Summer Training

It literally seemed like I was barely back home before I was packing bags again to leave for France. I joined some of the team in Les Houches for a few days of fitness training with Steve from Sterling Health and Fitness. We hiked into Switzerland to Barrage d'Emosson, went white water rafting and mountain biking. It was a valuable few days where I learnt a lot about where I was going wrong with my current training programme and adaptations I make to make it better.

 

Me and Amber taking delivering a core workout

Due to the poor conditions in Tignes there was a change of plan and we ended up skiing in Les Deux Alpes for 2 weeks. I've never seen the glacier looking in such bad condition, yet we were incredibly lucky and the conditions for skiing were awesome. We only lost one day due to poor weather. Despite such a long time off skis and not doing my usual summer gym training. I was feeling good on my skis and was putting together good turns especially in GS. This was my first camp with different coaches, although the 'Canadian invasion' isn't kicking off until October it was refreshing to have some change and I really enjoyed it. It was good to have kids from BSA on the camp too as we finished the fortnight with a mixed team event. The FIS team took the 'fancy dress' a lot more seriously than the younger guys and we went with a Pants and Pigtails theme! We had plenty of strange looks that day and lots of people asking for selfies!

The FIS team the moved over to Zermatt to finish off the camp. I've never been before but now it's definitely one of my favourite glaciers. Snow was awesome and training was really good. Disappointing that we lost 2 of our 5 days to weather. But the 3 days we had were really high quality and it was really cool to train alongside Swiss, Canadian, Austrian and Croatian national teams - we were in good company! 

It's been a really intense few weeks but I've got a lot out of it. I don't feel like my time spent off travelling has caused me any major set backs I think it may have been beneficial to take a little time off. I'll now be working as a coach for the British Ski Academy dry slope camp at Norfolk for the last week of August! and I've now got time to prepare for university. I'm really happy to have been awarded a sports scholarship at university of Manchester. I'm now trying to figure out potential flexible training arrangements for the beginning of the season. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hintertux October

I've just returned from two weeks in Hintertux with Motion Team, it was a huge relief to finally go back out in the mountains, it was the best reminder of why I put in so many hours in the gym in the last couple of months! 

Me and fellow Motion and Rossignol UK team mate Kirsty Guest

I had a day of free skiing to get the feelings back and to get the feel of my new Rossignol equipment! I really like the new set up!

 It was straight back into GS gates for day two. As it was the week before Sölden, Hintertux was pretty busy with big national teams preparing for the races. It was cool to train alongside Tina Maze and the Italian World Cup teams there aren't many sports that give you the opportunity to train in exactly the same environment as the top athletes in the world. So I feel very lucky! Talking to some of them on the lift I was surprised but also relieved when they said they were finding the conditions really tough too! Despite not skiing for a couple of months I was really frustrated with how I was skiing and I think I found it more difficult than I was expecting.

Had a selfie and a lift queue chat with Elena Curtoni :)

With Davide SImoncelli, Giovanni Borsotti and Luca De Aliprandini

We couldn't train for the next two days because of the weather, the mountain had to close. Over a metre of snow fell in 48 hours at the top. Even where our team were staying at just 850m altitude we had 40cm. It turned the place into a winter wonderland, so we made the most of it and did a team snowball fight in the woods, watched a whole season of Suits and did fitness training sessions in an underground car park! 

  

When the bad weather had passed it was back to hard training. For some days we managed to do some double sessions of either slalom or GS in the morning with Super G in the afternoon. The slalom and GS wasn't going so well but I managed to get some good feelings on the Super G skis.

Conditions were almost perfect everyday for the second week. I managed to get more sessions of slalom in. I have to be careful training slalom because it's so easy to injure my thumb again.  Skiing slalom courses with only stubbies on the right foot turns looked a little odd, but at least among the sea of gates we could tell which course was ours... Hopefully when I am back out training again I can ski full slalom courses as I would in races.

The final day training was the best day for me. After a frustrating two weeks when I felt my skiing had not been where I wanted it to be. I finally started to feel like changes were being made and I got more confident skiing giant slalom. It was a good way to end the camp. 

I am now home for a month before I head out to Innerkrems in Austria. Hopefully my first races will be middle of December. Now it's the last final push to get stronger and ready for the winter and make the most of the time at home!   

Thank you!

Big smiles when the post came today! 

My new gear from X-Bionic and X-Socks UK arrived! Massive thanks to Ardblair Sports Ltd for helping me with the support. Can't wait to get out training in the new kit! 

Check out www.x-bionic.co.uk for more high performance sportswear not only for wintersports but cycling and running too!