I won the first Downhill training run at U.S. Nationals by two seconds. Unfortunately, bad luck came my way again when I hurt my knee landing off a roll in the second training run. I did not crash and I continued to ski the remainder of the course, but I knew immediately in the finish area that I had injured my right knee again.

Leaving beautiful, sunny Alyeska was so hard to do. The race hills there are so fun, and the atmosphere at Nationals is so enjoyable… But the swelling in my knee made it clear that I needed to get an MRI to check out what happened. I flew home the day of the first race to see my doctor in Seattle.

The MRI didn’t show much damage, so I took off for my annual spring quarter at Dartmouth College. I showed up to class a week late, so I was met with a mountain of reading to keep my mind of the injury. After two weeks, however, I continued to have some symptoms in my knee, suggesting that there was in fact some damage.

I flew home to get a scope on my knee on April 20th. It was definitely a good call to fix my knee now, rather than wait longer into the off-season. I had some cartilage floating around and some joint surface damage, which my doctor successfully cleaned up. My knee already feels better than it did before surgery and I am optimistic that I will be back skiing really soon.

In the meantime, I am busy with my classes at Dartmouth. I am slowly getting accustomed to my newly-cut hair… I donated eleven inches to Locks of Love about a month ago!