Birthday week

This week on the 22nd of December I turned 18! It was also Christmas eve and Christmas day, so not a great week for my diet... Still it was a really good week of training. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I went to train with Vincent Soubiron at ski fluid. On the other days we trained at home, including on my birthday!

I didn't do much with jumping this week, so there is nothing worth mentioning there. However in slalom it was going really well. I had some stable passes at 14, which I ran with some pretty heavy wind as well in the beginning of the week. I also went back on 13 for the first time again, but I took the gate very wrong and only got around 2 boys. Despite that, it still promises good results for next week, so maybe I can improve my trainings PB just a bit before I leave. Even if I don't improve in bouys, I do know that I've learnt a lot in technique and that will eventually pay off in the next season.

Tricking also went very well, I'm learning the new tricks for next years run. This takes a lot of time and falling, more so than jump, therefore I'm investing the off season time on the new tricks right now. Especially in toe holds I'm learning them quickly, which is good, because those points will add up fast. Learning new hand tricks is a little more challenging, because the tricks that I want to learn have a high risk of falling on my ear, which right now is not healed yet. I'm still working on the beginning of my new run with one new trick and a new order, but I would have really loved to also have learnt wake 540s before I leave, sacrifices, sacrifices... Still I'm really happy with what I'm doing in toe holds and will upload a video to my Facebook page soon.

Now over to the best parts of the week that were not necessarily waterski related.... my birthday and Christmas! On both days of course I skied, which is incredible because it is after all December. I also drove for the first time in a country other than the Netherlands, because my drivers license is now valid everywhere, since I'm 18. My first road trip was to get a beautiful and delicious cake, the second one was to a waterski store.... priorities :D. I also went paddle boarding on my birthday and skied some more. In this time the Hof family planned a great dinner with everyone I'm skiing with and the neighbours, which I didn't know about until they were suddenly in the house when I got home from the gym. This was an incredible surprise and I can't thank them enough! Christmas was also filled with skiing, but this time more for show, because Talisa was shooting pictures from a paddle board. The result is absolutely amazing and more pictures can be found here. It was great to be surrounded with so many loving people, because this made it easier to be away from my own.

For now theres only one week left before I have to go home, so I'm going to make the most of it!

Surf week

I just finished a 1 hour massage, so I am completely relaxed and clearheaded, thus its the perfect time to recap on another amazing week in Florida! 
I spent this week living with the pro's. We had 5 days of training with Ryan and Breanne Dodd, naturally the focus was a little more on jump and slalom than on tricks, since it's not everyday that you get to ski with the champion of the world. This week was truly a great investment for my jumps to come, because I've spent 1 or 2 sets each day doing drills. One of the drills was the same as I had learned from him when he coached the Dutch team back home. I did notice a huge difference whilst doing this drill though, because at the end of the set, my feet were hurting from the tight bindings, but my legs were not that sore. This is definitely not because I was giving less effort than before, if anything the cuts I was making were more controlled and stable than the first time round. I believe its due to the training I've been receiving from my personal trainer, because the first sessions I did with her she already noticed that my legs needed more development. We have worked hard on strengthening my legs throughout the sessions, which many times made it hard to bike back after training. However, noticing the difference whilst doing those drills this week, I am more than happy with taking twice as long to bike back from training as I did biking there! This is not to say that the drills didn't tire my leg. Even though I didn't really feel it whilst skiing or after, I definitely felt it during the massage and so did the masseuse. He said my right leg was very tight and that my left leg before he massaged it felt the same as my right one after working on it for a few minutes.

Aside from jump drills, I also did some free skiing in slalom. Free skiing was new to me this summer when I did it with Anthony in France. Now I did a different type of free skiing, which makes it easier to make adjustments to my technique, since there's no distraction from the bouys. This really helped later in the course, but I could also feel it get better and better with every cut I made, which was a great feeling.

Even though skiing is great and I probably could do it non-stop for more than a month, it's still fun to do some other stuff when you spend a month only focussed on skiing. Therefore it was so much fun when we went to the beach to do some surfing. This was the first time I had ever gone surfing in the ocean, mainly because it is almost never possible in the Netherlands, especially where I live. It is something I had been wanting to try, but never got round to, until now! It was much harder than I thought and requires more timing, strength and endurance than I thought. Luckily with some coaching, I managed to catch a couple of waves, that was sooo awesome. Sadly, since all of us were surfing, there are no pictures or videos, so I have a good excuse to try surfing again. Back home it was definitely time for a break. Still we wanted to go out and do something, preferably on the water of course, so we decided to go wake surfing behind the boat. Another type of surfing that I had never done before. Again it was hard to learn at first, but when I got the hang of it, it was really fun and we were on the water till the sun set, like we did surfing the ocean.
Aside from all the things I learned in skiing and surfing, I also pulled my first slalom skier through the course. Admittidly, this requires some more practise still, but I'm happy to say that I added 3 new skills to my life! Coming week is promising to be exciting too, as my birthday is coming up, but for now I am going to enjoy the effects of my massage!

Florida week 1

To be completely hontest, this blog is later

than usual because I simply didn't feel like writing it. This is absolutely not due to the fact that I don't have anything exciting to write about, but purely because too many exciting this are happening and I didn't want to take time out to write :)

Since I do want to share some of my great

experiences with you guys I'll quickly tell something about each day and of course add some pictures to make you jealous.

