We had our first comp for the season this past Saturday, and it was great to get out of the start gate!

Conditions were pretty tough for Soelden which says a lot, cause its normally pretty tough already!  It was snowing and raining a bit a couple days before the race, so the conditions were less than great, but they broke through a tiny bit.

Skiing was ok for me.  It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but it’s good to get back up to speed, and I felt really comfortable, just not super fast.

I’m looking forward to some relaxing and recharging in Maui!  I will be back on snow the 14th in Colorado!  and then we race in Aspen! yay.

I love races on home turf!

It’s been a while, but hopefully you’ve seen a bunch of my summer updates! I might as well do a grand recap, to get you all up to date rolling into our first World Cup.

To start off, I’m not gonna lie: Last year really sucked for me. It was tough to deal with an injury that never seemed serious enough to sideline me from my sport. So after a bunch of mediocre finishes and a lot of searching, the season finally finished with a kick in the butt to motivate me for this year.

I put all my energy this summer into getting healthy fast! It was not easy, but the work was well worth it. I spent most of my time in and out of the gym, chiropractor, Pilates, and getting body work. Speaking of which, have you heard of Yamuna Body Rolling?? Well, look it up, cause it works wonders.

While it was strenuous work, I had fun doing all of that.

I stayed at home in Maui for 2 whole months straight, unbelievable for a schedule like mine! I only left once for a photo shoot for Nike which was well worth it. You can see my posing all over the web and at tons of sports stores in the U.S. It’s pretty awesome.

Besides the training, I got to surf a bunch too, as well as start up some new hobbies like slack line and rock climbing.

On the snow side of things, I have been training hard there too. I think I have already skied more than ever now going into the first race and I still have some days to go before the season really kicks off in Soelden. I skied with the team in New Zealand and stayed some extra days to ski a little bit more. In Chile after Portillo with the speed team, I stayed a few more days there to ski with the tech guys. The extra skiing just felt right!

It’s been a lot of fun, and I am skiing really strong. Times are good, but I think it’s really going to show up in the races. I am very excited to race, and be back to my normal healthy self.

Just sitting here in my hotel room in Switzerland it’s easy for me to reflect on the tough times, and see how it not only effects your results, but it chips away at everything: self confidence, self awareness, ability to focus, everything. For me when I jumped back on skis after spending months away from the snow, the fact that I was healthy again, made it so much easier. I can’t even remember a time that it’s ever been this easy. I feel great!

The race is next weekend, so bring it on!

Aloha,

Jules

Back on snow, and loving it! Just got finished with a two week speed camp in Portillo, Chile. The conditions were epic as always, and it was really fun getting back up to speed and catching some air.

We got really really lucky cause a huge storm came right as we landed in Santiago. We had to rush our stuff up to try and beat the road closure. Our bus couldn’t make it all the way, but we were shuttled with some smaller vans. So we got to spend the rest of the day and the whole next day staring at the snow and wind as it hammered down on the valley. It was a great way to get back into the winter though. I got to get a lot of rest, and wake up to a bluebird powder day on Monday!

Our team just skied powder all day, and had a ton of fun, and the rest of the camp was sunny and gorgeous! I am getting all my ski gear tuned in and it’s feeling great. My back is all healed and skiing is going fast! I am psyched.

I had a great time with all the girls. We played around on the slackline and had some fun in the sun!

Talk to you guys in Europe! Only one month til the first race!

Julia

The season has begun!

We are in New Zealand getting our ski feet back underneath us finally! It’s been an awesome summer training in Maui. I’ve been busy getting healthy and it feels so great to be able to test out the new strength on snow.

There is tons of snow down here and it’s beautiful as always! The whole team is down here and everyone is feeling pretty good, looking really healthy! We’ve been doing a bunch of drills, but the gates and timing will soon be set up and we will be ready to rip!!!

I’ll let you know how things progress… for now though, all systems go on the snow!

aloha Jules

Hope Everyone is doing well!!!

I have been busy busy as a bee! I flew to Mt Hood, Oregon for the day to do a photo shoot for Nike. It was a lot of fun and there were lots of nice people there to make me look fabulous!! They will be posting some video and stuff on nike.com so I will let you know when that goes up!!!

So speaking of Mt Hood, my teammates are having a fund raiser soon so if anyone is in the Mt Hood area or wants to have a lot of fun with lots of ski team athletes you should definitely check it out! this is what is going down!!! I hear the athletes are going to be Erik Schlopy, Steven Nyman, Scott Macartney, Tim Jitloff, Leanne Smith, Laurenne Ross, and Keely Kelleher.

Clinics- Saturday, July 18-Sunday, July 19 at Palmer Glacier/Timberline/Mt. Hood - Tentative Schedule:

6:15-7:15AM: Registration, Check-in, Breakfast, Athlete Meet & Greet

8:00AM: Meet on top of Palmer at our designated lane to break up into groups

11:00-11:30AM: Break for Lunch

- Autograph session on Saturday (after lunch, for one hour)

- Breakfast and lunch provided on both days

Dinner/Auction- Saturday, July 18 at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland

- Address: 1849 SW Salmon St, Portland, OR 97207

- Doors open at 5:00PM, Silent Auction/Cocktails until 7:15PM, Dinner at 7:30PM

- Wine/beer and dinner provided

- Attire: Black Tie and Blue Jeans

Also for all the details go the website. http://www.worldcupdreams.org/

I gotta run for now!!! literally! I’m starting to ramp up the training and getting to my 8 hour days!!! The hardest part is eating enough… but don’t worry I am still having fun! Tonight is an Eddie Vedder concert! Stephan and Kaz are coming over to eat my delicious chicken Tikka Masala! yummy! then we are going to rock!

