Landgraaf - Summer Edition

My next adventure as an official member of the British ParaSnowsport Development Squad was a slalom-based camp in Landgraaf (because going away skiing in August wasn’t strange enough we also had to do it in The Netherlands!).

I did find this block of training a bit more difficult than those in the past as my body decided to throw a bit of a tantrum and my spasms were completely out of control. This meant I struggled to tolerate being strapped into my rig in the cold, I also spent quite a lot of time quite violently kicking both the dinner table and whoever was unfortunate enough to be sitting opposite me! There was a bit of concern that my intrathecal baclofen pump could have been malfunctioning but since coming home my doctors have done tests and come to the conclusion that my pump is fine and that it is just my condition that has got worse (this sounds bad but is actually the better outcome as most pump-related problems require surgery to fix). In a bid to try and counteract this progression I have now had my pump baclofen dose increased as well as Botox injections in my legs, so hopefully my next camp should be a bit easier.

Now onto the interesting stuff - the actual skiing! This camp gave me a great opportunity to work on the two aspects of slalom racing that have caused me the biggest problems, the start ramp and hitting the gates to get a tighter line through the course. I think I can now declare that I am over my fears of these things; yes my technique in tackling these still needs to be refined in order to tactically maximise my speed and control through the course, but no longer being so scared has definitely helped. (In the past when approaching something I am not that comfortable with I had a tendency to completely stiffen up which only made things more difficult.)

Over the course of the week I managed to not fall out of the start gate once! My gate hitting clearly came on as I had the evidence of massive bruises on both upper arms, my helmet also took the force of many a gate too as I found it turning from blue to white. At some point I also managed to break a ski, so it can’t be said that I was lacking in aggression!

This training camp gave me a great chance to ski with so many other sit skiers (there were six of us in Landgraaf - and a there are a few more who couldn’t make it this time), this is something I find great benefit in, as it allows me to watch the styles of other people and incorporate the good parts into my own skiing. Skiing with other people who sit also makes it easier for me to track my own progress, as my weekly training at the Chill Factore takes place with able-bodied skiers, in courses that are designed to challenge even the best of them. This has done wonders for my slalom technique, but it can be somewhat disheartening when I repeatedly fail to do something that the rest of the group can do with ease, and I also have nobody to compare myself with. The fact that we now have enough sit skiers for our own training group is great, as for a while we were a bit of a rare breed.

To improve further I now need to keep working on the same things I have been focussing on for a while such as maintaining smoothness throughout the whole turn (avoiding jerky movements at the end) and increasing my edge angle by bringing it into the turn sooner. This will take time and effort but luckily I am very determined and have plenty of training camps coming up in which I can put this into practise.