AST Athlete Journal: Polly Lang

Hello Everyone!!

It’s been a while since I last checked in and a lot has happened. The season is picking up and we are heading into the busy season after Christmas break. I hope everyone was able to get to the mountains and had luck finding snow over the holidays! It was nice to have a little reset from racing and have some rest days.

Before Christmas, we had a big block of racing at Panorama for the Norams and a FIS series. Huge thanks to the volunteers for running smooth and efficient races. I was really happy with my results from the Noram slalom. I scored points on both days and had a top-10 run on one of the days! The GS was less successful, I am still trying to figure out how to ski fast on Old-timer. The FIS series was a little tough for me. I crashed pretty heavily on the first day in the GS and decided not to race the next day.

After the break Zoe and I headed straight to Colorado for the university races. Boy did the elevation hit me like a train there. I realized Colorado was high but I didn’t realize it was quite so high. Walking up a flight of stairs in ski boots left me out of breath. It was nice to race in a different environment, meet lots of coaches and see how college skiing works. I was able to score college points in both the slaloms. I ended up not racing the second run of GS as my back was in a lot of pain. I was able to get a last-minute flight home to avoid an 18-hour drive for my back. Since being home I have been attending a lot of physio and dialing in on active recovery. I had a bone scan last week, and the results read like a whole lot of gibberish. A big thanks to the team and the Benson Concussion Clinic for explaining to me what a “pseudo articulation” is and making sense of the report for me. It appears I have some focal bone remodelling on the right L5 transverse process and some partial fusions on the sacral articulations. For those of you like me and are not up to speed on specific medical terms it essentially appears I have a lot of inflammation in my lower back area causing the pain. At training have been focussed on a very technical warm-up and managing intensity and volume. While some of the team was in Kimberly doing speed, Katie, Keira and I were training a watered lane on Bronze. It’s great to challenge myself and get reps on a surface like this as we haven’t had much ice training this year. It’s still gonna take a bit of work to have full confidence in my downhill ski but I am making progress every day. 

This week the team is getting the opportunity to train at Lake Louise and Norquay. It’s nice to train at these venues in preparation for the upcoming Norams the following week. 

As the season picks up I would like to recognize our team sponsors GMC Dealers of Alberta, Karbon Sports, Genstar Canada, Gear Up Mountain Sports and Mountain Fire Foods. Their support is crucial to our team’s season and we wouldn’t be able to do all these awesome things without them!

Thanks for checking in with me!

Polly