If you are unfamiliar with my story over the last couple of months, the phrase "skeleton lawyer" might conjure up images of a dusty pile of bones wildly gesticulating in a courtroom or life slowly draining from an attorney chained to a desk for years on end. Luckily, neither of those visualizations apply to me. You see, I’ve been spending the winter learning the winter sport of skeleton at Utah Olympic Park in Park City but have been incredibly fortunate to still be able to work remotely as a startup/tech/corporate lawyer (makes sense now, right?). As I’m wrapping my time here, I thought I would take a few moments to reflect on my path.
I won’t go into great detail about how I got into the sport of skeleton (there’s already very well-written account of that here), so I’ll start at the beginning of our driving school in November. There were about fifteen or twenty people learning to slide, from high school students to people that were even older than I (I went in fully expecting to be the oldest new slider). As new sliders, we started on curve 11 of the 15-curve track to just introduce us to the feel of sliding before subjecting us to the five-plus g-forces we’d feel when going from the top of the track. As the week progressed, we moved higher—from curve 11 to curve 6 to curve 3—making it almost all the way to the top.
After the one-week driving school we had a break before the beginning of the development program season. When we resumed sliding, only six of the original sliders from our driving school returned. We all resumed at curve 3 and stayed there until the coach felt that we’d progressed enough to move up to the top of the mountain. One by one, my fellow athletes moved up the mountain until only two of us remained at the lower start. I started to become consumed by my failure to reach the top quickly and that obsession with the end result in turn made it impossible to truly focus on the process of daily, incremental improvement.
Well, wouldn’t you know it—I finally moved up to the top of the mountain (yay), and my outcome-based mindset started the vicious cycle of self-doubt all over again. You see, I tend to be a perfectionist, and limiting that aspect of my personality has probably proved to be the most challenging hurdle I’ve faced while being in Utah. Going from the top of the mountain meant training not only with the athletes from my driving school, but some of the best sliders in the world—people that have been skeleteers (yes, I just made that word up) for years. It was so disheartening to always find myself at the back of the pack, seconds behind the day’s leaders, and I hated that each day’s printed time sheets memorialized my failures.
Further, as someone who has been fairly successful at most athletic pursuits, adjusting to this new normal proved incredibly difficult for me. It was so hard to accept that the 100% effort I gave in each training session wasn’t giving me the results I wanted. One day in mid-February, though, one of the more seasoned sliders must have sensed my frustration and took a few minutes to both reassure me that my feelings were normal and encourage me to enjoy the few moments we got on the track each day. From then on, I consciously decided to stop looking at the time sheets, quit comparing myself to other sliders, and focus only on my personal improvement. It’s not that I don’t want to be the fastest or the best, but as a new slider with no previous experience and on a down-market rental sled I realized that those preoccupations were disruptive and taking away from my development.
The path hasn’t necessarily been linear, but realigning my focus has done wonders for both my sliding and my mental well-being. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m still quite a ways behind the World Cup athletes, but I find that when I concentrate not on the things I can’t control but on the task at hand—making an adjustment to my start, the next curve, feeling the line of the track—the results take care of themselves and I can go home each day content with the effort I’ve given.
For the last part of the winter I’ve continued to try to maintain perspective. When I’m having a rough day at the track, I wonder at how I have been blessed with an opportunity so few people will ever have. I remind myself that personal worth isn’t determined by a place on the podium, a finish time, or a clean run. I think about all the people I love who wished me well when I left Nebraska, who have checked in to see how I’m doing, and who will welcome me back even if I were the worst slider in the world. I reflect on all of the really great people I’ve been able to meet in my very short time around the sport. And I remember that true failure would be running away from the mountain instead of heading to the start line again.
I’m not sure if this will be the end of my skeleton career or if I’ll be back again next year, particularly as it remains to be seen how to successfully train for skeleton and endurance-heavy ultimate. Honestly, I still think I could turn out to be a pretty decent slider with a little more practice, some more sprint work, and my own sled, not an old shabby school sled. Either way, as frustrating as some of the days have been on the mountain, I know I’ll miss them when this experience comes to an end. Luckily, the lessons I’ve learned—humility, commitment, and self-worth—will last well beyond this winter.
