Training and patience (Skiing)

Tuesday 11 January 2011 08:41PM

Training was going oh so well, by Christmas I was feeling fitter than I have for a long time, so I was pretty psyched for my first trip out to the alps for some ski-mountaineering racing.

I’ve been living in Brussels for a couple of months now, after getting married in October, so I’ve been working out how to best train for ski mountaineering there. I’ve been on the roller-skis a lot, along with an occasional foray on real skis when the snow allowed (we got a bit, but nothing like as much as Britain got). I also did a 10km race, which was pretty good. Especially since I’d done the same race two years ago and I improved my position by about 30 places (to 4th) and my time by four minutes, even though the course was very snowy! So I was psyched.

Then on boxing day I started to feel a bit lethargic, which given that my dad was struck down with the flu I felt a bit nervous about. Unfortunately that day I cycled about 30 miles on the tandem with Hil, and did a short race with my old running club Matlock AC. That finished me off and the next day I felt awful.

I was hoping to be able to recover from the flu before last weekend, when there was the first round of the ski-mountaineering world cup, in Pelvoux, France. Unfortunately, this year’s flu seemed especially bad and long lasting, and I still felt ropey, so sat it out. I hate having to decide if I’m too ill to race or not. I always feel that I’m just being a wimp if I don’t race, but when I have raced when ill it has always lead to a much longer and grimmer illness. So far I’m glad I didn’t race, my health seems to be returning and I’m able to get out for a couple of hours ski training every day (I’m staying in Pelvoux for the week), in between more sedentry time spent working on my PhD sat at the desk.

Hopefully I’ll be fully fit for next Sunday, when there’s another great looking race.