Monday, December 19, 2011

Great weekend of skiing

I had a pretty quiet workout week last week. My ribs are still really sore, and I needed some painkillers just to sleep for the past week or so. Things were slowly getting better, but after two days of skiing this past weekend, including lots of moguls, I'm sore again today. I am scheduled to ski for 10 straight days starting Saturday, but if skiing is going to interfere with my rib(s) healing, I might need to curtail that schedule.

I did teach skiing all weekend. We still have limited terrain after one of the least snowy early winters in years. Luckily, it got very cold for part of the weekend and the mountain is making as much snow as they can right now.

On Saturday, none of my group of girls showed up to ski. The weekend before Christmas tends to be slow, as people are busy getting ready for the holidays. We also have coaches, especially college students, who tend to be busy that weekend. So, I covered for two other coaches on Saturday, and had six very energetic skiers on my hands. Four of them were younger than my group, but they just wanted to go, go, go. And so we did. I think that we skied more runs on Saturday than I'd skied the entire previous weekend.

On Sunday, two of my own group showed up, so I had a group of 8, and I had an assistant coach for the day, which really helped. My assistant is the older sister of a former student of mine and she did a great job. Despite cold temperatures and lots of operating snow guns, we skied hard all day. One trail in particular was a lot of fun, with snow guns blasting and big moguls setting up as the day progressed.

Over the weekend, one of the girls that I'd skied with for the first time ever told me "If I've learned one thing about you, it's that you like to smile and laugh a lot." As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't be paid a bigger compliment by a ski school student. In general, if they are having fun, I'll be having fun and smiling and laughing. And it was indeed that kind of weekend.

The downside to the weekend was that my rib injury seemed to regress. It was feeling better last Friday, but now feels very tender again. The pain is really isolated to one spot, but a blow to the ribcage anywhere near that spot (such as falling while skiing - even instructors fall sometimes) is pretty painful. Hopefully, five days away from skiing will let some more healing occur.

Also, I really want to get into the gym this week. The CrossFit coach has told me that I can show up and substitute any movements that bother the ribs. However, I'm afraid that just about everything will hurt. We will see. Tonight, we are decorating our Christmas tree at home. Tomorrow night, I'll be at CrossFit and I'll see how it goes.

And right now, all I want for Christmas is lots and lots of snow. This might be the slowest start to the ski season since 1999.

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