Day 4 and 5 - two completely different days

Tuesday, aka Day 4, was another perfect day. I kept my instructor’s information in my head - bend the knees, look ahead. I challenged myself going down some of the hard double blues that were filled with bumps and moguls. While I am not as fast as when I go down on the smooth runs, I still maintained my balance and kept making turns. I even took a ride down a double black - my first. I fell a few times but made it down with a few turns.

One thing I really improved on was my speed - I was flying down the mountain on the blues and the greens, really carving it up and hitting some jumps. I was so pumped after the day that I went to the gym, or should I say, a glorified hotel gym. This place was full of machines, had low ceilings, basically the opposite of Balance. Whenever I am in these type of gyms I love to do some Olympic lifts, plyos, and other explosive moves. After an hour of doing Turkish getups, single arm snatches, dumbbell pushup walks, Macgyver pullups, and overhead squats some of the guys doing preacher curls and smith machine incline presses started asking me about what I was doing. I got them doing some pullups and pushups on the rings (yes, the gym did have rings). All in all, Tuesday was a great day!

Wednesday, however was quite the opposite. Luckily for me I bought a helmet on Tuesday - a small $70 investment to save my bucket. The day started off just fine, hitting the double blues, riding fast the straightaways. But about 11:00 I took the nastiest fall I have ever taken. I was flying down the mountain and there were these 2 skiers in the middle of the trail, so I had to maneuver around them. In doing so, I took my eye off the trail and lost concentration for a split second. That was long enough for me to catch an edge and fall backwards at a high rate of speed. My head hit so hard that I thought that I cracked my helmet. And thank goodness for the helmet - I wouldn’t be writing this now if it weren’t for the helmet. My left shoulder and right knee are hurting pretty bad. After a few more runs, I called it a day. My right leg is in a ball of pain - can’t quite straighten it without pain. Wondering if it’s a ligament tear. We’ll find out Thursday.

-Graham