Sunday, December 30, 2012

No pain no gain!

 Instead of enjoying all of the sugar and treats that Christmas usually brings, we have stepped up our game and concentrated on our fitness. This has resulted in me buying a new gym wardrobe (well trainers and a couple of tops) and Max on a hunt for a 50kg set of dumbbells.
He always pulls faces when he stretches
Max standing on a fit ball... nowhere near as easy as it may look!!
My worried expression as kneeling on one is as far as I can go at the moment


Monday, December 24, 2012

Help?

After talking and planning this season full of races we have narrowed them down to a select few that comply with our university degrees and will be the best to progress further next season. After trying every single way possible we unfortunately had to exclude the races in Russia and Japan :(

Zweisimmen (Switzerland), Verbier (Switzerland), Mora (Sweden), Pfronten (Germany), Mittenwald (Germany) and Arosa (Switzerland) are the lucky 6 that we are planning to go to so far and we wondered if anyone out there could help us with accommodation for any of these. We are very willing to sleep on the floor if you haven't got any bed space!!! Would not be the first time for a race...

If you may be able to help any way possible, it would be greatly appreciated, please email us on cewheatman@hotmail.com.

Thank you and Merry Christmas!!!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

My basketball season so far - Claire

On the side of university and skiing, I am also on the UEA women's 1st team for basketball. This is something to be VERY proud of as so far we are undefeated this season in EVERYTHING (local league, Norfolk Cup, BUCS league, BUCS Midlands Cup). This has been by far the most exciting and rewarding season so far with them and hopefully it will continue! Unfortunately, we will be a couple of players short as they were only at UEA for one semester; however we will be gaining a few players back from injury in January as well!


Saturday, December 8, 2012

Christmas Law Ball - Claire

Amidst all of our skiing, we are of course both university students too, Max studies Graphic Communications at Norwich University Arts College and I study Law with French Law and Language at the University of East Anglia. It has proven hard at times as we have had to make many sacrifices, such as how much time we can spend on snow and taking time off university when we do go to train and compete, which makes it tougher for us in both areas to achieve our goals. Therefore, it is nice every once in a while to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves. This is exactly what I did at my Christmas Law Ball earlier this week. It was a great night with great company, food and music, as well as a free photo booth (the bit I was most excited about!!). Turns out that Max isn't the only one who pulls weird and wonderful faces in our family!





Monday, December 3, 2012

England Team Kit!!

Our England team kit arrived last week (YAAAAYYY!!). So here are a few pictures of it!
I apologise in advance, Max got a bit carried away!






Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Wild and Striped!

I would like to say a massive thank you to Claire at Wild Stripes for this amazing set of base layers! So cozy and snug, cannot wait to try them out on snow! Until then, our freezing student house will do nicely. They say that you will not be able to resist showing them off and they are right!! Would definitely recommend them!


Monday, November 19, 2012

BUDS 2012 - Claire

They didn't stay shiny red for long
Given that I am a 4th year at university and this was my first time at BUDS (British University Dry Slope Champs), it was always going to be great and having a legend of a bus driver confirmed this as soon as we got on the bus! 8 hours later and we arrived at our hostel in Edinburgh which used to be a church. After our arrival and having cooked spaghetti bolognese for 12 people we explored the hostel and found that all of the Irish were also staying there!

In typical Scottish style, it rained almost all weekend, this made walking up the side of the hill to where we were based difficult and interesting! With regards to the racing, I wasn't expecting much as I had skied on dry slope for the first time in 2 years only the week before. However, I managed to finish 40th in slalom and 47th in GS out of 203 females, so it wasn't too bad! The weekend also meant that I got to meet loads of people who I haven't seen since I have been at university, which was really amazing!

The BUDS Ball was a perfect end to the whole event, any reason to get out a posh frock! Even if we did see far too much of all the "true scotsmen" who were there!

Our first experience of a drunken true scotsman of the night!


BUDS Ball 2012


UEA Ski Captain and myself

The view from the top of Hillend

Battered and bruised after the weekend

Saturday, November 3, 2012

London Ski and Board Show

It is quite unbelievable that today was the first time we have ever been to the London Ski and Board show (unless you saw how lost we were then it was pretty believable). So many ski related things in one big room!! We got quite excited at the beginning and made mental notes of all of the stands we wanted to go back and visit, but when that time came, we had trouble finding most of the stands again.

We did however manage to find FSBS to have a meet and greet, little chat and to collect some gear to start properly repping, as well as Rubix Kangaroo (look out for more of them next year!!) and the Verbier stand to pick up our free day lift passes (Swiss Ski race here we come!) and to meet some lovely gorgeous dogs!

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Jumps, Starts and POW!

POW!
We are both home, safe and wanting to go straight back out!
After our last post with photos of gorgeous blue skies and a big bright sun, the weather took a turn with non stop snow (yaaayy!), -20something temperatures and low light and visibility (boo!). This meant that training within the course and on the jumps wasn't an option due to how dangerous it would be. Therefore, we did a lot of free skiing as well as digging out the start gate and doing laps practicing our starts and hiking back up the slope. This practice was much needed and very valuable, especially for Max as he is quite tall our coaches came up with a different starting position for him, as well as saying that he needs longer skis. It was also a prefect opportunity for everyone to get some funny video footage.

