Post-Season: What Happens Now?

The World Championships are always the peak event of the year - the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work. After a very successful event, I chose to take some time off from kiting to relax, refocus, and get ready for my next training block and the year ahead.

After the World Championships, I spent a few days playing tourist in Cagliari with my mom and grandma who had come to watch me race in Torregrande. I even got to go out 69F sailing on one of the training days leading up to the youth racing event. A huge thank you to 69F, Equal Sailing, and Team Dutchsail for letting me crash their training. 

I spent the following week in Lake Garda for some chill time with friends old and new. We went winging, kiting, hiking, and eating around the lake, and it was so much fun. 

From Garda I flew home to San Francisco for a few days. I knew I needed to take some time off from training and decided to spend the month of November in Hawaii to see my college friends. I repacked my board bags and headed to Oahu for a month to reconnect with friends, catch up on school work, and enjoy doing other activities. We went surfing, kiting, sailing, snorkeling, swimming and had such a great time. I hadn’t been on the island since February 2020 (just before COVID), so it was great to see all my friends and get some more of the college experience. I also began planning out the rest of my training schedule for this year and the beginning of 2022. From Oahu, I hopped over to Maui to spend Thanksgiving with my parents.

This time away from kite racing has become really important to me; in fact, just as important as the time and effort I put into my training and racing. I have spoken about burnout before, and how my experience taught me a lot about myself as a person and athlete. One of the biggest lessons I learned is about creating a sustainable training regiment that balances training, racing, and recovery time. I have found that constantly traveling to every regatta all over the world with minimal time in between is not sustainable for me, and that I am not always particularly productive when I train by myself without a coach or training partner. Learning about how I best train and how to make it sustainable is essential to improvement. I integrated some time off into my post-racing season schedule that allowed my mind and body to relax and recover, and eventually feel more refreshed and motivated to get back into more intense training in December.

I got the opportunity to spend a few days with team NextGen in Long Beach sailing GC32’s with an awesome group of people dedicated to improving their skills and expanding their knowledge. A huge thank you to them for letting me tag along for that week.

At the beginning of December I went down to Baja, Mexico, for some winter training. I have spent the whole month here getting lots of time on the water focusing on speed and maneuvers, and of course getting some awesome winging sessions in.

Although I won the World Championships this year, my mindset hasn’t changed. This is just one step in a much longer journey, part of a much larger goal. Every day is a new opportunity to learn, improve, and make progress towards that goal. But time is limited. This is the process.

I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and happy new year! Stay safe and stay healthy, and keep an eye out for my 2021 recap where I will reflect on this year and also share some of my goals and plans for 2022.