Mt. Hood, Oregon

I guess it is time to revamp this blog, because I am finally skiing again! After a looooong hiatus from the ski racing world, Nick Krause is back in the game. Since my last post, I have been putting in an absurd amount of hours in the gym, and fine tuning some small things with physical therapy. A couple weeks ago, I finished my first full camp with the US Ski Team in over a year. Words cannot express how excited I am to have skied seven pain free days in arguably the most challenging snow of the off season--Mt. Hood, Oregon!

When we got to Hood, the plan was to ski 4 days of Slalom and 3 days of GS with a focus on fundamentals. After the first day, we realized skiing GS or Slalom gates was going to be quite difficult with the crazy high temperatures and mushy soft snow. So, we decided to ski 7 straight days of Paneled Slalom! Now we have a little over two weeks working hard in the gym, and then we are hopping on a plane to New Zealand! Here is a little clip from our camp in Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Meniscus Surgery

It has been a while since I have posted here. My apologies. I said I was going to start posting every week, but since that post, my season really took a U-Turn. Along with my bone bruise, they found a tear in my lateral meniscus.  The doctor told me that if I could deal with the pain, I could ski for the rest of the season without any risk of injuring it further. I would then have to get a surgery to fix it in the spring.

I tried to ski on the torn meniscus for about a week, and realized that I would not be able to go on with the pain I was having. So, I decided to get the surgery as soon as possible. I got the surgery done this past Tuesday by Dr. Cooley in Park City, Utah.  All they had to do was go in with a scope to see if there was any more damage than they thought, then smooth out the damaged meniscus. Fortunately, they couldn't find any further damage. The standard recovery for this surgery is 4-6 weeks. It was definitely my easiest surgery to date, as I walked out of the hospital just an hour after I woke up from anesthesia.

I hope this surgery will solve all of my pain issues to be back on snow in 4-6 weeks! I will post some pictures when I take the bandages off!

Continued Therapy and Fundraising

For the past 2 weeks, I have been going to physical therapy 3x/week and working hard, trying to get stronger. A bone bruise is a tough injury to handle. At this point in my recovery, I feel like I should lift as hard as I possibly can, because my body feels like it is physically capable. But, if I do this, I run the risk of re-injuring the bone. So, slow and steady it is. Hopefully I will be back on snow within a week or two!

In the mean time, I have just kicked off fundraising for my 2015 training/competition season. Unfortunately, ski racing is an expensive sport, and I rely heavily on fundraising to support my Olympic dream. If you are in a position to donate, please follow my link below to contribute. If you are not able to help out financially, please share my link through email or social media to get the word around!

2015 Fundraising

Some Nagging Injuries

Hey guys, now that finals are over and winter is in full swing, this blog is about to get ramped back up! Expect a post at least once a week from now until April.

A little update on my injuries: I got back into GS gates at the beginning of December and the knee felt great. I then upped my training volume and started some full length GS just a few days after that. One day after training I felt a little pain in my knee, so I decided to take a couple days off. When I returned to skiing after a break, my knee still hurt quite a bit, so I took another day off. When that didn’t help my pain, I decided to go to Park City to get it checked out. After an MRI and a couple visits with Dr. Cooley at Park City hospital, I found out that I have a decently bad bone bruise. Treatment for this injury is pretty simple- rest, spinning on the stationary bike, and icing the knee quite a bit. Unfortunately it’s a slow healing process (3-4 weeks), but I should be ready to go to Europe on Jan. 1!

I am planning on taking my training a bit slow right now to prevent any further injuries.  For now, it’s a lot of training and a lot of gym time, trying to get strong! I don’t plan on racing until I am fully up to speed. I will keep you posted.

ITS THAT TIME!

You know its time to start slicing some turns when you scroll through your instagram feed and see 9/10 of the most recent posts are of people shredding in Colorado. Last week I had physical testing in Park City, UT. Before I can go skiing, sports science wants to make sure the injured leg is within 92% strength of the non-injured leg. Problem is, I injured both legs… so I guess I am pretty damn even! Nonetheless, I am the strongest I have ever been, and I was cleared to go skiing. I spent 4 days in Copper Mountain, Colorado free skiing with coach Ian Lochhead, just going through the movements. I am now finishing up my fall term at Dartmouth and will be heading back out to Colorado on the 22^nd to start my winter!

Here is a little throwback to the first NorAm of the season last year, where I went from 23^rd after the first run to 11^th overall and a 4^th place on the second run, competing against multiple top 30 World Cup racers. 