Burying team member
We were both gutted that we couldn't do any more jump training, but looking back at it we were so lucky with the weather and snow conditions at the start that we were even able to get some in for an October camp.

Digging out the start gate















Despite the cold weather, we continued with fitness as well with our usual recovery jogs, as well as a press up session and a watts per kilo bike test. The weather seemed to make these long days even more tiring, resulting in me going to bed at 9pm every night (apparently I'm still in that routine as I went to bed at 8:30pm last night too).

My surroundings during my recovery jog
Start training
Although we are back home now and straight back to university, skiing hasn't left our heads. Competition dates are starting to be announced now, so we are planning which ones want to do (all of them!) and which of them we are actually able to do (not all of them). We are also off to the London Ski and Snowboard Show on Saturday to have a look around and go and spend some time on the FSBS stand, so come say hey to us!! In addition, I am off to Edinburgh next week, embarrassing myself whilst trying to do slalom and GS on dry slope for BUDs, it will not go down well! I'm getting some much needed last minute coaching tomorrow from Max to try and decrease the level of humiliation.


Max is currently editing his video footage to create an amazing video for you guys, so keep your eyes peeled, we will premier it on here first! Until then, here is a video that a team mate from the camp made, so you can see what sort of things we got up to.

A massive thank you to James and Craig at JJC Training for absolutely everything, Stubai for the snow and No Team for the course!

Max staring me out at the start

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Austria Update

Studying besides the pool
Hallo! We have been in Austria for 4 days now, almost halfway through the camp with JJC Training, so crazy! My head thinks we have only just arrived but my body definitely feels like I have been here 10 days already. After a little trouble with my boots/bindings I got to ski with my new boots today, they are so responsive and comfy, love it!!

Half of the ski prep room
We have had some much needed jump training over the last 2 days which has been good and helped build our confidence and technique, as well as some start training and video feedback, which is essential as it is tough to get back into the race after a bad start! As you can see from the photos, the weather is lovely here, so hot! A bit of snow soon would be great though as it is starting to get quite thin in places (our skis have taken a bit of a beating from rocks and stones recently).

Views from the cable car up to the
top of the glacier

As a plus, the French, Swedish, Austrian and Italian national skiercross teams are out here at the moment! So getting to see them train in person is a great opportunity!

LOTS of GoPro footage has also been taken, so when we are back and rested we will have a go at editing it for you all and then post it up on here.

Although the 4* hotel where we are staying is amazing, we have to pay for the internet; therefore we will do another update in a few more days time.

Bis bald!



Friday, October 19, 2012

Off to Austria we go!

His concentration face
After a hectic day packing (my new boots don't fit my skis without redrilling my bindings, etc) we are off to the Stubai glacier in Austria for 10 days training with JJC Training! Excited does not express our emotions right now! GoPro is packed, so get ready for some great action photos, videos and stories!

It also turns out that I have gained some arm muscle as the "see if Claire can lift it" test no longer works to determine if our ski bags are too heavy.

Hopefully we haven't forgotten anything...


All packed!

No more taped up inners, I have new boots! I now need to red rill my skis...

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Look what we just bought!

In preparation for our training camp later this month we went and bought a Go Pro HD Hero 2!

Excuse his face, he doesn't always look like that!
So keep a look out for some amazing videos coming your way soon! Max has taken it home to try it out on his local bmx course, so you could see plenty of crashes!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

The rainy land of the leprechauns - Claire

Last year I was studying French law at Strasbourg university and after promising my mum that I would make loads of French speaking friends, the majority of the friends I made were Irish... So after a long summer apart we all decided to meet up in Dublin (it was quicker for my friend to get there from London than it was for another who came from Cork).

Typical to Ireland it rained a lot for the first few days and was very windy but this did not spoil our sight seeing around Dublin and our day trip to Galway. Our last full day in Ireland was however extremely sunny and from some of the pictures it could easily be mistaken for Spain!


We were definitely staying safe!



Howth or Spain?


All in all it was an amazing week and our England reunion will hopefully be taking place in February as long as my month isn't packed with competitions!

Friday, September 21, 2012

New Sponsor!

We are excited to announce that For Skiers By Skiers (FSBS) have welcomed us to their team!!

Keep your eyes peeled on their website and thier facebook page for our posts, pictures and videos!

Thanks FSBS!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Uvex Equipment Arrival

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't pretty excited about our latest parcel through the post: a helmet for me and a selection of goggles and lenses for both of us! It took a lot of will power not to put them on in the house.
My selection of products

We would both like to say a MASSIVE thank you to Uvex for putting us on their Athlete Programme!

THANK YOU!

England Development Squad Selection

So we were both selected for the England Development Squad at the beginning of summer! Of course we both then HAD to buy the England Squad kit which should be arriving in "Autumn"... What classes as Autumn?!

Both of us are pretty excited to say the least, especially Max who has only competed in 3 skiercross races on snow!

Now it is time for fitness....

Paralympics Wheelchair Basketball

After missing out on the olympics we decided that we had to watch a bit of the action for ourselves so we chose to go see the mens wheelchair basketball quarterfinals at the North Greenwich Arena.

We got to see 4 matches:
Columbia v South Africa (12th/11th place games)
Italy v Japan (10th/9th place game)

USA v Germany (Quarter Final 1)

GB v Turkey (Quarter Final 2)
It was a great day out, definitely glad that we got to witness a bit of history. Just wish that we had gotten tickets to some of the other events too!