What was meant to be my week on snow! Continental Cup SX - Hotham

Date: 1st September 2008

I had been looking forward to my week skiing for the last few months. Working hard at both my jobs, back at uni part time and training hard off snow, I was ready to get back on skis! I had a weekend cruising around at Hotham and managed to fall violently ill with influenza on the Monday, and it took me down BADLY! After being put on a drip on the Tuesday, food would not stay down and I spent the remainder of the week either in bed, the toilet or on the couch watching Olympic repeats. After not being able to keep food down for 5 days I,for some crazy reason, decided I would start the ski cross continental cup race on the Saturday. For those of you who are regular readers or know me well will know by now, sometimes you just can't stop me! Without the strength to tune my skis, team mates Craig Robinson and Gregg Samuels tuned, waxed, prepped and scraped my skis for me so I was ready to go in the morning, a huge thank you to them as I would not have been able to do this by myself in the state I was in.

So I left the apartment for the first time all week and found myself in the start area for the SX. I felt weak and sick, I rag dolled my way down the course and ended up in the finals in the outside gate (I was actually happy to get that far). I had a bit of luck and found myself in the big final. With little to no energy left after 7 runs down the course, feeling exhausted and sick, I fell straight into 4th place and made it to the bottom. I wish there was more to tell you, but it was fairly uneventful and I was just pleased to cross the line in that state! Actually a great result, potentially a stupid action even starting the event, but everything worked out well and I rushed off back to bed. I managed to keep some food in later that night for the first time in 6 days. The race was won by Aleisha Cline from Canada.
I left Mt Hotham on the Sunday and returned back to Melbourne where I spent the next 7 days just renourishing my body. The illness has put me out of training for nearly 2 and a half weeks and I am just getting back into it now. Gutted that my week at Hotham was spent sick as a dog, but am looking ahead now to the Northern season and will continue to work hard off snow.