First week in Toulouse

I’ve been in Toulouse for exactly a week now and settled in to my new ‘home’ for the coming weeks, which wasn't hard with a gorgeous view and beautiful sunsets.

Even though I had made great effort to train as much as possible in the weeks before coming here, it has become clear that 4 sets per day is still quite a challenge. Especially after several weeks of mainly studying and very little in the gym. Before coming to Toulouse, I trained little in jump, making it challenging to complete the drills I was training. I felt some improvements in how easily I could complete the drills after 2 days, but the last 2 days were tough again as I became increasingly tired. Saturday was my first rest day and I was very happy to have it. My coach says that the first 2 weeks of intensive training like this will be tough, but after that you are used to the rhythm and it will get easier, I will let you know if he’s right when I get to that point!

Despite the fact that it was an exhausting week both mentally and physically, I’ve already improved quite a few things, which means if I continue like this, after 5 weeks of training, there should be some great results! In learning new tricks I have quite weird preferences it seems. Many tricks come in two parts, you make the trick, and then you do the opposite of that trick to make sure you get back to the same starting position. For example if you turn a 180, you will turn another 180 in the opposite direction to be back at your starting point. I have been working on turning a 180 over the wake of the boat, whilst stepping over the line. Going from behind the boat outside went well, but getting back took a little longer to perfect. Usually it’s going back that is easiest, so much so that there are people that will start in the back position and only turn this trick back as to avoid making the first part of the trick. I have experienced this with multiple other tricks as well.

There have also been some changes in my materials that I’ve been very happy with. This goes to show that all the times I skied bad and blamed it on my material, I actually had a point haha! But seriously, some of my new material has really helped me perform slightly better in multiple ways, although these are not major improvements, it helps. As I mentioned before, at home my dad and I were looking at ways in which a slalom ski could be adjusted to enhance performance. The first step we took was set my boots back a little bit, in order to match the recommended factory settings. My coach noticed this made the ski a bit more aggressive and changed some other settings to compensate. This happened on Friday, so we will still need some more time next week to find the perfect setting. I’m positive that this will improve my skiing, because it is impossible that the ski as I was using it was perfectly tuned to my preferences. I’m very curious as to how much these settings will help in my results.

I want to conclude this blog with some exciting news. I will be skiing the under 21 Europeans on all 3 disciplines. Because of this I was asked to give an interview for a local newspaper back home to explain how this happened. This will be posted soon, so that’s something to look forward to!