Bittersweet

This week's Wednesday was a bittersweet day for me. It was the last day of lessons at high school. On the one hand, this means no more lessons, because we get time off school to study for our exams. On the other hand, this means exams are coming really close and this comes with the necessary pressure. However, this also means that my gap year is coming closer. After 5 weeks my exams will be over and only 5 days after my last exam, I leave to Vincent Soubiron’s skischool. I’m beyond excited to start a year in which I am actually free and there is not an essay in the back of my mind or a test week coming up after the holidays. I have many exciting things planned for the upcoming year, and I hope you will enjoy following those adventures.

Even though my exams are coming up and I need to revise a lot, I also want to spend more time on my skiing. As you know, I need the practice in order to qualify for the Europeans. But it’s also good for me to keep skiing, because then I can focus on something else, forget the stress and not just study all day long. I was planning on going to my 'second home', which is a 2.5 hour drive away, until the weekend before my first exam. However, coming back this weekend, I am really tired after an intense weekend of skiing, so I’m doubting if it is smart to do this before and during my exams. It might be smarter to just ski at my home club instead of driving 5 hours up and down. This weekend, the boat was let into the water, so now I have the opportunity to ski closer to home.

Hopefully I'll make a bigger spray further in

the season!

Besides studying for my exams in between my ski sets, I also took on another challenge. As I've mentioned before, this year my parents and I are really trying to go about skiing more seriously, so that I can have the best season ever and close the gap between me and the really good skiers at the Europeans. Even though I know it’s not realistic to catch up with the best just yet, I do feel that doing more research into every aspect of skiing will improve quicker. One of the things I want to start this season is keeping track of how my sets go in training. For example, I want to keep a log book and video more of my sets. In this way my dad and I hope to spot patterns that might lead to an adjustment in either my technique or equipment.  There are a number of things you can do with the fin settings for example. This is an aspect of skiing that is closely related to my brothers hobby, which is karting. My brother and my dad spend a lot of time figuring out the best set up for the kart in a race, and this should be applicable to water-skiing too. Since it makes such a huge different in the racing world, we figure it can make a difference in ski performance as well. What I don’t know yet is if this will make a difference at the level I ski, but it is good to have an understanding and awareness of how the ski works anyway. This way we also have the knowledge ready when the time comes that every little adjustment on the ski will improve my results. It’s also fun because it gives my dad a chance to combine his passion in karting with water-skiing and see the sport from a more technical aspect.

Other than this, I have set another challenge for myself today… It is to look a little more charming whilst skiing. In the boat Jacky, who I mentioned last week as well, took a few pictures of my trick set. Some of the pictures are quite terrible, but I might still consider sharing them with you when I receive them :p.