Four out of four JDS weeks on snow this year. Is this a record? You begin to hope the entire JDS could be run on snow in 2010, but that’s a bit unrealistic given the Scottish climate. Alice didn’t want to go to JDS most of Saturday, but relented in the evening.

We actually made it to the ski centre with bags of time to spare this week, I couldn’t believe it, especially as the road between Rhynie and Huntly didn’t seem to have seen much ploughing in the preceeding few hours and it was snowing heavily. Conditions were sunny and blue sky, but with the occaisional stinging snow shower. I was glad to have packed my skiing glasses today.

Today was a warm up to remember. Arthur had us Highland Country Skiing. The idea was you stepped to from side to side (on snow and skis) while you did Highland Dancing moves with your arms. It got us all laughing, especially when Eileen fell over and I was very warm by the end of it. I  foresee some sort of sword dance over crossed skis in snow shoes next week but can’t say I would have the coordination to attempt it.

Having warmed up we cut over to the football field where we worked on our classic stride for the first session, with Eileen Cosgrove as the instructor. With the group I have been working with for the past few weeks it’s mainly a question of encouraging the children to push their arms through when poling and bend their legs and ankles as they ski along. I try to carry out most of the exercises suggested by the coach to the children, which I feel has had a beneficial effect on my skiing (there’s certainly plenty of room for improvement), but it’s also nice to take a step back, watch the children and encourage them when they are skiing nicely. It’s important  to say “Do Y” rather than “Don’t do X” when training people, apparently most of the time when learning we subconsciously ignore the “Don’t” and end up doing what we are not supposed to. That’s about the limit of my educational psychology!

After the break the children swapped on to more skate training. This time they got longer poles and proper skate skis and boots. Eileen took us over to an unpromising piece of snow on the football field and quickly had the whole class bashing down the snow with their skis to prepare a training area. Then with a cunning series of exercises she gradually expanded the skiable area while instructing the children in skate 3 at the same time. Each week I am struck by the resourcefulness of the instructors in taking full advantage of the conditions they are given and adapting their program to draw out the best for a given situation.

This week’s Olympic event was a ski Madison, which is a particularly confusing event with what appears to be most of your team out on the track at one time. I was particularly happy to see Alice, my daughter competing and making a fair stab at it despite her young age. Hopefully we can get some photos of the event on this post soon.