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11/30/2010
Sarah and I spent last Wed-Sat in Vail, CO skiing for 1 day and enjoying the town for the other couple of days we are up there. Normally, we are die-hard skiers and would not have skipped a day, but we got up to the resort about half way through the day on Wed, Thurs was a high of 5 degrees with a low of -20 (we are not that diehard of skiers) and Sat we had to head back to Denver relatively early to catch our flight.
Friday however provided us the perfect day to ski! There was warm weather (about 30F), lots of snow and over 5000 ski-able acres! We worked to ski all of it and by the end of the day we had skied multiple runs on each mountain (there are 4 total in Vail) and that included skiing a lot of the bowls.
What I was not ready to experience for was how unprepared my body was for skiing. Normally, I am in really good condition heading into a ski trip, but I have been trying to expand a couple of my other businesses (http://www.travelfitnessequipment.com , http://www.workoutsontheroad.com and http://www.websites-for-fitness.com) and so I had not put in my normal preparation as we headed into the mountains.
While I pride myself on being a decent athlete I have never been a great skier. In any other sport I have particpated in you want to be in a stance that has bent knees, a wide base, a low center of gravity and you want to stay up on your toes. Skiing is completely different in that you want to be balanced between your toes and your heels, you want to keep your skis as close together as possible and you want to stay more upright. This change has been difficult for me to grasp, so while my very athletic wife (who is a great skier) bounds down the mountain at record pace, I am bouncing off each mogul and making wide S turns to keep myself from going over the front of my skis. After a day of skiing, my body was beaten down. I had not prepared my quads for the rigors of moguls and having tired legs forced me to use my poles too much, which in turn caused me to get lazy and even more sloppy!
My reason for this post is to tell you that no matter what sport you are going to be participating in, whether you are participating in a 3 day adventure race or whether you are just going skiing for a day...you can prepare your body and make your experience more enjoyable.
Following the old adage of "Do as I say, not as I do" I would highly recommend that if you plan on going skiing this winter, that you start working on the muscular endurance in your legs and do lots of high repetition squats, lunges, jumps and more to make sure that you ski to the best of your ability!
Make it a great day San Antonio!
Nicholas Wood
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