Cycling and Skiing

This blog update brought to you from Turangi. Have had some amazing skiing so far, yesterday’s weather was amazing and fresh powdery snow meant we skied all day. When we arrived here last Friday I discovered something quite amazing – cycling has improved my skiing! Apart from the obvious benefit of stronger quads and calves (meaning I don’t get tired so quickly) the downhill cycling on Tahuroa has meant that my skiing speed has increased as I’m not so nervous at heading downhill at speed. Lack of speed was the major problem with my skiing so it’s improved hugely thanks to the power of the bike! Having said that speed is not always a good thing, had a major wipeout yesterday during my ski lesson – stopped paying attention to the terrain (too busy thinking about all the things I had to remember) and found myself out of control at high speed – took off over an edge – wheeeee, landed on my feet which duly flew out from under me (never a good thing to see your skis in front of my face!) and landed with a nice bump on my butt followed by my head bouncing off the snow – and that dear readers is why we wear a ski helmet. No damage apart from a large snowball down my pants. As we were leaving at the end of the day the wind whipped up and it started snowing again, unfortunately the wind has increased and the mountain was closed today. BIP gone off to play golf and I went out for a strength interval cycle on the bottom part of the mountain road. Must lie down now.