Last night my ITB started acting up again. I didn’t think that the skiing motion would hurt it significantly, and I stretched plenty in the evening, but I did something that it didn’t like. Between that and the blisters, I almost didn’t go out again today. But, as I said yesterday, its a long way to come and not go skiing.

So. We get out there at about 10am, moving a little slower than we were yesterday. Get the skis, going for the “premium package” since they’re about $5 more expensive. They look a lot better too, which is an added bonus. They don’t have 12s in these either, so I try on a pair of 11.5s, to avoid the blister issue. We take the bus back over to the green slopes I did yesterday for a bit of a refresher course.

By the time the bus gets over there, I’m a lot less confident. My feet are aching a little, and things that were easy yesterday seem harder somehow. These boots are not going to work. Back on the bus, and swap out for the 12.5s. I’ll deal with it. This time, though, I make sure to tighten them as much as possible where they clamp around my shin. Hopefully, this will reduce the sliding. It does - they feel much more secure than yesterday’s. Between the tighter fit, and the fact that the premiums have more clamps, I’m back in business.

We did the same slope as yesterday a couple of times, and then moved on to the next one. This uses the same lift, but instead of turning left at the end, you turn right. Its a steeper profile that gets very shallow near the end to return to the same place, and there are a couple of other branches off it.

First time out, I get going a little faster than I expected to. Then quite a bit faster. I turn to the left to slow down, and find myself heading straight downhill on one of the branches. Whoops! All I can think to do is V-break, which slows me down a bit but not a lot, and keep on going. I didn’t wipe out, but I did end up at the base of the next lift over from where I was supposed to go. Stephanie laughed a bit but said I did pretty well, all things considered.

We go back over to the other slope, and do a couple of practice runs where I concentrate on moving more slowly and staying in control. They key here is to go back and forth at a fairly shallow angle, tightening the turns the steeper the slope is. My turns are getting better, too - at least, my left turns are. On the right turns, I’m having difficulty picking up my right leg completely.

Now I can handle the other slope better, but I’m beginning to have more serious problems with my ITB. It seems that the ski lift is really exasperating the situation. Sitting down and having the weight of the ski and boot pull on my leg is not fun. At first, I ignored it, and just did a little stretching. After a while though, I had to start just skiing every other time. Then it really started to ache.

Even though we’d only been out 3-4 hours, I had to call it a day at that point. I felt pretty bad, because it costs a lot of money to rent the equipment and buy the lift tickets, but I just couldn’t take the pain any more. And the whole time, I stayed on the shorter slopes to avoid the long trip up the lift for the taller, more interesting ones.

Sigh.

Well, it was a lot of fun, even with the injuries. And I will be back next year, maybe a couple of times, when I’m at 100% and can really give it all I’ve got. Its also a great workout. If you haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to give it a go. Take a few days, and a few friends, and a couple of lessons, but go!

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