New Year Training and Races

I decided to celebrate the New Year by once again running away to Austria for some more training and races. The week began with training in Stubai, the place where my adventures with the British ParaSnowsport Team began just over a year ago, and was finished by racing in Rinn as part of the RollRinn festival (a big event to raise money for disability sports in Austria) which was great fun.

This was purely a slalom camp so the things I worked on in training were mainly around making my turns tighter so I can ski a better line closer into the gates. I made a great deal of progress in this area but I still have to work on my balance in my rig to make hitting the gates less risky. It was also interesting to ski the same slopes I had attempted just over a year ago, I was encouraged to find that the slopes I had struggled just to get down before, now seemed fairly straightforward.

As well as training on the glacier we spent a few days skiing on a smaller slope lower down (as the weather was quite bad). This was the steepest slope I had ever skied gates on before, and the first day training here wasn’t the best day I have had. The next day I did much better on it, having had a good rest and starting to adjust to the steepness of the slope. That being said it was still a bit hairy as there were quite a few big holes in the course, meaning that I spent a large amount of time flying through the air rather than having my ski actually in contact with the snow!

After the great training sessions it was time to put my new skills to the test in quite possibly the weirdest races ever. The slope used for the races in Rinn was fairly short, not much longer than the indoor ski slopes we have in the UK, I was told that in the summer it is a golf course. To add to this, the button lift did not take you all the way to the top of the racecourse, so most people had to hike up about 50 metres, whereas the sit skiers like myself were loaded into the bucket of a tractor and driven to the start - that was a new experience!

The first race was a night slalom, which made things all the more exciting albeit rather cold in the start gate (it was -22°C and I was wearing barely more than a lycra catsuit). The first run I made it down the course at a fairly steady pace, enough to give me a second run. By the time the second run came around I was very cold, and, realising that the faster I skied, the faster I could get back inside the heated tent, I made the decision to be a bit more aggressive with the next run. This next run was going very well, I was racing considerably faster than I had done before, but however, what I had failed to notice was quite how tired I was. Coming over a roller section right before the finish I felt my body start to spasm, and I didn’t have the strength left to fight it, so I ended up falling over, and as the place I fell was so flat, I couldn’t get myself up. That night ended with what was basically a massive party in a tent.

The next day I was ready to attack the course, I managed to get down doing what is quite possibly the best skiing in gates I have done so far. This excitement was somewhat weakened when it was pointed out to me at the bottom that I had missed one of the last gates. Me and a few other people had managed to misinterpret the ending of the course and so I ended up skiing the wrong way round one of the gates. This meant I was disqualified and so I had no second run. The cause of this is just due to my relative inexperience, and I’m sure that with time and experience in different courses this will improve. I did find it interesting though that in the end only four sit skiers (both male and female) actually completed both runs.

Despite not finishing either race, I consider one this one of my most successful camps, I made massive progress towards skiing a tighter line, and the events of the race pointed out some of the things I need to work on.

Last Minute Pitztal Camp

Barely two weeks after returning from Landgraaf I suddenly found myself out on another training camp with the British ParaSnowsport Team in Pitztal, Austria. This was a bit different to all of my last camps, as it was the first time I had not brought my mother with me (due to my age I have to have a parent or guardian with me, but my mum was busy during this camp, however I was fortunate that the mother of my friend and fellow teammate kindly agreed to take me), I think my mum was more worried than I was though.

Prior to the races of the German National Championships, there were a few days of training, the most notable of which was the day I was let loose on a giant slalom ski. For those outside of the world of skiing, a GS ski is a fair bit longer than the slalom ski I am so used to skiing on, so the day was somewhat interesting, with a large proportion of it being spent face-down on the ground. I still need to work on being comfortable on a GS ski, especially as smooth movements don’t come easy to me, but by the end of the day things were beginning to improve (falls were no longer every 10 metres!). Overall I began to develop a few new skills in skiing, but not without my head taking quite the beating.

The next day the majority of my team took part in a giant slalom race, which gave me a much needed rest day (I need a lot more experience on a GS ski before I can even think about racing), which really helped me, as I wasn’t feeling great after the repeated head-bangings of the day before on top of the usual fatigue caused by my HSP. After a day of nothing, I was ready to take on the slalom race.

The slalom race itself, was not particularly remarkable, although the top section of the course was incredibly icy, and this managed to defeat many skiers, particularly the sit-skiers like myself. Before setting off I had made the decision to take the course fairly steady, and to just focus on getting down the course without falling, this seemed to pay off as I made it down and to the second run. After the inspection I noticed that the new course was significantly less icy than the last, so I allowed myself to run a bit faster this time, where I managed to finish and put myself into 8^th place.

I was absolutely thrilled with the how the race went as for me just getting down a course is very difficult (this will improve with training and more experience), it even made my friend’s mum cry!