Here I am in sunny, cold I made it to Canada! It only took two days for my luggage to arrive and we met a herd of elk on the side of the road on the drive from the airport to the hostel, what a welcome to this beautiful country!

Training’s started really well. The coach, Steve, is excellent and I’ve already learnt loads about ski technique, racing and equipment. The training schedule’s pretty full on:

6:30 get up, yoga and stretching

7:30 breakfast

8:30 bus to Kimberly ski hill

9:00 warm up stretches, get in sit-ski, warm up runs

10:00 race training with coach

12:00 lunch

13:00 race training with coach and warm down free skiing

15:30 bus home

Bath, stretch, relax

18:00 supper

Tune skis and early to bed ready for the next days training!

This week we worked on GS (giant slalom) training, I started skiing courses which are a fun challenge. In GS there’s about 3 seconds between each turn so it’s less technical than slalom but faster. Yesterday I did my first timed GS* run and was pleasantly surprised to find my times close behind the more experienced racers I’m training with. Annoyingly I’ve already broken a ski and they’re not cheap, but otherwise training’s going well.

It’s not all hard training. We had the afternoon off yesterday and set out to discover the mountain! There are only three lifts but it’s the runs and snow I care about, and there’s plenty of both, with lots of varied pitch groomed and ungroomed runs, separated by some excellent tree skiing to try. I had some great powder skiing yesterday; skied the deepest powder I’ve ever skied on a sit-ski and worked on more ‘balance training’ in the trees again today on our day off race training, this ski hill rocks!