, and one pair for free skiing in case there are rocks that could damage my skis. At this point, I pull on all my equipment and head to the lift and for on snow-free skiing runs. I take two warm-up runs where I do slow turns focusing on technique and the feelings that I want for the day. At most World Cups, there are warm up courses set for us to practice in before the actual race. I aim for two to three runs of highly focused and intense runs to get a solid feeling on my skis before the race. This is also the time I test how my equipment feels on the snow and make any last-minute changes before the race. Changes could include anything from making the ski more or less sharp to adjusting the aggressiveness of the tuning of the ski so that it reacts differently on the snow.
After the practice course, we have what we call an “inspection” of the race course. Inspection is when the athletes slowly slide through the race course to see and visualize how they want to ski it. Every race course is different, so this time allows us to see what’s coming and prepare mentally. During this time, we will stop a few times at different parts of the course to discuss our plan of attack with our coaches.
Skiing can be a game of what we call “hurry up and wait,” meaning that after inspection, there’s not much to do but go to hospitality and mentally prepare yourself for the race. During this last hour or so, I do some breathing exercises to work through nerves, chat with teammates and take a few moments to visualize my race run plan. About 20 minutes before my start time, I head to the start area to do my final preparations. My ski serviceman will have my race skis in the starting area, and I will spend these last 15 minutes before I go doing another physical warm-up and visualizing the course. I then clip into my skis a few racers before I go, slide into the start gate when it’s my turn, and then go!
After my first run, I stick around and watch my teammates. Once they are down, we chat about the course, the hard sections and how we felt. Then, I head back to hospitality to get out of the cold (our spandex racing suits are not warm at all!) and debrief my run with my coaches. Our coaches video our runs so we can watch and review it in between runs. We talked about technique if I executed my plan and if there were any changes I wanted to see for the next run. I will also grab some food to refuel at this time. Only the fastest 30 skiers from the first run get to participate in the second run, which is usually less than half of the starting field of 60-70 women. Skiing down the course is a matter a hundredths of a second and the time between first place and 30th place is usually less than a three second difference. So, when the first run is over, and the top 30 racers have been made official, we head back out to do our inspection for the second run, which will be a completely different course than the first run. I love this part of alpine skiing because there are never two courses that are the same, it keeps things exciting and new every run! After inspection, I run through the same routine for the second run – wait and prepare, go to the top, final preparations and go!
After the second run, my team and I head straight on to our next competition or training venue a few hours away. Our race schedule requires a lot of travel, so we head back to the hotel, have a quick debrief about the race, pack up and start driving to our next location that afternoon. We arrive at our new hotel, grab a late dinner and head to bed as soon as we can after a long, exhausting, but very exciting day of racing!