You can take the girl from the mountain...

I remember being about 10 years old, standing in line with my fellow ski-schoolers, listening to the instructor going on about some technique or other.  At the edge of the piste were a group of older teenagers, smoking, chatting, and most shockingly, sitting on their bottoms in the snow!  

"Snowboarders", our instructor huffed.  "We're getting more of them each year.  They seem to spend more time sitting down and being in the way than practicing a proper sport."

For the next couple of years, I would enjoy silently tutting at the people who - as I had learnt from our instructor - were too preoccupied with following a fad to enjoy a proper snow sport.

However, when I hit 14, I noticed that the vast majority of my ski camp peers had exchanged the heavy boots and awkward sticks for the comfortable soft leather of boarding boots - and they didn't seem to mind getting cold backsides when comfortably sitting in the snow, waiting for me to catch up. 

20 years later I was determined to fill the gap in my winter sports education, so the best husband and I hired some boards and hit the slopes in Adelboden (thank you Crazy Sports for having made that possible at such short notice at the time!) 

Unfortunately, whilst Matthew got on really well and progressed quickly, my "hitting the slope" soon turned into "hitting the wall". I had heard that people who were confident skiers tended to pick up snowboarding fairly easily, and was confident that my teenage skills were good enough to overcome the two decades of absence from snow and sports. Surprisingly, I was wrong. 

I had been warned that it might be hard work -  I just hadn't expected it all to be quite as tough as that! By the time our morning passes had expired, I had decided that snowboarding really was a fad at best, not worth investing in, and that the day was better enjoyed standing upright.

Adelboden (Engstligenalp) on foot

However, if you have read my blog before, you will probably have come across my approach to physical activity:  I try it, it's hard, I decide it's probably not for me.  The lock down has not only inspired a heart breaking nostalgia for Switzerland, but also forced me to reconsider how easily I had given up on things I had really wanted in the past, just because they were hard to get. 

And so, for my second lockdown Birthday, the best husband booked a lesson at Suffolk Leisure Park.  Perhaps because this time I was properly prepared for it to be hard work and tiring, and maybe because I didn't expect to make it to the bottom without landing on my knee pads, I had a really good time! After a short warm up and stretch, we hauled our boards up the short, steep incline. Initially, we slowly skidded down backwards, holding on to the the steady arms of the instructor, practicing only to slide and desperately tying to look relaxed. Much like a dance teacher, he must have gotten bored of uttering "look at me, don't look at your feet, relax your shoulders, no, look up, not at your feet, relax...". When he slowly prized my clinging fingers from his forearm, I had to focus so hard on not bursting into fearful tears that I can't really recall how I made down - but make it I did! There even was some zig-zagging action... but exactly how that happened I'm not sure.

 

Are you considering giving snowboarding (or brush-boarding, if in Ipswich) a go? If - like me - sports is not your middle name, here are my thoughts:

- Decide why you want to do it.  If you would like to have a one-off fun-time with friends, maybe go for tobogganing. Snowboarding will probably be very little fun for at least the first half hour.

- If you are considering trying it to see if it might be a regular thing to do, be prepared to find your first lesson hard work.  Whilst the boots are more comfortable than the skiing ones, I still felt that my feet were pressed into an awkward shape, my legs were pushed apart by the binding and my thighs burned from the near-constant squat position.  As we started on the beginner slope (phew!), our lesson also included a fair amount of bending down to clip in and unclip the binding and carrying the board back up to the top.  We definitely experienced a good amount of cardio and muscle work.

- Our very helpful and patient instructor recommended doing Yoga - he felt that the balance and flexibility he had developed allowed him to be confident on the board. 

- It might just be me, but I feel that I have the most fun when I start off by assuming that I'll be very terrible and won't make any progress ever.   

- Wear gloves. Whatever else you take from this, wear gloves.  Just... trust me. 

Will I do it again? I guess this is at least in part a financial question.  Lessons aren't cheap, and I would need a good few more before being able to fully enjoy it. Even once I am Olympic material, it's not like running, where I just chuck on some trainers. On the other hand, once I started to feel that I was getting the hang of it, I did really enjoy it... maybe I'll try skiing next, just to see if my mad 1995 skills are still alive in there somewhere.