Skiing

I went up for A-Basin's opening day on Friday and then again yesterday. It's one lift and one run, but High Noon is a great one run to have to ski over and over. The snow is in fine condition for the little that there is.

The little bit of exercise I've done over the past couple of months seems to have helped. My knee felt fine, and boredom with a single run sidelined me before fatigue. I think the thing that I noticed the most was the extra control I seemed to have gained from strengthening my abdominal muscles. I feel very strong upright and have lots of control and power through my turns. Since I am still a little nervous about my ultimate knee strength, the added control from my core is reassuring.

Perhaps ironically, this added control from conditioning exacerbates my need for new skis. When I switched from straight skis to shaped ones three years ago, I decided to stick with the same length, 195 cm. Normally, people ski a shorter shaped ski, but I stayed with the length since I had put on some weight and was looking for a pair of skis that I could use in pretty much all conditions. Now that I have had a couple of winters where I got in a good number of days thus improving my overall ability and have also lost a little bit of that weight, I find myself riding skis that are probably too big for me. I think that if I went a little shorter, I'd probably gain some additional control in the bumps where my current length makes rapid, sharp turns awkward and in the back bowls and trees where too much length is similarly inhibitive.

On the mountain, the skies always seem a little more blue and the air a little more crisp and clean. I hope to get up one more day this week before heading south for the wedding.

Jonathan 10/26/2004 12:41:00 PM