February: Dutch Nationals

The Dutch nationals abled body where held February 16-23 in Zauchensee Austria. On Sunday we trained GS in Zauchensee. It was a good training day and I definitely felt a lot stronger than in December. On Monday the first race was scheduled, a GS point race, in the abled body field I finished 5^th. Tuesday it was time for the national championships Giant Slalom. I was fore running this race, I had the chance to run 4 times, both runs from the youth start and bot runs from the adult start. It was nice to have the chance to do a run twice with race circumstances.

This week we got lots of fresh snow and powder! We free skied the powder on Wednesday instead of slalom training. I had a lot of fun playing in the powder. Later that day most tracks got ruined a bit with big humps, I crashed over a hump and I heard a nasty snap. I was sitting in the snow checking myself when I realized what caused the snap,  my orthotic was broken otherwise I was fine.

I was disappointed thinking I wasn’t able to ski anymore that week. I got a ride down on a ski doo and my leg was checked by the event doctor, removing the rest of my orthotic. After that I made a call to my orthopedic technicians’ office to see if there was a possibility to fix my orthotic in Austria, I got an address of an orthopedic technician in Salzburg. The next day I drove to Salzburg and Tappe fixed my orthotic that day! I was so happy I could ski again.

Friday it was time for the national championships slalom. I was forerunning again, now with the opportunity to ski 6 runs, this is because the youngest athletes ski a stubby slalom with short gates. Six runs was a bit too much, the schedule would have been to tight, so with other forerunners we divided the runs. I did the stubby slalom and the long run in the adult slalom. The stubby slalom was very tight and challenging that way, the kids have shorter ski’s. It was a lot of fun especially with the kids who requested me to forerun their slalom, they were very spontaneous asking lots of questions about my leg and orthotic.

The adult slalom had a nice first run, it was fast and a bit strait just the way I like. The second run was a lot rounder which made it more challenging. It was a good ‘race’ day. After 8 years it was great to be back at the Dutch nationals.