Bored now

  Not sure I should have gone to the gym yesterday; despite (mostly) dipping out of the stuff that looked likely to involve my Gastrocs I did do a few two-footed jumps and that’s probably not helped – my calves are still feeling pretty sore.

  On the upside I did learn a couple of exercises for improving core muscle strength that don’t require any equipment so that was useful, particularly since the core muscles are arguably more important than any others for skiing.

  I also learnt a couple of new stretches including one that hits a part of the calves that my current stretches don’t really get, so hopefully that will counter the additional strain the session may have caused..

  So another day spent indoors, massaging, stretching, icing and looking out the window at the snow and rain.

Felix goes skiing

  Obviously it wasn’t just Felix that went skiing, I went too.  We started on the green runs around the Altiport area and built up through the blues to a reasonably steep red and then skied down to “Ronnie’s” for a late lunch.

  This week is the start of 2 weeks of English half terms and 4 weeks of French half terms so I expected the pistes to be crowded but as it turned out they weren’t as bad as I’d feared.

  The weather is still out of sorts with cloud and a dusting of snow interspersed with sun and temperatures that are far higher than is healthy for a ski resort.  We desperately need new snow, especially with all the additional people who will be mashing up the pistes over the next month.

  Be nice if the temperature stayed below zero too.

   Best of all though is that I’ve (temporarily) escaped from the young ones; the majority of the youngsters on this course are self-centred, often unaware and/or unthinking and not infrequently astoundingly selfish, particularly en masse.

   Of course I might well have been like this myself at 19 but recently I’ve been finding that putting up with their behaviour (not to mention their inane chatter) has been increasingly difficult.

Not funny any more

  Felt distinctly under the weather this morning and was forced to conclude that after 3 days of half skiing/half resting days I wasn’t getting better quick enough, in fact I’m not really getting better at all.  So decided not to ski at all today or tomorrow, which, with the weekend, will give me 4 days complete rest.

  This afternoon we went on what was billed as a visit to the Rossignol factory, to pick up the various bits of kit we’d need for our slalom training.

  I thought it would be interesting to see a ski factory so I was pretty pissed off when it turned out to be just a factory outlet.  It then took absolutely ages to get all the kit assembled and stock levels were pretty poor so not everyone got what they wanted.

  If it weren’t for the fact that I could try on my new helmet before paying for it the trip would have been utterly pointless and even so I can’t fit the chin protector to the helmet until I can get some appropriately-sized holes drilled (they couldn’t even do that for us).

At least it’s the weekend

  Too ill to ski today, so I’m not going to, in fact I’m going back to bed.  Suppose I should be grateful I wasn’t wiped out last week and that I’ve got a fighting chance of recovering by Monday when we start with the ESF (though exactly what we will be doing still hasn’t been communicated to us).  Not sure whether my intolerance levels were raised at dinner yesterday because I was ill but it seemed like feeding time at the zoo.

  Our chalet hosts (John & Natalia) are leaving today.  Nothing to do with the chimps (apparently); they’re just not enjoying the amount of cooking and cleaning and the lack of good skiing so they’re going travelling.  Our new hosts (Vicky & Tom) take over straight away.

  Then there was the beer incident; taking without consent might be a polite way of putting it.  The names of the culprits seem to be an open secret so it will be interesting to see if they admit it and apologise.

  Fortunately most of the guys (and all of the girls) on the course are pretty sorted so I don’t think we have a serious problem (and I’m going to reserve my judgement until the end of the course by which time I should know whether it’s the booze or the personality).

  Outside the sun is still shining (and the snow is still melting); maybe I’ll wake up to a big dump (maybe not); maybe the temperature will drop 10 degrees (I’d settle for 5).

  Now where are my medicines ? (the French like their medicines !).