I’m writing this for a couple of reasons: first, because those of you who ask how things are going here deserve more than the one sentence response I usually give. Second, because the next time I’m standing in front of a mountain and reaching the top seems impossible I’d like to have a reminder to take it one step at a time. Most importantly, though, the next time I see someone in a season of self-doubt, I want to remember these raw feelings so I can empathize with and come alongside of that person in the same way the other slider encouraged me. If this is the end of skeleton for me, I can’t think of a better lasting legacy.
I won’t go into great detail about how I got into the sport of skeleton (there’s already very well-written account of that here), so I’ll start at the beginning of our driving school in November. There were about fifteen or twenty people learning to slide, from high school students to people that were even older than I (I went in fully expecting to be the oldest new slider). As new sliders, we started on curve 11 of the 15-curve track to just introduce us to the feel of sliding before subjecting us to the five-plus g-forces we’d feel when going from the top of the track. As the week progressed, we moved higher—from curve 11 to curve 6 to curve 3—making it almost all the way to the top.
After the one-week driving school we had a break before the beginning of the development program season. When we resumed sliding, only six of the original sliders from our driving school returned. We all resumed at curve 3 and stayed there until the coach felt that we’d progressed enough to move up to the top of the mountain. One by one, my fellow athletes moved up the mountain until only two of us remained at the lower start. I started to become consumed by my failure to reach the top quickly and that obsession with the end result in turn made it impossible to truly focus on the process of daily, incremental improvement.
Well, wouldn’t you know it—I finally moved up to the top of the mountain (yay), and my outcome-based mindset started the vicious cycle of self-doubt all over again. You see, I tend to be a perfectionist, and limiting that aspect of my personality has probably proved to be the most challenging hurdle I’ve faced while being in Utah. Going from the top of the mountain meant training not only with the athletes from my driving school, but some of the best sliders in the world—people that have been skeleteers (yes, I just made that word up) for years. It was so disheartening to always find myself at the back of the pack, seconds behind the day’s leaders, and I hated that each day’s printed time sheets memorialized my failures.
Further, as someone who has been fairly successful at most athletic pursuits, adjusting to this new normal proved incredibly difficult for me. It was so hard to accept that the 100% effort I gave in each training session wasn’t giving me the results I wanted. One day in mid-February, though, one of the more seasoned sliders must have sensed my frustration and took a few minutes to both reassure me that my feelings were normal and encourage me to enjoy the few moments we got on the track each day. From then on, I consciously decided to stop looking at the time sheets, quit comparing myself to other sliders, and focus only on my personal improvement. It’s not that I don’t want to be the fastest or the best, but as a new slider with no previous experience and on a down-market rental sled I realized that those preoccupations were disruptive and taking away from my development.
The path hasn’t necessarily been linear, but realigning my focus has done wonders for both my sliding and my mental well-being. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m still quite a ways behind the World Cup athletes, but I find that when I concentrate not on the things I can’t control but on the task at hand—making an adjustment to my start, the next curve, feeling the line of the track—the results take care of themselves and I can go home each day content with the effort I’ve given.
For the last part of the winter I’ve continued to try to maintain perspective. When I’m having a rough day at the track, I wonder at how I have been blessed with an opportunity so few people will ever have. I remind myself that personal worth isn’t determined by a place on the podium, a finish time, or a clean run. I think about all the people I love who wished me well when I left Nebraska, who have checked in to see how I’m doing, and who will welcome me back even if I were the worst slider in the world. I reflect on all of the really great people I’ve been able to meet in my very short time around the sport. And I remember that true failure would be running away from the mountain instead of heading to the start line again.
I’m not sure if this will be the end of my skeleton career or if I’ll be back again next year, particularly as it remains to be seen how to successfully train for skeleton and endurance-heavy ultimate. Honestly, I still think I could turn out to be a pretty decent slider with a little more practice, some more sprint work, and my own sled, not an old shabby school sled. Either way, as frustrating as some of the days have been on the mountain, I know I’ll miss them when this experience comes to an end. Luckily, the lessons I’ve learned—humility, commitment, and self-worth—will last well beyond this winter.
I’m writing this for a couple of reasons: first, because those of you who ask how things are going here deserve more than the one sentence response I usually give. Second, because the next time I’m standing in front of a mountain and reaching the top seems impossible I’d like to have a reminder to take it one step at a time. Most importantly, though, the next time I see someone in a season of self-doubt, I want to remember these raw feelings so I can empathize with and come alongside of that person in the same way the other slider encouraged me. If this is the end of skeleton for me, I can’t think of a better lasting legacy.