Just kidding, all in one piece :) I'm sure all four of you that read this have been eagerly awaiting news of how skiing went. Well, it was genuinely one of the best holidays ever, although I certainly didn't take to skiing naturally! In fact, by lunchtime on day 1 I was in floods of tears and the instructor had even suggested I take an early lunch as I was getting so hysterical. Oh the shame! I have many excellent wipeout stories I could share, but let me just pick out two of my favourites.
The afternoon of day 2 was going well. I had had a better morning in lessons than day 1 and was managing to have some control over what my skis were doing on a gentle nursery slope. At the bottom of the nursery slope was a button lift, which is essentially a disc attached to a wire pulley that gets you back up the slope to the top. Sounds simple, right? Yup. So I positioned my skis parallel to the wire, as instructed, and reached for the disc thing. However, having let the disc go too far past me I ended up on my back, on the ground, underneath the wire. I then proceeded to be hit on the head by every disc that followed. As I struggled to shuffle out from under the wire I was alerted to another disc by my friend Becky, helpless to offer any other assistance due to also having planks strapped to her feet. As I rolled out of the way of the disc my right ski became hooked around another button and I began to be slowly transported up the slope, still flailing on my back, to the horror of my friends. Bridget Jones eat your heart out! Fortunately I managed to untangle myself, finally escape the dreaded discs, and laugh about it long and loud afterwards. As a result of that incident everytime I got to the bottom of that slope I would simply pop off my skis, throw them over my shoulder, and frog march back up to the top (faster than the button lift might I add). That was excellent marathon preparation!
The other particularly memorable wipeout was on the afternoon of day 4, when tackling a proper blue run for the first time. One on, not particularly steep, slope, I was gently meandering down, ploughing and turning as I had been practising in lessons, when I came upon this scene. A group of skiers had stopped on the left of the slope to chat and embrace. A group of skiers (perhaps the same extended group) had also stopped on the right hand side of the slope to do likewise. They had also helpfully left a ski in the middle of the slope. Tricky. So I (rather skilfully) took a path in between both groups, avoiding said ski, and picked up a decent amount of straight line speed in the process. Foolishly I shifted my weight backwards and there was no way back from there! WIPEOUT!!!! But rather amusing to watch I imagine as I started with skis first, then head first, then back to skis first, and coming to a halt rather sheepishly wondering whereabouts up the hill I had left my poles. However, on a rather warm day it was quite refreshing to get a faceful of snow and no harm was done :) By the end of the week (and after a couple of days break in the middle to actually enjoy some of the holiday) I would call myself a skier and am hoping to go again next year. Just without any crazy marathon preparation to worry about at the same time.
I think I had underestimated just quite how good skiing is for fitness so I'm optimistic that running this week will be ok. Since returning I have gymmed and swam and polished off all of the delicious Swiss chocolate that I snuck home in my luggage (literally we ate a bar a day while out there and then just skied it off, good times!). I am planning to run tonight, Thurday and Sunday, and gym tomorrow and Friday. This is our last week of training before a week of eating for the half marathon on March 27th. I think that will be fine and really hoping to shave 10mins off our PB from September. But at least it should give us a good idea of how we are progressing and what we still need to do!
While I was away my brother rather gallantly ran the Silverstone half marathon, training in just 6 or 7 weeks for it. I think the official time was something like 2:53:55, and he beat Katie Price, so I want to publicly say WELL DONE to my awesome older brother.
Finally, one more plug for our fundraiser next Friday. We are currently deciding whether or not to go ahead with it due to low numbers able to attend so I will keep you posted on that.
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