St Gervais and Interschools

It's been a long while since I last blogged. After Bormio I went home for 5 days for a rest and to see a hand therapist about my thumb and get a new cast made. I'm looking forward to eventually having surgery and to finally be pain free!

When I flew back to Les Houches, I was working as a coach for 10 days with two of the new younger minis. Most of it involved free skiing and developing their basic technique. 

The children got to go to ski jumping in Les Houches on a Friday afternoon and I went to help and supervise. Everyone managed to go off the biggest jump including Oli who is only six years old! The prize for the biggest jump went to Jack who jumped 24 metres!! 

 

(Jack on his winning jump!)

Once I'd got back into training my next focus were the Citizen races in St Gervais - a slalom and two giant slaloms. My slalom race didn't go very well, I struggled to find the right rhythm on both of my runs so my timing was all wrong. I find it hard to judge the distances between gates and adapt to rhythm changes so this is what I'm going to focus on in training. In the two GS races I skied quite well. I'm still looking to put down two clean runs but it's progress. On the first day I scored my second best points result of the season thanks to a second run charge that moved me up 4 places overall. I felt like I skied better on the second day, it's a shame the points didn't reflect that but I can take lots of positives from my performance.

Straight after the races were the BSA and Equity Interschools races. With 400 kids racing, all of the BSA juniors were on hand to help out. I was coaching the under 12 boys. The hot conditions made the races challenging with the temperature hitting 20 degrees on the day of the stubby slalom! It felt weird skiing around in a t-shirt and sunglasses!

We enjoyed a day off on the Wednesday and decided to go and find a waterfall and went for a hike. It was good for fitness and we had fun playing around with Milo's GoPro.

Tomorrow is my last day training in Les Houches for the whole season! I will definitely miss this place, the season has gone way too fast. It seems only yesterday we were trying to find early season FIS races before Christmas!

I'm off to Val Thorens for some citizen races this weekend, then returning to Les Houches to help out with coaching before going to Meribel, to compete in the British Championships slalom and GS. I'm then staying in Meribel to support the minis in their British Champs before heading to Courchevel for the Scottish Championships. It's going to be a busy 2 weeks but I'm excited and can't wait to race.

(Training slalom with the girls the other day)

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