What do you get when you cross a Swiss mountain with a curious soul? A weekend of winter adventures and a lot of cheese, of course.
Recently, I have been really trying to push myself out of my comfort zone. In terms of work, in terms of diet, in terms of exercise and especially in terms of attitude. I went skiing for work this weekend in the beautiful towns of Nendaz and Verbier in Switzerland and found my ski legs. In fact, perhaps I found my ski fins…
To set the story scene, although I’ve been skiing a couple of times, I’m still very much a novice. But an eager one. I only started learning last year, with about five days of skiing in total. I’ve tackled steeper slopes in the past, but always with a lot of help. And they were always fairly short runs.
My comfort zone was well and truly shoved yesterday. There was no time to be a baby. Instead of someone who let me take it easy, I had a really excellent instructor who watched me ski for a couple of blue runs, gave me some tips, helped with my technique and then decided that I was doing okay. So it was time to take things up a notch. Goodbye blues – we were straight on to the reds. Steep, viciously long reds.
“Let’s go!” I agreed cheerfully, with a thumbs up on the outside and an internal shriek on the inside. But I just got on with it. And reader, I skied steep reds for that whole morning until lunch. Was it easy? No. Did I question whether my thighs were going to fall off? Yes. Many times. Was it scary? Hell Yes.
Every time my skis hovered over the edge of the slope, I felt my stomach churn in my throat. And then I shoved myself down that cliff with a smile on my face. Because, as I am realising more and more, you just have to get on with it sometimes. You can do so much more than you think you can!
It was a really fun, challenging day. I loved it, even though my legs are a little sore today! And I was so proud that I could arrive to lunch with those slopes under my belt. Not that I’m competitive or anything…
So here’s to improvement. And new boundaries!
Hope you had a good weekend too,
Sophie x
