AST 2020 Athlete Journal: Alyssa Hill

In April, when starting dryland with the team at CSI, I had made it my goal over the summer to make substantial gains in leg strength in order to make up for the loss of my hamstring tendon in my ACL reconstruction in 2018. By April, a year after my surgery, I found that I hadn’t made the progress that I had wanted to make. This was extremely discouraging. I wasn’t sure what exactly had gone wrong, why I hadn’t made this progress. I knew it couldn’t be my mindset: I had been dedicated to this since the day of my surgery. Knowing that dwelling on this would do more harm than good, when I started training at a new gym with a new team I decided to not focus in the setbacks of the past year, but to simply push myself to get better, without the distractions and time constraints of school that had been weighing me down. I wanted to be strong again. Now, nearing the end of August and at the beginning of our Chile camp, I think I’ve made a really big step on the way there. During the last few weeks of dryland before leaving, I noticed that I really did feel stronger; not yet where I strive to be, but I’m certainly on my way. Amid all of the uncertainty regarding our summer on-snow camp leading up to the week before we left, it was reassuring for me to know that wherever we went, I would be more comfortable on my skis than I had been in the spring. It was quite an adventure to get to Pucon(parts of which I am sure you’ll see in Ashleigh’s video next week), and we’ve only been here for a few days, but I’m looking forward to the camp and making progress, and to the season ahead.