It’s been a while since I updated this blog, and one of the first things I want to talk about that we’ve done recently is to go on our ski holiday.
The family went this February. The plan was, the little ones would learn to ski, and something I’ve wanted to learn for a long time now is snowboarding, so I planned to take a couple of lessons and try that.
We bought ski passes from Monday to Friday. For my snowboard lessons, I didn’t want to take lessons all week as the idea was to ski with Bea and Alex too, but for group lessons you had to book by the week. Plus, I’ve tried snowboarding on two separate occasions, once around 2006 when I was fairly new to skiiing. One of the days was too icy to ski, so I took a days snowboarding lessons. That was a mistake, I didn’t realise icy conditions are terrible (and painful) for snowboarding.
I was told to show up on Sunday and see if there were any spaces left for the group snowboard sessions but when we got there it was all booked up. I reserved a couple of private lessons on Thursday and Friday, figuring I’d try snowboarding once or twice in the week and then ski the rest of the time, and I’d still get to learn snowboarding at the end of the week.
Unfortunately my youngest son fell sick with the flu on Sunday night, which meant either Bea or myself would need to stay with him in the apartment. We arranged it so that we would alternate morning and afternoon ski sessions, skiing with Alex while the other one looked after my youngest son.
I decided to try snowboarding from the first day, so snowboarded with Alex (who was on skies and practised doing 360s on the snow to pass the time as I slowly made my way down) on Monday. On Tuesday I only went for an hour or so. I took a day off snowboarding on Wednesday to go skiing with Alex in the morning, and in the afternoon with Beatrice and with Olivia.
On Thursday I had my first private lesson. It was really good, the guy explained to me how the board works according to where you place your weight. If you want to turn, you have to put your weight at the front of the board. This is quite counterintuitive. I have a tendency to want to lean back when something gets steep or get a little bit scared, but this is the opposite of what you need to do. What you need to do is put your weight forward so that the board grips at the front and you have the likeness at the back of the board to be able to change direction with your back foot.
Thursday’s snowboard afternoon session was really good, I was getting really into it and applying what I’d learned and linking turns well. At the end I got a little bit too confident though and had a bad fall onto my bum. That shook my confidence a bit.
On Friday I had my second private lesson. It was also good, but I was a little more scared of falling after yesterday’s tumble.
In the afternoon I went with Alex again to do some more snowboarding, first on the green which is actually more like a blue. And then on the blue which is actually more like a red. I found myself pretty scared on the blue and was happy to get off it. I had to go down mostly using the falling leaf technique. But even on the green I wasn’t really as comfortable as the day before. I think next time I go snowboarding I need to make sure I equip myself with protection for my bum, back, and wrists.
But in conclusion, learning to snowboard is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’m really happy I did it. Getting an instructor was a massive help and makes me think of all the other things I could get a coach for to help me progress. All it takes is getting that initial momentum going by actually organising something (like the ski holiday with the instructor).
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