On Monday I arrived pretty late in the

Thank you 'Sinterklaas' ;)

evenig local time, so from the airport, we went straight to a restaurant to catch up and have dinner. Afterwards it was time to get a house tour, and of course celebrate 'Sinterklaas'! We played a fun quizz game to decide who gets to pick out a present and spent the evening unpacking presents and and reading the poems that went with them and it was so much fun. In the end I was up for almost 24 hours, so I figured that I'd sleep up untill a normal time in the morning and not have a bad jetlag, but I did wake up pretty early and felt jetlagged for a couple of days.

On Tuesday I wanted nothing more than to ski, even though the weather wasn't too great,  but it had been too long ago since I had skied, so we went! On this day, we wanted to go to the mall too, so it would be good to ski in the morning. However, it was raining pretty bad, so we waited for as long as possible. When we went out to ski, there was some showers, so my first set in Florida was in the rain... Because of a thunder storm, I only skied once, which was tricking. We had some lunch in the food court of the mall, which I enjoyed because everything is so different than what I'm used to. This is also the main reason I'm so tired everyday and I didn't put up a blog yet. Almost everything I see and do is new and different and I want to appreciate and remember everything!

On Wednesday it was time for the serious training, we went to Vincent Soubiron at ski fluid. This was the first day skiing 4 sets in a very long time, so this resulted in some nice blisters and serious muscle aches. This was very much worth it though, because we both noticed that all the training and the changes in diet and other preperation I had done beforehand really payed off.

Thursday and Friday were similar, but more sore. 4 sets of training on both days, and even though I'm not completely where I left off 3 months ago, I'm happy with the level I got back to after just 3 days. It was also great to see some team members again, who I saw last when we were training in France. The only down side is that it was a pretty cold week with some showers, which is not what I expected after travelling all the way here. Still it's wayyy better to ski here than in the Netherlands, so I won't complain about that anymore!

Lastly, on Saturday, I skied my first slalom set back on the lake where I'm staying. I also got a membership to the fitness, which is a 15 minute bike ride away, so I went there twice during the time that we were actually 'home'.

So far there is so much to enjoy and so many things to talk about that I can't possibly mention everything. Bottom line though, is that I'm thouroughly enjoying every single minute here and look forward to everything that's still happening in the coming weeks!

(Almost) ready to go

As I predicted in the last blog, I left the actual packing to the last minute! This was not only because I like to procrastinate on stuff like this, but also because it is something that I can do Sunday night, by myself. For anything where I rely on a shop or other people, I have to do it first, because most are not open Sunday, or only partially. Therefore other things took priority, like going to the hairdresser, to cut of quite a bit of my hair so that I don't overheat in Florida! I also had to do some shopping, since I miss Christmas, I want to be able to leave something behind which can be opened on Christmas day. Furthermore, most of my days this week were spent working. It felt like an end sprint, because if I was working at night, I was babysitting in the morning and if I was babysitting at night, I was working during the day. This way I'll have some extra money to spend on my trip, and I know exactly what I want, hopefully I'll get in on time and will be able to show you, so stay tuned! Lastly, I had some doctors appointment. The first was to do one final check-up on my ear... it has still not healed, and the hole barely got smaller, so in Florida I will need to take extra care and protect my ears very well. This was quite disappointing to hear, especially because I felt like it might have healed. Now there is a risk of infection if lake water gets in, and also because water will go straight to the inner ear, this can lead to dizziness, which is not great when trying to balance on the skis. My biggest worry is that I will fall on my ear again and make the hole bigger, because the chance of it healing naturally then, I think are close to nought. The other time I went to the doctor I got some antibiotics, to help fight my tonsillitis. I hope this will be completely over by the time I get to skiing, which will most likely be Tuesday.

This all, combined with going to the gym and hanging out with some friends before I leave pretty
much filled my week. Now I've only just finished packing all my bags and checking my equipment. I'm happy I checked my skis, because I had one problem with my slalom ski, which is fixed now, thanks to some help from my dad, and also all my screws match once again, because throughout the season I had gathered 3 different types of screws on my ski... Once this was done, I could put everything on the photo on the right into my ski bag. This only just fits in the weight limit, so I hope the scales at the airport are similar to the one I checked with!

Finally it was time to fit my clothes and other stuff into my other bag. Since my ski bag was allowed 32kg, I was able to put more of my ski equipment in there than usual (when it's allowed 24kg). Due to this I thought that my other bag could be 20kg, instead of 24kg, but I was wrong. I realised that I'll just try to take more stuff knowing that I have more kilos, but my bag ended up being 23kg. Since everything I'm bringing is absolutely necessary (probably not, but I couldn't chose what to leave out), I put some heavy things in my hand luggage to get the weight down. I now have the weirdest selection of items in my hand luggage (sorry airport security). I'm bringing all my ski bindings in my carry on, along with my sport shoes, slippers, a kilo of cheese and my own snacks. However weird my luggage may look now, I do have all my bags within the weight restrictions and am officially ready to go! I was actually ready to leave when I was biking to my friends house this morning in -3 degrees Celsius, but the only problem was of course that I had no bags packed yet...

Only 17 more hours until the plane leaves and I'm so excited to finish this year with some good results!