An open letter:

My Teammate, Aliyah Snyder, has had to call her career to an early end. She explain it best in her blog, here.

Needless to say, I'm beyond bummed that Aliyah won't be there with me at the start house next time. I can't say enough about how amazing of a teammate she is. No one else helped me get over my fear of sliding after my accident in Park City as Aliyah did. She was the only person I could really talk to about skeleton, and all the unique challenges that come along with our sport.

Even when Omri's face is smashed, Aliyah remains positive and happy


Aliyah Pushing

to Aliyah:

Thank you so much for everything you've done for me, for the team, and the way in which you represented our country with pride, confidence, and humility. I am so proud to be able to call you a teammate, a world-class athlete, a fellow Israeli, and a friend. You have an incredible spirit, and with or without skeleton, that's something that will always serve you well. I know that while your involvement with team Israel as an athlete may be over, you will always be part of this team, and this federation. Let's face it, without you, we would not even have T-shirts :). I know I speak for our entire federation when I say that wherever your athletic/professional/personal lives take you, we will always be there to support you, and to cheer you on. I can't thank you enough for being a part of our team, and I can only hope that when new athletes join our federation, they will be even half the person you were, and that I'll be able to have half as much fun doing a track walk at -30°. I promise to learn our special team dance, and get you a video of it once I have it down.


oh, and you'll always have Israel's first Medal

Good day at training

So let me start off by admitting that I need to write more. A combination of being busy and procrastination has made me largely avoid blogging... but no more (I hope!)

Today was a great day at training. Although I haven't slept nearly enough the past two nights and arrived at training exhausted, I managed to get a new personal best in my front squat (345lbs at 172lbs bodyweight). As exciting as it is, I'm thinking of it as little more than a stepping stone towards my later goals. In any event, a big thank you has to go out to Brian St. Pierre, who has been doing my programming as of late. Brian is a great dietitian and hopefully soon I'll get to sit down with him and fine tune my diet. In any case, if you haven't already, it's definitely worthwhile to check out his blog- www.brianstpierretraining.com

More to come...

Sled Pushes are fun

I was training at Cressey Performance today did some sled pushes. Here is one:




I need to gain a LOT of strength still but my weird back does some magical things for me in pushing. Basically I have a hyper mobile lumbar spine that hinges at a weird point and it allows my spine to rotate while also going from flexion to extension quickly and with force. While this is probably not good for upright running, its a huge advantage for running bent over like I do for skeleton pushes-- Think greyhound spine:

This:


to This:


Exciting stuff, eh?

How did I survive that?

So...

Massive crash today. And by massive crash, I mean I was done with the run and then hit something in the run out of the track and got launched about 15 feet in the air, did a triple somersault, and landed off the track in some coolant pipes..... right on my head. They think my sled got caught on something in the track-- it takes a huge amount of force to launch a 172 pound guy and an 86 pound sled with a really low center of gravity that high.

The helmet is gone-- absolutely shattered in the back. Thank God for it-- It saved my life.
The sled is gone too-- it got launched out of the track as well. Gonna have to find a new one.
$400 practice runners that I've had for 2 days-- also destroyed.

Still, I am thrilled. Beyond some serious abrasions, I'm alive, and I didn't break anything! Honestly, I thought I was going to die or at least be paralyzed, so I'm doing great!

Hopefully I'll have some good-- non injured photos for all of you soon.

Day One of sliding...

Today was the first day of sliding.

Unfortunately, my speed suit has yet to arrive, so I bought a surprisingly good one of a lady here. The downside is that it is just about the ugliest suit you've seen.

We slid from start 4 today just to get a feel for the ice. I felt really good on my new sled, and I was amazed at how responsive it was compared to the old steel sleds. All I had to do was look in the direction I wanted to go and apply just a tiny bit of force on the sled and it moved. I was happy just to get a feel for the sled and get down real clean in all 3 runs. Hopefully we will be moving up tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes.

In terms of photos... I forgot to bring my camera today... I'll get some good photos tomorrow, though.

Finally landed!

I just arrived in Salt Lake City.

I managed to convince the nice lady at the shuttle counter to get me a discounted ride to Park City and the condo I'm sharing with six bobsledders and one skeleton athlete from New-Zealand.

I managed to sleep for 80% of the flights here from Boston and through Dallas, but I'll definitely be able to get back to sleep tonight at an early enough hour.

Tomorrow morning there is athlete registration, and then I get to spend my day searching for a speed suit at various sports stores around Park City because my speed suit didn't arrive at my house in time (it's been 3 weeks since it's shipped). Also tomorrow, I am picking up my new runners and attaching them to the sled.

In any case, I'm sitting here in the airport and it seems the shuttle as just arrived. Hopefully someone is in the condo to let me in :-). I'll keep you posted!