Here is me doing the infamous 30-30-30 last week. The test consists of 30 jumps as high as you possibly can, followed by 30 seconds of rest, and then 30 more jumps as high as you can. The line that attaches to the harness around my waist runs into the ceiling to measure how high each jump is. First 30 jumps are easy… second 30 is stump city. Also, Simon Dumont comes into screen halfway through the video to scope out my hops. Pretty chill.  

August Therapy

Last time I posted in here I was just 4 weeks out of hip surgery. After 6 weeks of intense physical therapy and fitness training, I am on my way back to the east coast 10 weeks out of hip surgery and over 5 months out of knee surgery. After a great training block here at the Center of Excellence in Park City, UT, my strength and fitness is getting very close to where I was before my surgeries. I am thrilled with my progress, and excited for where I am heading. I have a little over 2 months of training before I get back on snow, and I am confident now that I will be the strongest I have ever been before winter comes. I will be starting school this fall at Dartmouth College, and will continue my rehab there. I will be able to fit in a semester of school, and be done by mid November to start training and racing with the US Ski Team- Europa Cup Tech Team.

Over the past 6 months, I have gone through a whole lot of ups and downs. As I was sitting in the gym the other day watching my teammates get heated in a game of basketball, I realized that with these injuries, I have been secluded from any type of competitive environment. It’s a weird thought, because ever since I can remember, I have been involved competitively in one way or another. Whether it’s checking your time against someone else’s time at the bottom of the course, trying to beat someone up the mountain in the last 10 minutes of a bike ride, or stacking 10 more pounds on the barbell just so you can say you did more weight than the guy next to you, I haven’t been able to participate in any of it. It’s funny, because growing up, everyone (parents, coaches, teachers) tells you to do the best YOU can do, and not to worry about anyone else. As any athlete at any level can attest to, this is nearly impossible. These injuries sure have pushed my mental strength to its capacity. Everyday, I go to physical therapy, do my modified workouts separate from my team, and sit on the stationary bike for hours because I am not allowed to mountain bike yet. There is nothing in my training right now that I am able to compare to anyone else. I am flat out, just trying to get MYSELF stronger, so I can have the best winter I can possibly have. Though it’s easy to just wish I were down in New Zealand or Chile skiing with my teammates, I have to find ways to get motivated to hit the gym everyday by myself. I can tell you that I have been more focused and more in tune with my body in the past 6 months than I ever have been. The people I will be competing against this coming winter have pretty much finished their dry land training blocks, and are already training on snow somewhere in the world. I am ok with that. Physical therapy is what I need to be doing to get back on track to becoming the best skier I can be. No doubt, when I get back on snow I will be a bit behind the pace, but I can assure you, and myself, that I will be making progress with each turn I make come November. As my friends and I always say “you do you!”

Here are a couple pictures of me taking the US Ski Team 'bike test'. Just 2 months out of hip surgery, I tied my best test ever. Now it's time to get my strength and explosiveness back up!

Rehab

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I have posted in here, and a lot has happened. Since my crash in the World Junior Downhill in Slovakia, I have had two surgeries. The first one was to get the ACL in my left knee fixed, from Dr. Boynton in Rutland Vermont. After this surgery, I was only on crutches for about 5 days, which seemed incredibly short to me, but the Doc assured me that my knee would be stable enough to walk. So, I started physical therapy on my knee just 10 days after my surgery, and could actually perform body weight squats at 4 weeks out. I then headed out to Utah to ramp up my physical training at the USSA Center of Excellence. I had a nice 6 week block from May into June strengthening my left leg, dong exercises such as: Leg press, single leg squats, overhead squats, front squats, and single leg biking.

In mid June, I flew back east to search for a hip surgeon to fix my hip impingement and labrum tear. The first doctor I saw was Dr. Van Flandern at the New England Baptist surgery center, in Massachusetts. He was a super nice guy, and got right to the point with me. He basically said ‘you’ve got an impingement, and a labrum tear. You won’t be able to ski with it like this. Come in next week and let’s fix it.’ I didn’t want to waste any more time, and I couldn’t have been happier with how quick Dr. Van Flandern was able to get me in for surgery. So, I just bit the bullet, didn’t meet with any other doctors, and went with him as my surgeon. It was a great choice. I am just 3 weeks out of my surgery, and I can barely feel anything in my hip. They told me it could be painful for as long as a month, but I stopped having any kind of nerve pain in just 7 days. I am now sitting on a plane, heading back out to Utah to getting my physical training started once again.

For the amount of crap I have had to deal with this off-season, I am thrilled with how smooth my surgeries have gone, and I fully intend to be back on snow in November, working harder, and skiing faster than ever!