Aloha!

Jules

Winter’s long gone now… for a while there, even into mid April, I was still totally in winter mode - skiing at Nationals, testing skis, and doing a celebrity ski event. But now that I had 10 days or so on Maui, some physical fitness tests in Park City Utah at the brand new US Ski Team training facility (which is just extremely state of the art!) and am now in California for a photo shoot and some hangtime with friends and family, I’m just all over the summer vibe.

Gone is the cold, the snow, the white capped mountains… on comes the bikini, the spaghetti straps, the slippers. And of course, no summer would be complete without some good sweaty workouts and strenuous physical activity.

The photos were taken of my sister and I in the climbing gym.

See you guys later on… have fun out there, and be safe!

Jules

I am back in Europe and the main event was the Verbier High Five. Its a fun series of five different events, GS, skiercross, speed trap, Carlsberg triathlon, and parallel slalom. You can check out the details http://www.verbierhighfivebycarlsberg.com/high-five/en/home. I was 2nd!! Won some new long johns. The weather was beautiful, and its always nice to have some fun friendly competition after a long season.

Right now I am in Saas Fee testing skis. They are being incredibly awesome. We get on the lift at 6 am and whip tons of runs off by snowmobile, then done by 10. I had a day of GS, and a day of Super G. Tomorrow I am going to try out my new DH skis. Things are good! Hope everyone is enjoying their spring.
I also want to touch on the passing of my friend and ski Legend Shane McConkey. His memorial was this past Sunday and I wish I was able to make it home. I will just share my personal story of how Shane has inspired me.

Growing up in Squaw Valley you get to know your “ski family” pretty fast. Its a small place, full of lots of big personalities. Though I was much younger than Shane, and didn’t get the chance to really meet him until I caught up in age, he was a huge influence on all the kids I looked up. There is something about Squaw Valley, that really inspires everyone there to just love skiing. I along with Marco Sullivan took the path of ski racing, but yet many other of my friends took the path of being kick ass free skiers. We all started in the same place, doing non-stop Kt runs, skiing the fingers, and looking up to crazy guys like Shane who would go out on water skis, and run events like the pain McShlonkey open, where pretty much anything goes, crazy costumes, chinese downhill and basically just have fun on skis. When JT started ski BASE jumping with Shane, I was convinced that would be my next sport. I had dreams of taking off to ski some crazy shoot and off a cliff between worldcup events. Sounds totally crazy I know, like when would I find the time to do that!?!

Well thats what Shane did. He inspired us all to DREAM BIG! So thanks Shane. I can tell you one thing for sure: I will keep having fun with what I do, and keep the tradition of just being stoked everytime I put my skis on!

My heart goes out to Sherry and Ayla, and you can check out more details on how to help out at http://shanemcconkey.org/. You can also leave your comments on how YOU get stoked out there in life…

Not sure anyone has ever answered that question, so here it goes…

After course inspection, the racers typically all hang out at a lodge at the top of the hill. If there is only one lodge up there, then we’re all packed in there and depending on how small it is, we’re packed in there like sardines. Imagine 70 girls all in one room, plus coaches, hangers-on, waiters, etc… a wild scene.

As the start time approaches, people start making their way up to the start area.

Once there, I have a quick meeting with my technician Andrea. He gives me some last minute info on the skis and perhaps we go over the course again. Shortly thereafter, I go inward and visualize the course with its optimum line, bumps, rolls, and jumps.

As my number gets closer, I do some active warm-up stretches to get the muscles firing. Tara, the US Ski Team Physio uses the stick that helps loosen my muscles one last time. I take off my jacket, Andrea lays down my skis, brushes the excess snow off my boots, and I click in the bindings. Andrea gives the bindings one last tweak, brushes off the top of the ski, towels off the base, and off I go.

Beep beep beep… see ya!

Well, we’re not in Kansas anymore! Nope. This little old town tucked away in deep eastern Europe on the Greek border is quaint, cold, and old. Kinda cool to take a step back in time and walk down cobblestone lined streets and monastery type buildings with peeling plaster and shuttered windows.

But next to all that history is a super long gondola ride from town to the finish area and then 2 more lifts up to the start. Interesting how you see old and modern next to one another. By bringing a World Cup race here, it’s obvious they’re trying to ramp up their tourism.

The hill is pretty darn icy. It’s sent a lot of girls to tears, so we’ll see what kind of carnage we’ll find this weekend.

It’ll be worth tuning in I think. I hope I can take it to the next level.

Later!

Jules

The girl’s side of the World Championships in Val d’Isere is over and done with and I’m truly bummed about how things turned out. Well, that is, I was bummed.

I’ve hit some new lows in my career. Things had come somewhat easy for me in years past. I always seemed to ski fast, mostly in the top 10 and hardly more than 1 second out from the leader. So when I came in 2 seconds, 3 seconds behind, and my body unable to bear the load of a long downhill in the World Champs combined and I pulled up, I hit rock bottom.

I had no idea why I became so slow.

The good news is that I have some clues and I’m reassessing what I have to do to dig my way out of this mess.

I’ll be out in Tarvisio pluggin’ away at my comeback, so make sure to tune in right here at UniversalSports.com!!!