It’s amazing what you can remember about things you haven’t done for months. It’s also amazing how much you forget.

I’ve skied for 2 of the 4 days. Today is the third day.

The first day, getting my boots on without help was the first hurdle, carrying my skis was good, standing up without falling over was better and I was so happy at still being able to turn corners and getting down the mountain in one piece that nothing else mattered much. I didn’t really notice how much my feet or my head hurt until I was in the car on the way home. I took a headache tablet after dinner and went to bed.

Yesterday, my feet hurt from the day before, my legs ached, my shoulders ached, my head was fuggy and my stomach had found something to complain about. I slithered my way down 2 runs and went to sit with the other ladies (who preferred sitting at the bottom to the mountain to actually skiing).
After lunch we decided to drive across the valley to the other lifts (same company so same ski passes). I was feeling a lot better, and there was better snow. Also there was a wide blue run open which presented a chance to practice technique instead of just getting to the bottom. 5 or 6 runs later I remembered what it felt like to know you’ll get down ok, and to enjoy the process, another couple of runs and I could concentrate on what my feet were doing and not on the slope (if you go down the same slope often enough you know what’s coming), and after that my feet were able to concentrate by themselves and leave me room to think about what I wanted to do, where I wanted to ski, to look at what the people around me were doing instead of hoping we wouldn’t collide, to just have fun with the mountain. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about that.

About 15 minutes before the chair lift closed I met one of the rest of the group on the way back from a red run. We decided to get one more go at it before the lift closed and set off. It’s SO much more relaxing to ski even the steeper slopes when you’re confident in your feet. We met some of the others at the top and came down as a group. When we came to a red-black crossing most of them went down the black slope. I dithered a bit until they said I could do it too and then joined them.

I did it too, I got down without panicking and only falling over a few times :).

And now it’s today.

I’m off out 🙂