2nd ski lesson

And still no broken bones or hideous bruises. Yay me!

OK let me say one thing first. I think this whole blogging thing is pretty cool. Whether or not anyone really wants to read it, I enjoy being able to throw down my thoughts :)

So I had my second ski lesson today. The first one they had us use the short skis but today I strapped on my personal skis. Made it a little more difficult but I got the hang of it I think. About 1/2 way through the lesson our instructor took us over to the chair lift and we started going down the hill one step bigger than the bunny hill. Looked like a damn black diamond the first time I looked down from the top. Truthfully, what kind of calmed me down and let me forget about having to find a way to ski all the way down the hill, was remembering that last summer we used to run to the top of that hill for training. Crazy coach Ingrid had us doing hill repeats at Hyland a few times last year. Don't get me wrong, I think she's the best but that day I was not so happy. I have to tell this great story....

The one day we were running hill repeats at Hyland by the ski lifts and I was getting ever so close to what felt like death. My legs were shot and shaky and with only a few minutes left I knew we had to be going down for the very last time. But then all of a sudden, she drops her jacket and water bottle at the top of the hill and starts running down. I wanted to just drop and cry!!! Leaving her stuff at the top could only mean one thing...we're going back up. Looking back it was a great workout for us that I'm sure greatly helped our endurance overall but I was not a happy camper :)

(I told ya I probably couldn't resist plugging in stories from my past! The picture is of us on THAT day)

Anyway back to skiing....

We are learning how to turn by doing a wedge turn. I was pretty frustrated going down the green run the first few times because I kept falling uphill after trying to turn. Long story short I got myself to quit watching my skis, quit leaning uphill and looked in the direction I wanted to turn and sure enough it seemed to get a little easier. It's nearly an hour after I finished skiiing and my toes are still pretty warm feeling. Unfortunately a few years back I got some pretty good frostbite on my toes so now they go numb really easily, which they did today. And my left hand pinky finger :) It was only about 10 degrees so even my face got pretty cold. Going downhill you kind of don't think about it but the second you stand still it's a whole different story. I am thinking I want to take a second round of lessons in January (3 sessions) but unfortunately I just found out I am probably going to be shipped to Washington for work for a couple days so I have to find out when that is first before I sign up.

Well I need to go take a warm shower now and hit the hay. Masters swim again tomorrow AM...TGIF!