Today Alex skied strongly and amazingly well in conditions that surpassed even the absurd conditions that he encountered a week ago – once again the only slalom course in sight and snow ranging from extreme mush to rock solid ice and breakaway slabs of ice. Moreover, he was positive, enjoyed it and continued to make progress. Only a week ago he was understandably certain such conditions were a complete waste of time.
Skiing is “holistic” – which means the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This phenomenon also means that bits can be missing or imperfect but overall the system still works. Cars are not holistic – as most of us find out through experience. (except my old Citroen 2CV)
Today was about putting into practice the adaptations gained following several days of working on technique on more moderate terrain. Still far from perfect the changes made have had a profound effect – Alex stating that it was easier skiing in the course than outside of it in those conditions. That’s a classic outcome when things are coming together!
Useful to make comparisons with Kristoffersen – seeing what is similar and recognising where differences in Kristoffersen match the targets we are specifically working towards.
No Alex – he is not pole planting! He gave a double pole push near the start – that’s all.
Today it was the turn of the Panoramic chair lift to breakdown – so nobody could get to the race pistes. We ended up having to walk over rocks to the bottom of the lift and I decided to risk being the first to take our poles up to 3500 again – this time on the back of a Piste machine – with us along with the poles. No sign of the cable car working. (The T-bar was functioning at 3500) We took up one bag of new FIS poles and one bag of old poles which can be pulled out of ice with only a key (so was not to wreck all the new bases drilling them out of ice) . This worked extremely well as the old poles were in pure ice for the most part.
The reason Alex came out of the course on his last run was due to the slab of ice he was turning on breaking way and sliding beneath him.
