Biggest news is Friday's view of the Club:
White in November is always encouraging!
And the jackets have arrived and are most excellent - a few people who were in the right place at the right time are already wearing them!
Some of the many sizes and colours waiting to be distributed
Thanks to Carrie Lenauskas, you can watch this and count the Craigleith people you see:
And thanks to the support of our great sponsors and the general success that comes from so many people being engaged in GDHL, we have been able to support upgrading the timing system at the Club so that it will display "best of two" results during the second run of GDHL races (no more embarrassment at being shown as 112th when there were only 84 starters), and to provide a much bigger collection of gates and cameras for adult race training programs at the Club. Plus, we're expecting to announce more great news on the sponsor and support front very soon.
Planning for the GDHL schedule is well underway. The biggest news is that our Super G will be held on Landslide for the first time, so get ready for less skating through the woods and a few exhilarating turns once you drop over the lip and onto the pitch. I'm still lobbying for the course to run up the side hill to the bottom of Manitou, then down Vortex to the Millennium finish line, but one thing at a time :) We're also hoping that the logistics work for a night dual slalom on Little John or Zipper, perhaps on an exhibition basis until we determine how many of our racers are allowed to leave the house after dark.
So how do you get to be part of this? Just log in to the members' section of the Craigleith website and get signed up for GDHL and all of the great training programs offered in our new consolidated Alpine Programs department. We're now in the traditional slow period between the end of the early bird rate offer and the week before the season starts. We have almost exactly the same number of people signed up as this time last season. Several are new Club members, or at least new GDHL racers, and they will continue to bring down the MRA (mean racer age, not that we allow mean racers). But why wait until the last moment? Take advantage of this time to get signed up so you can concentrate on skiing when the Club opens. And please look for the question on the sign up form that asks whether you want to be on a team. The new form has made that a bit more obscure and you will look silly trying to blame your spouse when you find you're not on a team and wanted to be, or whatever. If you didn't note your preference on the form when you signed up, please reply to this newsletter and let me know.
Or even if you don't want to race but want to be part of GDHL, be like Julie Hughes Workman and join our GDHL committee. Volunteer for a little or a lot, we're glad to have you! Reply to this if you're keen.
DIVERSIONS
Once you've done all that, turn your attention to skiing. Hopefully you've been working at your fitness for a while. If not, check out this S-Media series on preparing for skiing. And here is an interesting article with some simple tests designed to assess your functional mobility when it comes to skiing. We spend a lot of time working on ski technique, but our ability to do what we see racers doing on television is often subject to physical limitations. Being able to do these movements won't make you the next Ted Ligety or even Kate Ryley, but not being able to do them might prompt you to seek some personal training to help you get there.
And where is there? Well, Tessa Worley was there on Saturday, winning the women's World Cup GS in Killington.
Enough for now. See you skiing soon!
James Mathers